CHAPTER 6 : THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. THE PERSPECTIVE

I. CULTURAL DATA.

A. The medieval culture fall within a symbolic thought. The Nature, the World are the expression of the divine thought and  the divine will, under a material form.

That material form hides (because the thought is spiritual) and shows at the same time (because the material form was modeled by the thought) this very thought.

In the medieval culture, there is nothing but God. The Saint Victor’s Walnut is God under different showings (see above).

The Renaissance evacuates the symbolic thought and prepares the scientific thought. God and World (or nature) got divorced. We must think the world in a different way.

B. In the 12^Th century, all the knowledge is revealed. The way to know is the faith. Neither the reason nor the senses.

In the 13^Th and 14^Th centuries, the foundation of the knowledge is revealed and falls within the faith. But god has given the reason to the human people in order to allow a most easy comprehension of this knowledge.The theology (Saint Thomas d’Aquin, particularly) makes an effort to reconcile the two ways of knowledge : faith and reason. “Sciences” won reserved areas and  outside the faith control.

C. In the 15th century (particularly in Italy), the symbolic thought tend to disappear for the benefit of the scientific thought which extends his empire (Copernicus, Polish, is studying in Italy : The Earth is not the World Center. Galileo, soon : the Earth rotates on the spot and around the sun. Giordano Bruno, finally : the universe is infinite) against the religion.

So a new way of thought is necessary in order to think the world, and for the artists, a new representative device. It will be : the perspective.

1. The bifocal and centralized perspective : Ghiberti.

 

 2. The bifocal and lateral perspective : Uccello

 

 

 3. The convex perspective : Fouquet

  

 

4. The mono focal perspective, discovered in Florence between 1420 and 1450.

Political dimension : private area, public area (From Strozzi to Côme de Médicis). The public area is the place of historia.

When Côme de Médicis comes back to Florence in 1434, he throw out  Palla Strozzi. This one had asked Gentile de Fabriano to paint The Adoration of the Magi, a prestigious work, belonging to the most pure International Gothic : a luxurious paint but with a  complicated narrative mess.

To affirm his difference, Côme needs another art with opposed features : simple and sober. At least for the public areas (because for the private places, e.g. his  chapel in the Medici-Ricardi’s Palace, he uses of the same international Gothic, with Benozzo Gozzoli). A republican art. But it is exactly that thing the perspective allows. According Alberti, the perspective is the first mode building a public area (a square) on which an historia is able to occur (on which the History occur).

The rise of the perspective is linked, not only but definitely, at this political breakthrough in Florence.

 

III. Perspective meaning and conditions.

1. La construzione legitima.

Another name for the perspective is  construzione legitima, legitimate construction. That is to say that the perspective gives an objective vision of the reality. A realistic vision of the world.

It is the meaning of the Alberti’s piece of glass. On a slab of glass, the real itself is written for an eye located at the top of the visual pyramid.

 

 The meaning, too, of the Brunelleschi’s tavoletta. The Batistery of Florence is reflected “at it is” in the mirror. 

 

 

2. The world without God (Panofsky)

With the perspective the infinity goes into the world. It was, until that time, reserved to God, transcendent. But when the infinity goes into the world we do not need a divinity. God is useless.

Indeed, the perspective lines which meet on the horizon, according our vision, are in reality parallel. So, their junction is located at infinity. The perspective, of course, do not represent the infinity, it gives only a suggestion of infinity.

3. A new vision of the world, centered on the human subject (Francastel)

With the perspective, the human subject becomes center of the world. The visible becomes visible only from a point of view (top of the visual pyramid). The world becomes a stage on which human, like a subject, it is to say like an actor (of the vision), is center stage. The objects only appear by the look he has towards them (and this is at variance with the idea of the objectivity of the perspective).

4. A vision of the world commensurable to the human (Arasse)

It is a return to the ambitions of the old Protagoras, so much criticized by Plato and the christian theology : human is the measure of all things. So, the visible size of the objects decreases, proportionally, according to the distance in relation to the human subject who sees them.

 

5. Refutation of the believe in the objectivity of the perspective vision.

- First, the perspective vision is a cyclopean vision. Perspective imply only one eye.

- Secondly, an objective vision is nothing but the God’s vision (Van Eyck, Madonna of Chancellor Rolin : distinct vision, from the first plan to the infinity revealing the things as they are. Bruegel, Childre’s Games : a pan optic vision which, like a bird’s eye view, indexes exhaustively all the games).

- The tavoletta, then, expresses nothing but the point of view of the human subject located in a such place, in front of the Baptistery. A  very subjective vision.

