Ferdinand Hodler signed this study of the male form Pienezza, a title later carried into English as Fullness, and into German as Urkraft, primordial force made flesh. This standing male nude, rendered in oil on canvas during Hodler's late allegorical period, turns the torso three-quarter against a wash of ochre and cerulean strokes that seem to shift without settling into cloud or water. The man's two hands anchor the composition, fingers curled around a pale verdigris sash that loops around his hips. Ridged abdominal musculature catches the same sienna flesh tone that climbs the neck toward that lifted jaw. Hodler's theory of Parallelism, repeating limb against limb, finds its counterpart in the doubled diagonal of raised head and planted stride. This figure exists as gesture alone, muscle and posture doing work that myth might otherwise carry. The ashen boulder ground beneath bare feet is the only fact given. Cool slate and violet-gray tones model the rock itself, dissolving into the same translucent color layering that carries his gaze upward, past us, toward light rendered as a pale yellow streak of horizon.
