Valerio Nicolai Doppio Capolino, 2026

Valerio Nicolai uses painting to confront art history with elements of the prosaic and everyday. Humor, symbolism, and absurdity inhabit scenes in which reality and fiction continually shift places. 

In Doppio Capolino [Double Peek], two faces whose features recall Italian Renaissance portraits emerge from the edges of a dark, architectural space. The thick wooden frame suggests a doorway, window, stage, or passage, leaving the setting suspended between interior and exterior: the figures do not fully enter the image, but appear to hide within it, looking out from the margins, taking a peek. Unlike previous works by the artist centered on a single face, Doppio Capolino introduces for the first time a double presence, creating a quiet exchange between the two figures and the viewer. 

Drawing on Renaissance and Baroque portraits, including the direct gaze often found in works by artists such as Lorenzo Lotto, the painting unsettles the conventional relationship between sitter and observer. Rather than presenting the figures openly, Valerio Nicolai places them inside an artificial pictorial space, creating a subtle tension between appearance and concealment, looking and being looked at.