Fernando Ribaudo - Aurelia Flamel (1668 1690) La Figlia...

I am Fernando Ribaudo, a 63-year-old Roman artist, a set designer for 42 years, and today devoted to my lifelong passion: painting. My grandfather frescoed churches in Sicily, my father produced paintings for America. Dreamer and student. My painting is born where Caravaggio meets the symbol. I study the ancient light of the Seicento masters to tell dreams, fears, and modern allegories. I use oil on linen canvas, with glazes and chiaroscuro. Each of my paintings is a theatre. The protagonists are nudes, skulls, felines and candles. I do not paint reality. I paint its secret. ..and here is my new fable, to be told by candlelight.. AURELIA FLAMEL (1668-1690) - The Daughter of the Golden Alchemist The Father: Nicolas Flamel Le Jeune (1635-1702) - was a descendant of the great Nicolas Flamel of Paris, official alchemist to Louis XIV at Versailles. The Man of the Sun called him L'Homme d'Or because in his tower in Montmartre he truly managed to create gold to finance Versailles. He worked only at night, with tricolor veils at the window so as not to be seen. His daughter whom I included in the painting is Aurelia Flamel. Born in Paris, raised in Versailles. It is an oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm Symbolic realism with French baroque Versailles light. Chiaroscuro à la Georges de La Tour and Charles Le Brun, with Paris whiting, Versailles ultramarine blue, royal velvet red, gold of Louis XIV. Central subject: Aurelia, 19, Parisian. Black hair in the French style, back tattooed. The tattoos are not ink. They are the father’s gold formulas written in old French, that shine like threads of Versailles gold. The white-red-blue veil is the drapeau de France. White of Paris, Heart Red, King’s Blue. It is the veil her father used to wear at the Montmartre window when he was making gold. On the table the crystal ball: it is Flamel’s boule de cristal in Paris. Inside there is no gold. There is a dream that shines. Her father saw ingots there. She sees the dreams of the people of Paris. The golden clock with chain, the hourglass, the inkwell with a goose-quill: her father used them to calculate the exact hour to make gold in Versailles. She uses them to calculate the exact hour to make a dream come true. The silver vase with putti: it is the Sèvres vase of Versailles. Her father filled it with liquid gold for the King. She has filled it with water from the Seine. Whoever drinks from that vase dreams in French. The gold coins and the tarot cards: they are Louis d’or from Louis XIV that her father secretly minted in Montmartre. She leaves them on the table for those in need. She never counts them. The animals: Jaguar, black panther, lynx, cat, rabbit. They were the heraldic animals of the Sun King that her father had to paint in gold for the Gobelins tapestries. She freed them from the Versailles tapestries. Now they sleep at her feet in the tower. The arched window: opens onto Paris, the Seine, with Notre-Dame and Montmartre at sunset. No longer German Elba. France. The painting within the painting: the nude Venus in a golden frame is Titian’s Venus that her father copied for Louis XIV. The first woman her father tried to cover in gold. French story: Her father, the Golden Alchemist of France, spent 25 years locked in the Montmartre tower in Paris, making gold for Louis XIV to build Versailles. He succeeded. He made a chest of Louis d’or. He brought it to his daughter Aurelia, who was seven, to Versailles and said to her: but fille, j'ai fait de l'or pour le Roi. Aurelia took a Louis d’or, looked at it, threw it from the arch window into the Seine and said in French: papa, l'or ne brille pas. Ce sont les rêves qui brillent. The father, the richest alchemist in France, cried for three days in front of the Versailles palace. Then he understood. He emptied the Montmartre furnace and from that day taught his daughter only one thing: comment prendre un rêve et le rendre vrai. Aurelia learned. At 15 she realized the dream of a laundress to see Versailles. At 16 the dream of a child to fly over Notre-Dame. Not with magic. With her father’s gold. She took gold for the King and turned it into dreams for the people. Magical ending: The Paris legend says that Aurelia Flamel still lives in the Montmartre tower with windows white, red, blue. If you hang this 30x40 in your home, and before sleep you look at the crystal ball and think of a true dream, not about money but about heart, and you think it in French, even just a mot, rêve, she understands it. After 7 nights, the gold tattoo on her back in the painting begins to shine blue, white, red. It is not painting. It is the Versailles gold of her father that has transformed into the light of France. And on the morning of the eighth day, your dream begins to come true. Not because you were lucky. But because the French daughter of the alchemist who made gold for the Sun King decided that your dream is worth more than all the gold of Versailles. And she achieved it.

Estimate:£837.59

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