Excerpt:
...In Giovanni Battista Podestà’s painting shown opposite, the hierarchical perspective clearly indicates the ascendancy of the God Gold over human beings. The divinity, depicted as an idol, overpowers humanity: two figures are forced to bend in submission. In the upper section, the Latin initials of Christ signal the radical shift from religious to material devotion. A self-taught artist, Podestà constantly rebelled against the materialism of post war Italian culture, a society in a state of rapid change. In denouncing modernisation, he looked back to an enchanted mediaeval past.

Podestà was born in 1895 at Torre Pallavicina, a little village in Lombardy. His background was modest: his father died when he was a child and there was a large family to support (he had 12 sisters). In order to help the family, he left school at 10 and was apprenticed to a stonemason.