Family Love

Painting Description: "Family Love" by Valeria Notarnicola

Medium: Acrylic and lacquer on canvas
Dimensions: 80 × 100 cm
Date: May 2025
Style: In the tradition of Gustav Klimt

In Family Love, Valeria Notarnicola expands upon the Klimtian tradition of sensual ornamentation to explore a more intimate, archetypal realm—that of familial bond and collective vulnerability. The central composition features three entwined figures: a woman, a man, and a child—rendered in a graceful, tender embrace, their bodies interlocked in a shared current of protection, trust, and unity.

The palette is rich in earthy golds, deep greens, and crimson reds, with the figures encircled by a field of blooming roses, halos, and mosaic-like textiles that envelop them in symbolic warmth. The layering of patterns and textures—particularly beneath the figures—recalls Klimt’s famed tapestries of geometric abstraction, yet here they are reimagined as a quilt-like foundation of love, memory, and continuity.

Above the family hovers a white dove, a subtle yet powerful symbol of peace, spirit, and guardianship. Its inclusion places this intimate scene in a mythic or even sacred register, transforming a quiet familial moment into a visual prayer for harmony and generational healing.

Notarnicola’s signature use of lacquered acrylic gives the painting a luminous surface that elevates the emotional tone—simultaneously grounded in the everyday and lifted into the realm of iconography.

Interpretation

Family Love evokes the mythic ideal of the family as sanctuary—a living vessel of love, trust, and interdependence. Through the Klimtian interplay of pattern, gold, and the human form, Notarnicola honors the universality of familial connection, presenting it not only as an emotional truth but as a sacred archetype that transcends time, culture, and personal story.