“While I was studying with Leoncillo in Rome, I stopped on my scooter one day beside the river where some people were pruning the trees. Without thinking, I asked if I could have a branch. I took it back to my studio on Via Gregoriana and thus started making these things of wood.” (FICACCI, 2002, p. 14)Mario Ceroli’s love at first sight for thismaterial was sudden but lasting. The use of untreated wood for crates, shaped into rigorously unpainted silhouettes, became thehallmark of all his work. Themost frequent subjects are multiplied human figures but also reinterpretations of artworks of the past. Rome offers Ceroli a vast repertoireto draw upon, as in the case of this Mouth of Truth, where the charred wood subtlyrecalls the characteristic dark veins in the original mask of pavonazzetto marble. (Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma) BIBL: Mario Ceroli. Carte, a cura di L.Ficacci, Milano, 2002.