James D. Herbert

Lecture Outline for HCC: Perspective

November 2012

 

Preliminary Comments for two units

B.    Selection of Topics:

1.     Renaissance Perspective:

a.     Epochal change in capacity of visual images. As big an event in art as Discovery of America was for geography/political economy.

b.     Seem to be turn toward depiction of world. Like a photograph.

c.     But huge number of perspective pictures are religious, specifically Catholic. This unit asks: “What is relation between this new visual technique and religion?”

2.     Coventry & War Requiem

a.     Rather than general period, a specific case study: interaction of architecture and music (and poetry).

b.     Advantage of case-study approach.

A.    Final units: shift from text to image/architecture/music.

1.     Different kind of “text”

2.     Not just reflection of religious “truth,” which words provide. Instead, different media mean new types of meaning.

3.     Purpose of assigned text (Panofsky) changes: don’t read for its own sake, but for sake of making sense of images; means toward an end.

C.    Limitation of these final weeks: all Christian.

1.     Partly the subject matter: importance of perspective; felicity of Coventry case study.

2.     Partly me: Historian of modern Europe.

3.     Art History Department strong in other religions as well.

I.      The Issue

• Byzantine School, Enthroned Madonna and Child, 13th century

• Raphael, The Alba Madonna, 1511

A.    The Invention of Modern Space:

1.     Approx. 250 years bring about fundamental transformation in character of pictures in Europe: carve out space beyond the apparent “window” of the picture plane.

2.     Space is consistent and regular.

B.    Why Byzantine School picture appears as it does:

1.     Gold background evokes heaven.

2.     Adult proportions of Christ prefigure his 3-year ministry.

3.     “Distortions” overcome the essence of things, which are hidden in earthly space.

C.    Raphael picture appears more like the real world. Such space has been described as a move by art toward secular concerns.

D.    Carving out of space has a name: linear perspective.

1.     Accomplished in urban places, depicting urban spaces.

2.     Far from being purely secular, perspective will prove to have strong religious implications.

II.    The Period Eye

• Piero della Francesca, Flagellation, c. 1458–59

A.    Linear perspective developed in 15th century Italy.

1.     Primarily in Florence, but also in other urban centers.

2.     Patrons and principal audiences consisted of nobles, clergy (Catholic Church), merchants, and bankers. Often from same families. Shared sensibilities and visual capabilities. We’ll look at two such values.

B.    Extremely familiar with tales from the Bible.

1.     E.g. Flagellation, from the Passion of Christ. Audience doesn’t need to be taught this story.

2.     Instead, function of painting is to remind them of scriptural story, prompt contemplative reflection on its meaning.

3.     Hence: don’t need huge amount of detail, or emotional expression.

4.     C.f. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, which provides a much different image of the Flagellation for the sake of a different sensibility in a different era.

C.    Think in mathematical terms:

1.     Regularity of tiles in floor of Piero’s Flagellation.

2.     Life of merchant depends on certain skills:

a.     Accurate gauging, reckoning; perception of ratios.

b.     E.g. volume of barrels; ratios of volume and of currencies.

3.     Tiles also seem regular.

a.     Might expect they are straight linear ratios, but that’s not the actual case.

b.     Complex hyperbolic (non-linear) function. Actual math not worked out until 17th century.

4.     General disposition in other pictures: break things down into ratios, geometric solids.

5.     Nature of space: isotropic. Can measure the space depicted in Piero’s Flagellation.

• Perugino, Christ Handing the Keys to Saint Peter, 1481–82

D.    Not just a mental predisposition of patrons; also the development of a practical method by artists.

1.     Several congruent methods; here’s one that’s relatively easy to understand, using a single diagram (though this particular method was actually developed later).

2.     The steps involved: picture plane horizon line; vanishing point (about which more later); orthogonals; distant points; transversals.

3.     Result in same mathematical recession as in Flagellation.

III.   The Vanishing Point

A.    Tension between depicting surface and depicted space.

1.     Both can be regarded as regular, isotropic.

2.     Can map points on the surface onto points in space, and vice versa.

3.     In most cases, points are measurable and commensurate.

B.    Crucial exception: The Vanishing Point.

1.     Point on the surface has no correlate in depicted space, however one slices that space.

2.     Defies measurement.

3.     Perspective vs. Axonometric drawing.

4.     Hints at: Infinity.

5.     Vanishing Point is the hole at the center of the system; it both declares the remarkable capacity of linear perspective and displays its limitation.

