James D. Herbert

Study Questions for Panofsky Reading

November 2012

 

1.     Early on in this selection, Panofsky describes the move toward linear perspective as being an entry into “modern systematic space.” What are the implications of regarding space as being systematic, homogenous, and regular (isotropic)? How does this affect how we view items depicted in the painting? What does it imply about space beyond the visible “slice” of the world portraying in the picture?

2.     Panofsky quotes Pomponius Gauricus as saying about space: “The place exists prior to the bodies brought to the place and therefore must first be defined linearly.” Does space exist prior to, and independent of, the objects that fill it, or do the objects create the space? This question could be debated on philosophical or perhaps even scientific terms; consider, rather, how you would answer it by drawing on visual evidence from some of the pictures discussed in lecture.

3.     What, according to Panofsky, introduces “infinity” into the picture? Can a picture represent infinity, or only hint at infinity elsewhere?

4.     Does the introduction of infinity into the picture “detheologize” space (make it an entirely empirical, or mathematical matter), or does it grant nature “an almost religious sublimity of its own”? Does new perspective space exile God (or whatever deity), or invite God in?

5.     What, in perspective construction, “draw[s] this world of things, an autonomous world confronting the individual, into the eye”? How does our understanding of perspectival space change when we start attributing is placement to the mind of the perceiver?

6.     If the “vanishing point” is infinite (or, rather, represents the infinite), how much of the attribute of infinity can the “viewpoint” claim? More generally, what do the vanishing point and the viewpoint share, and how do they differ?

7.     To what extent is perspective objective, and to what degree is it subjective? How do we strike a balance between perspective as “a triumph of the distancing and objectifying sense of the real,” and as “an extension of the domain of the self”?

8.     Panofsky concludes by suggesting that perspective allows the viewer to “internalize” the “supernaturalness” of religious art. What does this mean, and how does a picture do it?