What do you fantasize about? [panel]

One of a kind.
Entirely handmade.
MADE IN GROTTAGLIE.

The main subject of my mural is a typical character of the local tradition, the "Pupa Grottagliese", which is also a typical artefact of Grottaglie craftsmanship, decorated with frills and lace according to the seventeenth-century fashion and painted with bright colours: an anthropomorphic bottle with feminine shapes but with an unexpected detail, the moustache.

According to the medieval custom of "ius primae noctis", all the young brides of the village were forced to spend their first wedding night with the prince. It is said that in Grottaglie a peasant, shocked by the idea that his young wife should also suffer this outrage, decided to kill the evil prince. On the night of the appointment, the peasant dressed up in his bride's women's clothes, richly adorned to attract the lord's desires. He showed up at the court palace, but in the fury of rebellion, he realized he had forgotten to cut his moustache. He was discovered and mocked by the prince.

The lower part of the mural depicts a scene related to the Minotaur, a character from Greek mythology, a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull locked in the center of a boundless labyrinth. Even more cruel, he was also the terror of virgins, since every nine years he demanded that fourteen Athenian subjects, seven girls and seven virgins, be sent to Crete, who disappeared into the labyrinth as sacrifices to the Minotaur.