The Enigma of the Hour

The Enigma of the Hour is a painting by the Italian metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico. He created the work during his early period, in Florence, when he focused on metaphysical depictions of town squares and other urban environments. It is not clear whether it was dated 1910 or 1911.

The Enigma depicts an urban scene with the classical architecture and angular lighting that are Chirico's hallmarks. Several figures around the scene have vague features, to give the sense that they are absent. Above the scene is a large clock that reads five minutes to three. Luca Cottini referred to the clock as "...[suggesting] the paradox of an 'eternal present,' located on the edge of a-temporal revelation and moving temporality, and [enacting] the enigma of its nature." Peter G. Toohey has asserted the figure in white represents Odysseus.

In a way, The Enigma of the Hour can be considered the first conceptual artwork; “the artist did not seek to find a new way of rendering that which is visible, as Picasso did, or to express an emotional state through abstract forms and colors as did Kandinsky; rather, de Chirico’s aspiration was to translate a thought or philosophical concept into the forms of the plastic arts”.