The Damnation of the Soul of the Miserly Citerna 1444

Il Sassetta painted "The Damnation of the Soul of the Miserly Citerna," in the early quattrocento. The cool palette, rendered in tempera, constructs a scene both ordered and surreal. The composition divides into distinct zones, each framed by a series of vertical architectural elements. The monks sit behind a long yellow desk, their faces identical, almost like symbolic masks. A friar stands to the left, gesticulating toward a doorway where demons seize the soul of Citerna. Through this portal, Sassetta destabilizes the earthly with the otherworldly, introducing the uncanny. The artist uses architecture and light to delineate space, and with this, he also divides the sacred from the profane. This not only provides a background for the story but also functions as a sign in a semiotic system of values. We can thus interpret "The Damnation of the Soul of the Miserly Citerna" through this lens as the meeting point of the earthly and the spiritual.