This work was inspired by Bellina, an enchanting girl of noble lineage, lived around the thirteenth century in Erice, Sicily. She had long black hair, ethereal and graceful features, and seductive haughty eyes.
Those who saw her fell in love with her at first glance, desolate at the refusal she opposed to anyone while she remained for a long time looking out the window of her house looking at the sea beyond the horizon. She was a pensive and sad beauty, perhaps because she had only one love in her heart, a soldier who had left for a war of fortune from which he never returned.
Before leaving, he had given her a ring; it was her promise of marriage, her pledge of happy return.
The weeks and months passed, the seasons changed, and a rich baron fell in love with the Bellina; she rejected him, and the noble, in order to have her with him, turned to a magician to cast a terrible spell on her. He managed to get hold of her ring and make it curse, and with that he blackmailed her by promising to return it in exchange for a single kiss.
At the scheduled appointment, seeing the baron that she resisted his every soft flattery, he threw the ring in an impenetrable bush of brambles and went away hastily and grumpily, leaving her in despair with her hands buried in the ground to get back her gold pledge. When she thought she saw the ring, entangled in the bushy threads, she reached out to take it and pricked herself with a thorn, and by spell the Bellina turned into a snake.
It seems that today she haunts with her presence the abandoned houses of Erice in Sicily, looking out from the windows of the most unhappy huts to attract the unfortunate ones to her, who, instinctively rushed to a hasty nod of a woman, to the transgressive sensuality of a love unexpectedly, they arrive - possessed by her - in his presence and when their eyes meet they have the horrifying experience of seeing her transformed into a hideous black snake.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE:

**The character is not a real model, is created in collaboration with an AI algorithm.
The prompt used for the character creation is thoughtfully constructed, starting with physical appearance, expression and clothing. This is not a real model that could pose for other artists as well. This gives uniqueness and unrepeatability to the work, an equal character cannot be created even by another artificial intelligence if not copied.
The face is restored using a photo editing technique and then the image resolution is enlarged. The last step is the realization of the digital painting using an oil brush and various textures that give an antique look to the work.
Resolution: 4640 x 6160 px
Edition of 5