Il cuore lieto e forte vince l’amara.. Corte

Within «15 Portrait 15 Poets», Sara Ventroni’s identity is subjected to a conflict between the individual presence of her face and two collective codes, the altered proverb and the scratchcard verdict, which turn the strength invoked by the phrase into a promise that is immediately withdrawn. Zampogna does not celebrate the poet through recognisability alone. He places her portrait within a device in which common language, personal identity and the logic of winning correct one another. The shift from «sorte», fate, to «Corte», court, leaves the sound of the formula almost intact while diverting its meaning: what appeared to guarantee victory over necessity becomes an unstable statement, exposed to the arbitrariness of a substituted word.

The frontal screen printed face retains a precise presence, yet its translation into greyscale also consigns it to the impersonal reproducibility of the image. Red brushstrokes cross the face, the writing and the white field, binding them within the same interference and preventing the figure from closing itself within the celebratory autonomy of portraiture. The saturated band framing the field acts like the assertive graphics of a promotional message, but the sentence inside it loses its reliability. Lower down, «Non hai vinto», or «You have not won», counters the proverb’s moral confidence with an immediate, anonymous verdict: the heart may be «glad and strong», but the code of the game recognises neither virtue, experience nor identity.

The work thus brings into poetic portraiture a tension already central to Zampogna’s scratchcard works: individual hope is formulated through public devices that promise change but produce exclusion. Here, however, the language of tradition is not merely juxtaposed with a commercial verdict. It is itself made defective, almost as if it were a losing combination. Sara Ventroni remains recognisable while the codes that should define her strength prove unreliable. Her identity is not erased, but compelled to contend with the linguistic and media noise surrounding it.