D'Annunzio's Theosophical Cross: Ancient Egyptian Mask at Vittoriale

At the Vittoriale degli Italiani in Gardone Riviera, a polymaterial cross created by Gabriele d'Annunzio and Giuseppe Guidi combines a 3,500-year-old Egyptian funerary mask with early 20th-century enamel plaques depicting the Passion of Christ. The mask, from the New Kingdom, originally transfigured the deceased into the goddess Isis. Guidi, a painter and enameller from Castel Bolognese, crafted four copper plaques in cobalt blue and purple red showing the Last Supper, Christ's condemnation, Crucifixion, and Deposition. D'Annunzio demanded frames as minimal as "the circle of a ring holding a lapis lazuli fragment." The work, housed in the Stanza delle Reliquie, reverses traditional theology by placing Christ's Passion within the maternal womb of Egyptian myth, transforming death into eternal regeneration. It is a theosophical assemblage serving as a talisman against physical and spiritual decay.