REFLECTIONS ON THE REPRESENTATION OF SPACE IN PAINTING

Jordi Rodríguez-Amat

For many centuries, the system of perspective representation that was established in Florence around the first third of the 15th century, has been accepted as an absolute truth. There are those who have even described all the plastic systems previously used in the representation of space as erroneous. We must understand, I think, as opposed to a rule or a method and not as a synonym of equivocation or false, the fact of judging the other systems used for the representation of three-dimensional space as wrong.

It is true that the perspective system created or rediscovered by the Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi in 1425, based on a central projection with a single vanishing point, made it easy to create three-dimensional spaces very similar to those perceived by human vision. So, from that same moment until the end of the last century, all Western painting used this method of visual perspective and, following Brunelleschi's principles, theorized as well as systematized by Paolo Ucello, Piero de la Francesca, Sandro Botticelli and many other artists of the early Renaissance, allowed the representation of visual space on a flat surface.

Despite being an architectural work, San Lorenzo (Florence), among many studies and works, was where Brunelleschi already made use of the perspective concept with a single vanishing point (central perspective).

San Lorenzo (Florence). Filippo Brunelleschi. Beginning of the XV century

It would be unfair to conject that the optical-perspective problem had been linked exclusively to a purely architectural and non-pictorial fact, although Brunelleschi, in his optical-perspective studies, demostratess nothing more than a flat representation of space, basically his researches have been linked to architecture as the arrangement of spaces and volumes.

The vast majority of artists who contributed the most to the evolution of perspective were painters.

The Tribute Money (Masaccio). 1425 (Capella Brancacci)

This scene unfolds in an open space where nature and architectural construction, represented according to the laws of frontal perspective with a single vanishing point, complement each other by framing the set of figures. Oobserve how the lines of perspective converge on the head of Christ.

Masacció could have depicted the scene in a purely natural setting, but he made use of perspective, emerging at that time (1425), adding an architectural element.

The Flagellation of Christ, probably painted between 1468 and 1470, is an Oil and Tempera on panel painting by Piero Della Francesca, measuring 59 cm x 81 cm.

It is a complex composition and the theme, one of the best known in Christian iconography, represents the moment when Jesus is scourged.

Piero Della Francesca.

Flagellation of Christ (Piero della Francesca). 1468 – 1470

Here we can see how all the lines run away to a single point, called the vanishing point.

The Flagellation of Christ. 1468 - 1470. Piero Della Francesca

The Flagellation of Christ. 1468 - 1470

Piero Della Francesca. Reconstitution of the plant.

This method was considered from the 15th century itself as a formula for representing a highly developed civilization. Later, from the 16th century, it was expanded into a system of two vanishing points, allowing the representation of the large scenographic spaces of Baroque painting.

The Renaissance, inheritor of all Greco-Roman visual knowledge, raised the central perspective with a single vanishing point to an absolute rule, having systematized it by means of an exact method. What's more, it raised it to the organizing role of the urban space, a space in which, obviously, the whole culture of the Renaissance developed.

Perspective as a science was linked from the very beginning to a central system, since the system as monocular vision and the intersection of the pyramid (Alberti) were the basic principle of all the subsequent development of the system.

After all, neither Brunelleschi nor the entire fifteenth century arrived at the mathematical concept of infinity. Perspective was nothing more than a flat projection from the point of view. It was "the open window". Due to the fact that vision is a very complex phenomenon: sensitive relationships of all kinds, memory, light, compensatory processes, etc. etc. , the linear perspective as a flat projection is not an absolute system. Despite everything, the system created at the beginning of the 15th century has been for many centuries a tool and organizing element of the entire plastic process, its field of action being very wide: painting, sculpture and architecture. With him was born a new social system, a new way of thinking, a new attitude towards the world. The perspective systems used from the 15th century onwards were nothing more than the pictorial-architectural formulation of the change. This change was from a theocentric society to another anthropocentric one. From now on man will be the center, measure and balance of the universe.

The School of Athens represents the greatest philosophers of classical antiquity.

To represent the faces of the characters, Rafael used personalities of his time. The artist left no record of the philosophers who appear in the painting or of the people he represented, which is why in many cases the identification is confusing. However we can identify the most important figures that coincide with the vanishing point where all the lines converge, these are Plato and Aristotle.

Rafael Sanzio, The School of Athens. 1510

But is it not also true that, in the same way as in many other civilizations, the plastic method being used in Egypt was then considered an immutable system? And that they also enjoyed rules well known to all and at the same time accepted as absolute? It seems, however, that the problem of the relationship of pictorial images as a direct apprehension of the external world was never raised, not even as a pure conventional language until the Renaissance.

In reality, every plastic system is inseparable from the civilization that created it and at the same time non-transferable to any other civilization. That is why, today, it would be a mistake to consider absolute the systems of representation of space governed by both visual knowledge and ideographic principles.

The Wedding at Cana was painted by Pablo Veronese in 1563. It is in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It represents the biblical story of the conversion of water into wine during the childhood of Jesus. It is a work of purely Mannerist style measuring 990 cm x 666 cm.

The Wedding at Cana. Pablo Veronese. 1563..

If it is true that every figurative system tending to give an image closer to that of vision is typical of a developed civilization, because it has been able to discern and create a system appropriate to the representation of three-dimensional spaces. It is no less true that a system, ideoplastic or other, based on images governed by a noetic knowledge, does not allow them to shape the "physical" world. On the other hand, it seems that every flat representation system based on central projection has as many limitations, although in essence different, from those of any other figurative system.

This perspective method was considered from the 15th century onward as a formula for representing a highly developed civilization.

Claude Lorrain.

The landing of the Queen of Sheba at Tarsus. 1642

Francesco Guardi. The Ducal Palace. (Venice)

During the baroque time we find artists who use a perspective system of three vanishing points, which allow the representation of the large scenographic spaces of baroque painting.

Analyze this painting by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri called Il Guercino and you will see the three directions of the perspective.

Il Guercino, 1620.

In children's drawing, today considered an art, and within a schematic or descriptive stage between the ages of 8 and 10, the child makes use of the concrete representation of the idea with resources as wide as those of any other system of representation, whether visual or ideological. In fact, many of these resources are found in painters, whose work is not limited by scientific rules of visual perspective.

Personally, and making use of the right of discernment inherent in the individual, I dare not accept as a figurative plastic system superior to any other, the system used from the 15th century that allowed the representation of visual space during five centuries. All systems are but different stages within an age-old chain of forms of figurative expression.

Jordi Rodríguez-Amat

Part of this study was published in an article in Diari de Girona on November 1, 1996.