Beginning in the early ’70s, Giulio Paolini and Jannis Kounellis revived the use of historical classicism in the iconography of the neo-avant-garde, bringing back into circulation those particular iconic signs that until that point, at least in Europe, seemed to have been deposited forever in the storerooms of museums, excluded from any possible contemporaneity. This was despite prestigious, if entirely formal, revivals by Pablo Picasso and Giorgio de Chirico in their time: these were imperfect revivals, given the immodesty of both artists, who filtered mythical suggestions and “eternal and