CHAPTER 6: THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY: PERSPECTIVE
Jacques ROUVEYROL
I. CULTURAL BACKGROUND
A. Medieval culture is based on symbolic thinking. Nature and the World are expressions of divine thought and will in material form.
This material form both hides (since thought is spiritual) and reveals at the same time (because the material form was shaped by thought) that very thought. This is what a symbol is.
In medieval culture, there is therefore only God. The "nut of Saint Victor" is God under different appearances (see above).
The Renaissance removes symbolic thinking and prepares for scientific thought. God and the World (or Nature) divorce. The world must now be understood in a new way.
B. In the 12th century, all knowledge is revealed. The means of knowledge is faith. Neither reason nor, even less so, the senses have any authority.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, the foundation of knowledge is revealed and based on faith. However, since reason has been given to humanity by God, it must contribute to making this knowledge more accessible to humans. Theology (especially Saint Thomas Aquinas) strives to reconcile the two means of knowledge: faith and reason. "Sciences" have "reserved" domains and are partially exempt from the control of faith.
C. In the 15th century (especially in Italy), symbolic thinking begins to disappear in favor of scientific thought, which extends its reach (Copernicus, Polish, studies in Italy: the Earth is not the center of the world. Galileo, soon: it rotates on its axis and around the Sun. Giordano Bruno, finally: the universe is infinite) in opposition to religion.
Thus, to represent the world, a new type of "thinking" is needed and, for artists, a new system of representation. This will be: perspective.
II. THE SEARCH FOR DEPTH
1. The bifocal centralized perspective: Ghiberti
The political dimension: private space, public space. (From the Strozzi to Cosimo de' Medici). The public square as a place for historia.
When Cosimo de' Medici returned from exile to Florence in 1434, he expelled Palla Strozzi. Strozzi had commissioned Gentile da Fabriano to paint The Adoration of the Magi, a prestigious work belonging to the pure International Gothic style: luxurious painting but with a complex narrative disorder.
Cosimo needed, to assert his difference, another art with opposite characteristics: a sober and simple art. At least for public spaces (for private spaces, like his chapel in the Medici-Riccardi Palace, he continued with the same International Gothic style, commissioning Benozzo Gozzoli). A republican art. And this is precisely what perspective allows. According to Alberti, perspective first constructs a public space (a square) on which an historia unfolds (where History happens).
The rise of perspective is certainly linked, not solely but certainly, to this political upheaval in Florence.
III. SENSE AND CONDITIONS OF PERSPECTIVE
1. The Construzione Legitima
Perspective is also referred to as construzione legitima, or legitimate construction. This means that it is considered an objective, realistic vision of the world. This is the meaning behind Alberti’s glass painting. On the glass plate, it is the reality itself that is inscribed for the eye positioned at the top of the visual pyramid.
2. The World Without God (Panofsky)
With perspective, the infinite enters the world. It had previously been reserved for God, transcendent. Now that it has entered the world, it makes it possible to do without God. Indeed, the vanishing lines that converge at the horizon for our vision are actually parallel, and as such, they only meet at infinity. Perspective, if it does not depict infinity, suggests it.
3. A New Vision of the World Centered on the Subject (Francastel)
With perspective, it is the subject of the vision that becomes the center of the world. The visible is only made visible from the point of view (the apex of the visual pyramid). The world becomes a stage on which man, as a subject, that is to say as an actor (of vision), occupies the central place, with objects only appearing in relation to the gaze he casts upon them (which contradicts the belief in the objectivity of perspective perception).
4. A Vision of the World Commensurate with Man (Arasse)
With perspective, the world becomes commensurate with man. This returns us to the claims of the old Protagoras, much criticized by Plato and Christian theology: "Man is the measure of all things." Thus, the apparent size of objects diminishes proportionally, depending on the distance from the human subject perceiving them.
5. Refutation of the Belief in the Objectivity of Perspective Vision
-
First, it is a cyclopean vision. Perspective presupposes an eye.
-
Furthermore, an objective vision could only be that of God (Van Eyck, The Virgin with Chancellor Rolin: as we saw, a clear vision from the foreground to infinity, revealing things as they are; Bruegel, Children's Games: a panoptic vision, in a high angle, exhaustively listing all the games).
