Photographic and pictorial exhibition by Andrea Colarieti and Simona Benedetti.

Since the time of Leonardo da Vinci, the human soul has been a subject of inquiry, mystery, and representation. In his studies of faces and gestures, Leonardo sought to capture the inner motions of man, those imperceptible variations that pass through the eyes, hands, and posture, becoming for him the visible sign of the invisible.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his theological vision, defined the “motions of the soul” as the passions that move human beings toward good or evil, sensitive forces that, when guided by reason, become instruments of virtue.

Centuries later, Descartes described them as natural mechanisms, movements of the soul and body united in an invisible dance, the encounter between mind and heart, between spirit and matter.

It is within this ancient yet ever-relevant lineage that the exhibition “The Motions of the Soul” unfolds, where Andrea Colarieti and Simona Benedetti translate, through different languages, the light and color, tensions, fragilities, and beauty of human feeling.

In Andrea Colarieti’s photographs, a single face becomes the stage for infinite inner transformations. Through one subject, the photographer explores the multiplicity of the human spirit: calm and turmoil, strength and vulnerability, light and shadow dwelling within each individual. The face becomes a universal mirror, a mutable icon of emotion. His images, seemingly suspended in time, echo Leonardo’s search for inner movement, translating into image what cannot be spoken.

Around these visions develops the pictorial universe of Simona Benedetti, a physical and symbolic path in which the viewer is invited to walk among large canvases suspended from ceiling to floor. These surfaces vibrate like veils or deep breaths, allowing the visitor to literally immerse themselves in the motions of the soul: crossing them, touching them, listening to them. Benedetti’s painting is instinctive, material, visceral: a language that does not represent emotion, but evokes it, lets it happen.

“The Motions of the Soul” is therefore a journey within the human spirit, a dialogue between reason and instinct, between the visible and the invisible. An invitation to look not only at what is shown, but at what moves within us.