C.    Panofsky’s argument: about the nature and theological function of this point of Infinity.

1.     Panofsky first finds infinity not at vanishing point but at the sides of the picture, beyond the arbitrary slice imposed by the way the picture frames the picture.

• Duccio, The Last Supper, 1308–11

2.     C.f. Duccio, The Last Supper, where the lack of isotropic space turns the side walls into the limit of pictorial space.

3.     Vanishing Point as stronger representational figure of the infinite.

a.     At first, it seems that Panofsky is arguing for perspective as a “detheologization” of space, focus on mundane world.

b.     But then he grant space a “religious sublimity of its own.”

4.     This is also the dual character of Jesus as the Incarnation of God: both of this world (thus limited) and yet fully God (and thus infinite). Definition of Chalcedon.

D.    This Vanishing Point as Infinity could be used to enhance, elaborate religious narratives.

• Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1498

1.     Da Vinci, The Last Supper.

a.     Vanishing Point as Infinity focused on Christ.

b.     Panofsky: this provides comforting distance from the magical of the divine.

c.     C.f. the Black Madonna of Rocamadour and other miraculous icons.

d.     Eventually, fear that gods were present in works of art lead to Protestant iconoclasm.

e.     Council of Trent makes Catholic Counter-Reformation position clear: pictures only represent divinities without becoming them.

• Perugino, Christ Handing the Keys to Saint Peter, 1481–82

2.     Perugino, Christ Handing the Keys to Saint Peter.

a.     Focus not on Christ, but on the Church.

b.     Christ depicted as his mortal Person: not at eternal god, but as human who comes to earth but will die and leave again (with expectation of eventual return). Thus, he needs to give keys to Peter to perpetuate his presence on earth.

c.     Church only established after his death, by Peter (and even more so, by Paul). Peter an appropriate subject for this picture painted in Rome, next to the Basilica of St. Peter and home of the popes.

d.     Church appears contemporary: a combination of Florentine architecture. The current presence of Christ in the world, which is also a recognition of his corporeal absence.

E.     Important implication of Vanishing Point: it positions not just infinity as the structuring absence at the center of the picture, but also a specific Point of View directly opposite the Vanishing Point.

1.     The mechanics: distance of prescribed Point of View from Picture Plane is equivalent to the distance from Vanishing Point (on the surface) and the Distant Points.

2.     Whole prospect is given to the viewer who assumes that spot. Perspective as both purely objective (mathematical) and purely subjective (built around specific viewpoint).

3.     Panofsky’s main argument: perspective as two-edged sword:

a.     On one hand, perspective creates present world and an absent infinity, all held at a distance. (objectivity)

b.     On the other hand, perspective internalizes that world in the mind of the viewer, precisely as his/her view. (subjectivity)

c.     Theological implication: human consciousness becomes a “vessel for the divine.” (In this regard, perspective anticipates the Protestant Reformation).

F.     Return to analysis of use of perspective to elaborate religious narratives.

1.     Perugino, Christ Handing the Keys to Saint Peter (continued).

a.     Problem: in Rome, this fresco painting is located so high that no one can stand at prescribed Point of View.

b.     Actual view is radically askance, anamorphic.

c.     On one hand, this doesn’t matter: our eyes and mind easily accommodate (c.f. experience in movie theater).

d.     On the other hand: it gives the merely mortal viewer the message: this prospect is not quite for you. By implication, you view someone else viewing the scene.

i.      Perhaps the higher authority of the pope. (affirmation of Catholic sensibility)

ii.     Perhaps Christ himself, viewing his “bride,” the church.

