IV. Sole

The fourth heaven — the Sun — painted in Soave, the city of white wine and golden walls.

Le Cabine del Paradiso – IV. Sole is a mural created by artist Neve in August 2021 in Soave, Verona, commissioned by E-Distribuzione (Enel Group) under the patronage of the Ministero della Cultura.

One of nine electrical distribution cabins across Italy commissioned by E-Distribuzione for the 700th anniversary of Dante's death, each corresponding to a Heaven of the Paradiso read through a hermetic and alchemical framework. The project carries the patronage of the Ministero della Cultura and uses Aerlite photocatalytic paint. The geometric structure underlying the nine-cabin project is alchemical: each cabinet contributes an element of the Philosopher's Stone figure (circle/triangle/square), and the nine together reveal the eyes of Beatrice — the tenth, ineffable heaven. The fourth Heaven is the Sun (Sole) — the sphere of the wise and the learned: the great theologians, philosophers, and Doctors of the Church who illuminated Christian thought. Here Dante encounters Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, who each lead a circle of twelve radiant souls around him, singing and dancing — wisdom manifest as light in motion. In the alchemical tradition, the Sun is gold (Sol = aurum): the most noble of metals, the masculine solar principle, the light that illuminates all and is the goal of the Great Work itself. The Soave cabin is formally distinguished from all others in the project by the inversion of its ground: where every other cabin uses a black background — the darkness of space, of the cosmic void, of Caravaggesque shadow — the Sun cabin uses white. Light is the ground itself. The figure emerges from radiance rather than from darkness. The figure is a classical face, female or androgynous, rendered in white and grey tones as though carved from marble, crowned with a wreath of roses. Above the head, a solar disc in gold: a circular halo of sun, marking the heaven. The roses of the wreath connect the solar tradition (Apollo, Sol, the Rosicrucian rose) to beauty, to the flowering of wisdom, to what comes into bloom in full light.