Mythological Renaissance

Credit: Radiante Mozzarelle

Flying horses, nymphs, dragons and gods aren’t things you see every day. Mythological and fantasy art is slowly fading away from galleries and museums, but perhaps it now belongs to the digital world.

Radiante Mozzarelle is a digital illustrator and painter based in California, USA, who brings history and myths back to life.

Originally from China, Mozzarelle grew up in a family of artists, with her mother being a fine art painter and her father writing poems in Song Dynasty Chinese. Their passion made her fall in love with culture and history, finding in art a way to represent her favourite stories.

In 2018, she started her studies at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where she discovered her obsession with European literature and philosophy, which also led her to learn nine languages.

‘Art to me is just another language to think in. As long as you can see, pictures can transcend cultural barriers,’ she says.

Mozzarelle’s style is the result of a mixture of European and American sources: a pinkish lovechild of Leyendecker, as she claims herself, blends with the meticulous line art of Charles Dana Gibson and the heavy brushstrokes typical of Dean Cornwell.

‘I feel like Pygmalion with a gallery full of Galateas stuck in my brain and my computer screen. I love an idealised antiquity with a modern twist,’ says Mozzarelle.

Angels, horses, famous mythological and historical figures are the protagonists of her artworks. Characters like Perseus and Medusa still have regular anatomy but with a pastel palette of colours that make them look like statues of quartz or iridescent crystals.

As aesthetic as this might be, her works go far beyond simple illustration and tell a story that resonates with people as if they were the spectators of an ancient Greek play.

‘I like to start the painting with some kind of tragedy, and turn it into a “tragicomedy” through my art,’ she says. ‘The tragic part is still the woeful fate of characters of circumstances, and the comedy is the colours and beauty I can add to it.’

Unlike Mozzarelle, Olivia Di Gregorio represents mythology and fantasy scenery through the soft and colourful lines of her oil paintings. Di Gregorio is an emerging artist based in Toronto, Canada, who takes inspiration from folklore tales and her own dream world.

With a mixed background of Chinese and Italian heritage, she often uses the concept of identity as a mean to reflect the story behind a character.

In 2019, she graduated from OCAD University and since then she’s appeared in several exhibitions, with the most recent being the Modern Eden’s annual portrait exhibition in San Francisco.

Waterhouse, Winterhalter, Velasquez and the Pre-Raphaelites fuelled Di Gregorio’s passion for mythology, which she urges to bring forth in a more contemporary context.

‘Escapism is a luxury that few can often afford, but when people can see magic and their cultural lore represented in art, it helps inspire honest reflections that make sense of the world,’ she says.

‘It also gives us permission to believe in extraordinary things, and see ourselves in different worlds that may not suit the one we live in.’

Ethereal clouds and dreamy girls are the darlings, as she puts it, starring in her paintings. But knights and fairies don’t miss the opportunity to bring that extra magic feel to them.

Di Gregorio’s work acts as a mirror to self-introspection or a portal to our wildest dreams, which is something that has always inspired her, especially during her isolated childhood.

‘I relied on my dreams for some sense of adventure, trying to return to a specific dream from nights before. It felt like I was hopping through worlds, and I think I still rely on them now.’

In paintings like Pair Dadeni, dreams seem to come true. The softness of the clouds surrounding the naked female knight fight the cryptic scenes reflected in the mirror in front of her. Magic is captured with the use of bright, vivid colours that float in the darkness surrounding the subject.

Much like her previous works, Pair Dadeni references Di Gregorio’s intimate secrets and her journal writings, as well as folklore tales.

‘Some of my recent works prioritise stories from survivors of abuse in literature and real life, with my paintings acting as a visual escape into perfectly untouchable planes of isolation within fantastical landscapes,’ she says.

Contemporary mythological art is not as present in art galleries as it was decades ago and the reason, for Mozzarelle, is the lack of interest and patrons.

‘Mythology just isn’t a central part of the public consciousness anymore. Most people aren’t looking for a lecture.’

Di Gregorio agrees. ‘Mythological works are seen as unfashionable, or too romantic in comparison to more popular genres.’

But she claims that this is an issue that even the Pre-Raphaelites struggled with. ‘Any work that focused on relics from the past was seen as too sentimental, and in some ways, I think people still share that belief when it comes to collecting artwork.’

With more artists exploring the digital route, art programmes like Photoshop or Procreate are becoming the new canvas. However, there’s the risk of it appearing as less professional than traditional art, just like fanart.

For Mozzarelle, this is something that can be fixed with an intriguing narrative and the relatability factor behind each piece.

‘Gods and goddesses of many cultures are more than characters in a story. There’s often a message that endures time to be discussed in this kind of art, which makes people reflect on more than themselves by putting their individuality on a much grander timeline,’ she says.

For traditional artists like Di Gregorio, mythological art is timeless and can still communicate its particular narrative with hog and sable brushes.

Both artists are now preparing for their next big projects. You can catch Di Gregorio’s work at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair’s 60th anniversary, which will be held online, and Mozzarelle’s prints on her social media accounts.