Spherical People and Fornasetti’s Muse

Tattoo by @notattoo_berlin, made at @visionsofecstasy.studio
— Jorge

This tattoo comes from one of the most beautiful myths about love and separation: Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, where human beings are described as once having been whole, rounded, spherical creatures before being split in two by Zeus.

Since then, each half searches for the other.

It is a strange and powerful image. Love appears not only as attraction, but as memory — the feeling that something once complete has been divided, and that desire is also an attempt to find a lost shape.

The idea for this tattoo did not begin with me. It first came through Vale, one of my long-time clients, who brought this myth into our conversations. I made several drawings for her, trying to find a way to translate the spherical people into a tattoo, but none of those first versions felt completely right for her at the time.

Still, the idea stayed with me.

Some images do that. They do not disappear just because the first attempt does not become a tattoo. They remain in the studio, in the portfolio, in the back of the mind, waiting for another body, another moment, another person.

Later, Joana saw the drawing and connected with it immediately. What had started as a conversation with Vale found its place on Joana’s leg. In that sense, the tattoo carries more than one story. It belongs to Joana, but it also keeps a trace of Vale, who first brought the myth into the work.

Visually, the tattoo also enters the world of Piero Fornasetti, especially through the repeated, enigmatic face of Lina Cavalieri, his famous muse. That reference gives the image another layer: theatrical, classical, decorative, and slightly unreal. The myth becomes less literal and more like an object from a dream — two bodies, two faces, two halves, still searching for a shared form.

What interests me most in this tattoo is the way ideas travel. A reference comes from a client. A drawing is made, rejected, kept, seen again, and finally transformed into something permanent for someone else. Nothing is completely lost. The image changes hands, changes meaning, and gathers memory along the way.

This is one of the things I love most about tattooing. A tattoo is never only a design. It is also a chain of conversations, delays, accidents, affinities, and trust.

Here, an ancient myth, a client’s intuition, Fornasetti’s visual universe, and another person’s body all meet in one image.

Two halves, still moving toward each other.