Painted plaster fragment with a red hand

Said to be associated with the Abbey of Thelema, Cefalù, with a letter from Kenneth Anger

A painted plaster fragment said to be associated with the Abbey of Thelema at Cefalù, the house occupied by Aleister Crowley from 1920 until his expulsion from Italy in 1923. A splayed red hand is painted across bands of green, ochre and black. The edges are broken and irregular. Crowley called his bedroom La Chambre des Cauchemars, the Chamber of Nightmares, and its walls were covered with grotesque and esoteric imagery. After 1923 the murals were whitewashed. In 1955 Kenneth Anger uncovered and filmed surviving decoration. This fragment is accompanied by a personal letter from Anger to a former owner concerning the piece. It is not identified with any picture titled by Crowley. The association rests on that letter.

By repute, the Abbey of Thelema, Cefalù, Sicily. Private collection, accompanied by a personal letter from Kenneth Anger to the then owner concerning the fragment; thence to the present owner.

Yorke Collection, Warburg Institute, NS74: p. 220, three photographs of paintings in the Chambre des Cauchemars; pp. 221–222, further photographs of paintings at Cefalù. This fragment is not identified among them. NS52: photograph of Kenneth Anger and Dr Alfred Kinsey at Cefalù, 1955. Villa Santa Barbara, Abbazia di Thelema, FAI, on the protection order of December 1990.

Surviving painted fragments from the Abbey of Thelema are exceptionally uncommon; much of the decoration was whitewashed after 1923. The association with the Chambre des Cauchemars rests on the fragment's provenance and the accompanying letter from Kenneth Anger, which together give this example its documentary interest. For the villa and its protection, see Villa Santa Barbara, Abbazia di Thelema, FAI.