-
The Tavoletta, moreover, obviously only expresses the point of view of the subject placed at a specific spot under the porch of the Duomo, facing the Baptistery. Therefore, the vision is strictly subjective.
-
Furthermore, contrary to what one might think, perspective is not meant to render architecture exactly, because, on the contrary, it is architecture that derives from painting during the Renaissance.
-
Perspective, moreover, was not invented to render depth. Other methods are used alongside it:
-
The segregation of planes,
-
The veduta. Perspective is just one technique among others. We will see, in fact, that it is not without anomalies and, more importantly, that these anomalies, far from being signs of clumsiness, are intentional on the part of the artists (cf. Daniel Arasse, L'Annonciation italienne).
-
IV. PERSPECTIVE "ANOMALIES"
1. The Trinity by Masaccio
The laws of perspective govern this composition. Only the cross and the body of Christ escape this order. What is the meaning of this anomaly? Could it be interpreted as a statement that the being hanging on the cross is not of this world? That he is not subject to the same laws?
2. The Italian Annunciations
Daniel Arrasse notes that many Italian Annunciations present similar anomalies. Domenico Veneziano’s Annunciation, for example, has the curious characteristic of showing an oversized door handle at its vanishing point.
This intentional anomaly challenges the viewer’s perception of spatial coherence and suggests that the divine event being depicted—like the birth of Christ—transcends the typical laws of nature and perspective. By distorting familiar elements such as the door handle, the artist may be emphasizing the supernatural significance of the moment, inviting the viewer to consider the divine presence within the earthly realm.
Similarly, what is being represented in the Annunciation ? The very fact of the Incarnation. For at the moment when Mary gives her consent ("let it be done according to your will"), she is filled by the Holy Spirit and becomes pregnant with the Savior. However, while it was given to humans to see Christ, the incarnate God, no one can see (or represent) the Incarnation itself. To give access to this event—the entry of the unrepresentable (God) into the world of representable things (bodies)—it was necessary to make evident the impotence of perspective, which is capable only of representing the things of our world.
Let us also consider, in a different context, the Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The index fingers of the Creator and the Creature come close, but they do not touch. This is because they are not on the same plane. Adam is on Earth, God is "in Heaven," that is, in a different space. Yet the two bodies are of the same dimension. How can this be understood? Simply put, God is far away in infinite space, so what gives Him the appearance of a common dimension with the creature is only the sign of His immensity. God is so great that even when seen infinitely far away, He still appears to be the size of a human.
Thus, perspective is neither the means of representing the world objectively nor the means of representing our subjective perception of the world. It can even be used symbolically to "depict" what is not of our world. It is a device that allows us to express a new relationship with the world, one in which man becomes the subject and, therefore, the measure.
IV. SPACE AND TIME
Gradually, just as space has been unified, time will also receive its unity. Successive scenes will no longer be represented simultaneously on a single surface.
In The Tribute Money by Masaccio at the Carmine, there are still three moments in a single space: Jesus ordering Peter to fetch the money from the shore; Peter executing the order; Peter handing over the money.
In The Banquet of Herod by Filippo Lippi, Salome dances in the center; she receives the head of John the Baptist on the left; she places the head on the table on the right.
It is Leonardo da Vinci who will emphasize the inconsistency of multiplying the temporal dimension within the spatial unity. This same Leonardo, who, with The Last Supper, will reject perspective.
V. MISUNDERSTANDING ALBERTI’S "WINDOW"
"My first action, when I wish to paint a surface, is to draw a rectangle of the appropriate size, as a window through which I can see the subject (the historia)" — Alberti, De Pictura, 1435, Book I, §19
Contrary to what has sometimes been believed, Alberti never intended to open a window onto the world.
It is simply about constructing the space of a painting. This "window" is a frame, and the painting is a world.
VI. FLORENTINE ARCHITECTURE
The painting is both a world and a model for the world. For from the space of the painting comes the real architectural space.
The medieval palace was a tower palace by virtue of its regularity, symmetry, and proportion.
But above all, it was defined by its visualization. The visual tools developed by Brunelleschi allow for the visualization of the project BEFORE its completion or even its construction. Architecture, thanks to perspective, is FIRST drawn, then built. This marks the emergence of the architectural PROJECT.
No comments:
Post a Comment