- Furthermore, contrary to what one may think, the perspective is not used in order to make the architecture visible, because, quite the reverse, in the Renaissance, the architecture has derived from the painting.

-The perspective is not invented in order to make the depth visible. Another modes are used simultaneously : segregation of plans, veduta. The perspective is one way among others.

Moreover, we are going to see that the perspective is not free of anomalies. And, most importantly, we are going to see that these anomalies are not the expression of an awkwardness. They are intentional (see Daniel Arasse L’Annonciation italienne).

IV. THE “ANOMALIES” OF THE PERSPECTIVE

 1. Holy Trinity (Masaccio)

  

 

The perspective laws organize this composition. But the cross and the body of the Christ escape the rule. What is the meaning of that anomaly ? It is this : the being who is hanging from the cross does not belong to this world. He is not submitted to the same rules.

2. Italian Annunciations

Daniel Arasse note that a lot of Italian Annunciations show similar anomalies. That of Domenico Veneziano (below) present the curious particularity to show at the leak point a disproportionate door handle.

 

In this Fra Angelico’s Annunciation (below), the leak point is ... in front : on the median column. With the consequence that we cannot take advantage of the opportunity to see the depth normally generated by the leak of the lines.

 

In this another Annunciation of Lorenzetti (below), the perspective seems correct in the lower part, (tiled floor), of the wooden panel. All the upper part, totally golden, seems to ignore even the fact that an object can hide another object. So, in front of the text “non est impossibile” should pass a wing of the angel and the column. Well, the text is interrupted by the obstacles and starts again after. It is that we are not in the same world below and above. The world above does not obey at the rules of the world below.

 

In the following Annunciation of Piero della Francesca, the angel and Mary are separated by a column. The angel cannot see Mary and reciprocally. The perspective laws have allowed this paradoxical construction. What is the meaning of this ?

 

Probably this one. What is an Annunciation ? The very fact of the incarnation. Because, in the very time when Mary agrees (“thy will be done”), she is penetrated by the Holy Spirit and immediately pregnant of the Saviour. But, if humans have could see the Christ, the incarnated God, nobody can see (or represent) the Incarnation. In order to allow an access at this event (the intrusion of the no-representable (God) in the world made of representable things ), it was necessary to make evident the helplessness of the perspective, which is only able to represent the things of this world.

Consider, yet, in another register, the Adam's creation by Michel Ange, on the ceiling of the  Chapel Sixtine in Roma. The forefinger of the Creature and the forefinger of the Creator are close but not touching. It is due to the fact that they are not on the same plane. Adam is on the Earth and God in the Sky, in another place. However the two bodies have a similar size. What is the meaning of this ? Simply : God is far in the infinite space. His real size is, according the perspective rules, immeasurably large. God is so great that its size, however seen in the infinity, is not largest than a human body size.

 

So, the perspective is not an objective mode to represent the world or a mode able to to represent objectively our representation of the world. It can even be used symbolically to “figure” that which is not in our world. It is a system which is able to express a new relation to the world, relation in which the human becomes the subject and, consequently, the measure.

IV. SPACE AND TIME

Progressively, like the space, the time is receiving his unity. Until then, successive stages were represented simultaneously on the same surface. In the Tribute of Masaccio, at the Carmine, their are yet three moments in only one space (Jesus telling to Peter to search the money on the shore ; Peter executing the order ; Peter handing over the money). In the Herod’s Banquet of Filippo Lippi (Duomo, Prato), where Salome is performing the Dance of the Seven Veils (in the center), she is receiving  the John the Baptist’s head (at left) and she place this head on a table (at right).

Leornardo da Vinci will insist on the incongruity of that process. The same Leonardo da Vinci who will reject the perspective in The Last Supper.

V. MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT THE ALBERTI’S “WINDOW”

“My first act, when I want to paint a surface, is to draw a rectangle, with the good size, which will be used as a window, from which I can see the subject (the historia)” Alberti De Pictoria 1435 First Book, §19. Contrary to what one may think, there is no question of open a window on the world. It is only a manner to built the space for a painting. This window is a frame. And the painting, a world.

VI. THE FLORENTINE ARCHITECTURE

The painting is a world and also a pattern for the world, because the real architectural space comes from the painting space.

The medieval palace was a  palace shaped like a tower (e.g. the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence). The Renaissance palace will be antique. So, marked by the regularity, the symmetry, the proportion. But above all, marked by the viewing. The eyesight tools (the perspective drawing) allow to visualise the project before its completion or even its construction. The architecture thanks to the perspective is firstly drawn, then materialized. It is the beginning of the architectural project..

 

 Medici-Riccardi's palace (Michelozzo) Florence

 

Church St Andrews (Alberti) Mantoue