The Picture of Dorian Gray
© Ivan Cangelosi, 2009
130X75 cm
Ink on paper
Technique – Handwriting of the whole novel of Oscar Wilde – English
Material – Pens and paper
Category-Society
About the novel – The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only novel by the Irish writer Oscar Wilde, published for the first time in 1890. The main character of the book is the rich and beautiful Dorian Gray who, fascinated by the figure of Lord Henry Wotton, ends up embody his maverick nature and the immorality.
Dorian Gray is given a picture that shows him at the height of his youth, so as to arouse in him, as time goes on, a sort of envy towards his own beautiful and young image portrayed in the painting. This led him to conclude a sort of pact with the devil that will guarantee him eternal youth and beauty, while it will be its image in the picture that will show signs of physical and moral decay.
Every time that Dorian Gray commits some vicious and immoral act, the portrait deforms and becomes uglier and uglier, as if it would reflect his dirty consciousness; until one day he decides to get rid of it by tearing it with the same knife by which he had previously killed his friend, the painter Hallward, author of the portrait.
As a result of this act, his servants will find Dorian Gray dead with a knife stuck in his heart, unrecognizable and suddenly aged, at the foot of his portrait which has returned by magic young and beautiful as it was in the beginning.
Description of the painting – Selfportrait