Keep your distance... keep away... avoid close contact: these are the most widespread recommendations on behavior to adopt in the midst of the Coronavirus emergency. Yet, it is precisely the closeness between bodies, the arms that tighten around another person to express feelings and passions are perhaps the most distinctive, most characteristic sign of our existence, of our humanity and of civilization itself. Covid wants to deprive us of all this and, for the most part, it has succeeded. The virus wants to steal from us one of the most social and universal gestures that humanity has ever been able to express: I hug her.
The image of a hug is almost a topical sign, an icon, a visual trait that is also an emotion. A hug is able to express the synthesis of thoughts, of affectionate or loving impulses. A hug expresses the language of the body without the use of words or looks: they are just and simply two bodies approaching and holding each other.
Art has grasped this gesture very well and has represented it in sublime and unforgettable forms. In the darkness of the Siena Cathedral crypt, by Duccio da Boninsegna, an embrace full of deep intensity and emotion is depicted: Mary enveloping the body of Christ as art has rarely been able to illustrate.
The embrace in the history of art has had innumerable representations. On this Easter day, in these days of mandatory "social detachment" we offer a Best Wish with a "virtual" Embrace as art has proposed it and told it from past centuries up to these days with that symbolic image of the nurse in gown and mask that tenderly embraces Italy.
Among the many hugs, we mention only the best known: in sculpture we start from the oldest and most famous hug of the Etruscan spouses depicted in the sarcophagus that united them forever (preserved in the Cerveteri Museum) to the famous Canova's Love and Psyche up to Auguste Rodin's Kiss. In painting you can range from Raphael's Three Graces to Giorgio De Chirico's Hector and Andromache; fromEmbrace by Gustave Klimt to get to Embracing by Jack Vettriano and the very modern and very mysterious Bansky with his Mobile Phone Lovers.
Finally, we can remember that it seems to have Celtic origins the use of hugging trees as a testimony of life, of respect for nature, for the environment that surrounds us. Many still do but a loved one to hug is something else. We would very much like to hope to hug each other again soon, however and wherever and, if possible, without a mask.
