Key Takeaways
- Matteo Basilé views broken clocks as metaphors for the space between measurable time and imagination, a tension that drives his work.
- He describes contemporary humanism as a “wager on a short circuit,” questioning whether soul, grace, and imagination can survive in the language of machines.
- Born in Rome in 1974 and a member of the artistic Cascella family, Basilé is a European pioneer who fuses photography, digital art, and new technologies.
- His studio—a converted carpentry workshop on Rome’s outskirts—hosts an AI system he has “trained” to perceive light and beauty through his own eyes.
- Basilé’s images seek the “divine dimension” as well as the “darker one,” evoking what lies beneath the surface rather than depicting reality literally.
- The Artemisia series (2024), part of the Intermundia project, reinterprets the portrait tradition by blending his photographs, AI‑generated alterations, and references to Artemisia Gentileschi.
- Each Artemisia image begins with a photographic portrait of model Artemisia Levita and is transformed by AI, preserving the original’s narrative power while opening a dialogue between past and future.
- The work underscores Basilé’s ongoing inquiry: can technology become a poetic conduit for human soul, memory, and courage?
Artistic Philosophy: Broken Clocks and the Wager of Humanism
Matteo Basilé is fond of broken clocks, “because they leave room for dreams.” This simple observation encapsulates his belief that the gaps between what is measured and what is imagined are fertile ground for creativity. Reflecting on the relationship between humanity and technology, he has said, “Humanism today is a wager on a short circuit: can we still speak of soul, grace, and imagination in the language of machines? I believe we can.” The quote reveals his core stance: rather than rejecting technology, he sees it as a potential partner in exploring the ineffable aspects of human experience.
Heritage and Pioneering Practice
Born in Rome in 1974, Basilé belongs to the distinguished Cascella family of artists, a lineage that has long contributed to Italy’s visual culture. Over more than thirty years, he has positioned himself as one of Europe’s pioneers in merging photography, digital art, and emerging technologies. His practice constantly negotiates the boundaries between tradition and innovation, the sacred and the contemporary, memory and the future, seeking a dialogue that honors the past while venturing into unknown artistic territories.
The Studio as a Laboratory of Light and AI
Basilé’s studio occupies a former carpentry workshop on the outskirts of Rome—a space that mirrors his own hybrid approach, blending artisanal roots with cutting‑edge tools. Within these walls, artificial intelligence has become an integral part of both his creative process and a profoundly poetic artistic inquiry. The artist explains that he has “trained” AI to see through his own eyes: to understand his treatment of light and his fascination with that delicate threshold where beauty and unease meet. This training is not a passive feeding of data; it is an active calibration that allows the machine to echo his aesthetic sensibilities while offering unexpected variations.
Seeking the Divine and the Darker
In numerous interviews, Basilé has stated that what interests him most in portraying a person or a place is “the divine dimension, but also the darker one.” His images do not aim to replicate the world as it appears; instead, they strive to evoke what lies beneath the surface—those hidden currents of spirituality, anxiety, memory, and desire. The years he spent in Southeast Asia further enriched this dialogue, exposing him to diverse cultural rituals, mythologies, and imaginative worlds that now inform the layered symbolism of his work.
Intermundia and the Artemisia Series
The image chosen for the cover of Women Church World belongs to the Artemisia series (2024), part of the broader Intermundia project. The title refers to a suspended space “between worlds,” where photography, painting, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality enter into dialogue. At its centre is the portrait, a genre that Basilé reinterprets in a contemporary key without severing its connection with the great tradition of Italian figurative art. By situating the work in this liminal zone, he invites viewers to contemplate the fluidity of identity across time and medium.
From Photograph to AI‑Transformed Portrait
The Artemisia images begin with photographic portraits taken by the artist himself and are subsequently reworked using an artificial intelligence system trained on his own visual language. They are therefore not images generated from nothing, but transformations of an original photographic source that retains all of its narrative and symbolic power. This method ensures that each piece retains a tangible human anchor—the genuine expression, posture, and texture captured by Basilé’s lens—while the AI contributes layers of color, texture, and surreal detail that push the portrait into speculative realms.
Artemisia Levita and the Echo of Artemisia Gentileschi
The Artemisia portrayed by Basilé seems to belong simultaneously to a distant past and to a future yet to be imagined. She bears the face of a young woman of today, called Artemisia Levita, a model and actress with long red hair. Yet the allusion to Artemisia Gentileschi is unmistakable. Five centuries later, the great painter continues to embody both artistic genius and personal courage. Within the confined world of seventeenth‑century Rome, she was the woman who found the strength to denounce the rape she had suffered and to bring her attacker before a court of law. It was an act of freedom and dignity. A revolution. (r.p.) By linking the contemporary model to the Baroque painter, Basilé creates a visual palimpsest where historical bravery meets modern identity, suggesting that the struggle for agency and recognition persists across epochs.
Conclusion: Technology as a Poetic Conduit for the Soul
Through his broken‑clock metaphor, his wager on a short circuit, and the meticulous AI‑enhanced portraits of the Artemisia series, Matteo Basilé demonstrates an enduring belief that technology can serve as a conduit for the soul rather than a barrier to it. His work asks viewers to linger in the threshold where light meets shadow, where past dialogues with present, and where machine‑learned patterns echo human intuition. In doing so, he offers a compelling answer to his own question: yes, we can still speak of soul, grace, and imagination in the language of machines—provided we train those machines to see through our own eyes.
https://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/2026-07/dcmen-007/artemisia-matteo-basile-and-artificial-intelligence-trained-to-d.html