• Piero della Francesca, Flagellation, c. 1458–59

2.     Piero, Flagellation.

a.     No such anamorphic problem for Piero: small, portable panel painting. Viewer can position self to be at precise prescribed Point of View.

b.     Vanishing Point, however, located neither on Christ or on contemporary viewers.

c.     Odd relation between two sets of views: separated by time, yawning space, and the Vanishing Point, yet all part of the same isotropic continuity.

d.     Possible interpretation:

i.      Certain identity of intended viewer: Duke of Urbino.

ii.     Possible identity of contemporary figures: Emissary from Constantinople; Courtier of Duke; deceased favored nephew of Duke.

iii.   Flagellation of Christ could be seen as allegory of Eastern Church coming under attack from the Turks

iv.    Painting becomes an argument for the Duke to support a new Crusade to save the Eastern Church.

v.     Yawning gap marked by Vanishing Point represents the unnatural disconnect between the two churches in this time of crisis.

vi.    Reinforced by inconsistency of light.

IV.   The Essay

• Masaccio, The Holy Trinity, 1427

A.    The assignment: Make an argument about how the painting uses the Vanishing Point to forward a certain theological proposition.

B.    Facts about the picture:

1.     It is big: nearly 4x human height, with life-size figures.

2.     It is flat: picture carves out three different layers of illusory space.

3.     It is a fresco in a church: (relatively) unmovable; provides a side chapel where actual spatial recess is lacking.

4.     It depicts recognizable characters:

a.     The Trinity:

i.      Doctrine of unity but difference of three “Persons” of the Trinity.

ii.     Three levels of symbolic status of the three figures.

ii.     Special status of Christ, who temporarily gives up part of his divinity to enter the word as man: Doctrine of Kenosis.

iii.   Resulting odd status of God the Father in this spatial recess: shown in this world.

b.     Virgin Mary and St. John at the base of the cross.

c.     Renaissance donors.

d.     Skeleton on tomb: “I once was what you are; and what I am, you also will be.”

5.     It relies on perspective:

a.     Vanishing Point located at division between top and bottom parts.

b.     Distant Points establish location of Point of View.

c.     Creates division between eternal life, above, and death, below.

6.     It may have served as an altar, with a table upon a platform placed before the picture.

a.     Skeleton then lost to view.

b.     Location of the Eucharist during Mass.

V.    The Incarnation

• Raphael, Transfiguration, 1517–20

A.    Raphael, Transfiguration

1.     Large painting: served from 1523 until 1797 as main altar in San Pietro in Montorio (Rome).

2.     Not a painting that shows the architectural structures of linear perspective, but benefits from the spatial depth carved out by the invention of perspective.

3.     Biblical story, two parts, radically separated by composition:

a.     Transfiguration of Christ, with Elijah and Moses, witnessed by Peter, John, James. (first noticed from far away)

b.     Other disciples’ failure to heal the possessed boy. (directly in front of us when close up).

4.     Unaccounted for figure: woman in foreground.

a.     virtuosic demonstration of body in space.

b.     “Sophia”: empirical knowledge of the world.

5.     In contrast, Christ figure makes little sense:

a.     Seen from below makes sense of certain aspects;

b.     Seen from above makes sense of others.

c.     Two audiences: divine and human. Once again, Definition of Chalcedon. We among those “of little faith” at bottom, before Jesus’s saving arrival.

d.     This corresponds to the impossible textual demand to make Christ glow; Raphael has him float instead.

e.     In Sum: Raphael fails to represent Christ; but that failure itself represents:

i.      Christ as more than of this world.

ii.     the incapacity of worldly painting to make Christ present.

B.    Eucharist

1.     Where does presence go? Catholic doctrine: Eucharist.

2.     Presence based on lack of resemblance.

3.     Presence immediately addressed by a kind of iconoclasm: Host is eaten/drunk.

4.     Special role of priest:

a.     Makes transubstantiation occur, but in role handed down from Christ through church hierarchy.

b.     Becomes figure of Christ arriving to heal possessed boy.

4.     Reconsider figure of Christ in Transfiguration:

a.     On one hand, resembles Christ; actual Christ is distanced.

b.     On the other hand, does not resemble Christ; Christ become present by grace.

C.    SUM:

1.     Vanishing Point: both divine infinity and mundane limit.

2.     Christ/Eucharist: both presence and absence.

3.     Two means by which perspective, a seemingly mundane affair, evokes the divine.