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A Question Of Perspective (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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79 A.D.....



1500.....



Note that the perspective captured in the painting from 79 A.D. is far more complex than is that in the work of Raphael.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Ah, history of art -- difficult to fake. Excellent wheeze. As per usual there was a BBC series on recently dealing with this very point

ART OF ETERNITY
How should art depict the relationship between man and God? How can art best express eternal values? Can you and should you portray the face of Christ? For over 1,000 years these were some of the questions which taxed the minds of the greatest artists of the early West. In this three-part series, art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon sets out to unravel the mysteries of art from the pre-perspective era.

His explanation is that the Byzantines deliberately forsook perspective in order to glorify God/Jesus by always putting him in the foreground. I thought it was dubious at the time but my (typical) explanation was, "Fookin' Christians, they mess everything up."
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Mick Harper wrote:
His explanation is that the Byzantines deliberately forsook perspective in order to glorify God/Jesus by always putting him in the foreground. I thought it was dubious at the time but my (typical) explanation was, "Fookin' Christians, they mess everything up."

The conventional chronology says Ancient Rome came to an end in 490 A.D. and, along with it, perspective painting and high-sculpture completely disappeared for 800 years or more.

Pompeii, for example, shows no sign of serious Christian influence. Whenever it expired, it appears to have done so prior to the age of Cathedrals and Crucifixes. There has to be sufficient time between General Pompei and Prince Machiavelli to allow for Christianity to completely obliterate the old culture of Rome. Yet the art and architecture within the city appear no older than the works of Raphael. Not just the style but the subject matter choices remain consistent (suggesting a continuity of value and fashion).

And here's another idea that's been rattling round my brain....

Examine Egyptian art and architecture.

Assuming the accuracy of the conventional chronology, we are asked to believe that no innovation was made in visual style over the breadth of two or three millennia!!! This is without parallel. Everything we know about human history tells us that style varies in time at least as much as it does in place. If it is possible to tell the difference between Babylonian and Egyptian styles, Old and New Kingdom art ought to vary at least as much. Yet they don't. What change occurs is infinitessimal in contrast to the vast breadth of time supposedly involved.

Just look at the 20th century for an example of the rapidity in artistic style change. The pace of change is phenomenal! Yet we take for granted that Egyptian art remained static over one hundred generations.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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The programme claims that the Christians more or less consciously took over the Egyptian style (though more the Graeco-Alexandrine than the traditional Gyppo style) specifically in order to avoid the 'pagan' Roman style.

Of course it's more than perspective that is ignored. The whole tradition of realistic depiction that the Classicals were so heavily into is junked. But, on the other hand, this idea that it was blasphemous to go in for realism when depicting the divine is something that becomes really, really important both in the Iconoclasm of later Byzantium and the straight rejection of any kind of representation by Islam.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Mick Harper wrote:
Of course it's more than perspective that is ignored. The whole tradition of realistic depiction that the Classicals were so heavily into is junked.

This model is enormously problematic.

#1. At the time the Italians are known to have adopted realism and perspective, there was no Church backlash. No theological objection. The trouble the Church had gone to centuries before of purging itself of all realistic and mathematically precise represention of reality appears to have been forgotten.

#2. The time at which the Italians are known to have adopted realism and perspective coincides perfectly with the period in which was developed the technology to do so. The discovery of perspective painting is associated with persons, dates, and even specific temporal accounts (a famous painting of a Cathedral(!) on the face of a mirror and the mathematical analysis of the resulting lines).

#3. So it would appear that, so long as the Church lacked realistic iconography, the technolgy to provide it was also absent but, the moment the technology of perspective was developed, the Church became the chief patron of the painters.

Note also that even the affectation of direct ceiling and wall painting (rather than canvas painting) epitimized by the Sistine Chapel is merely an ecclesiastic application of identical techniques applied to the walls and ceilings of brothels in Pompeii and Herculanium. As I said before, even the same sort of beings are represented (Cherubs and full-sized winged angels) and represented in the same style (pudgy features with pale skin tones set on dark, detail-poor shadowy backgrounds).
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Wireloop


In: Detroit
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But, on the other hand, this idea that it was blasphemous to go in for realism when depicting the divine is something that becomes really, really important both in the Iconoclasm of later Byzantium and the straight rejection of any kind of representation by Islam.

Right.
Judaism (which Christianity IS), seldom represented the 'Great I AM' as a graven image. It was forbidden. Only occasionally do you see a mosiac here and there i.e., @ Duras Europa.

Deuteronomy:
I am the LORD your God,...You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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First Century...



15th century... (that's one thousand, four hundred years in between)



I guess nothing ever changes.
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Ishmael


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wireloop wrote:
Judaism (which Christianity IS), seldom represented the 'Great I AM' as a graven image. It was forbidden.

That's not the problem. The problem is that we have many, many such "graven images" but none of them employ perspective until the Renaissance when we actually have the invention of the technology recorded as an event. And yet, perspective had already been used hundreds of years before (though we have no recording of that event), and in the same country no less.

I repeat. The advent of the geometric techniques required to paint in perspective was recorded as, and perceived to be, an invention when it occurred in the Renaissance. And yet we know it was not an invention at all -- having been widely used (to decorate common homes no less) over one THOUSAND years before.

None of this artwork had survived into the 15th century? None of it was there to be viewed and copied by the new great artists of Italy it would have inspired?

Strange then that the subject matter of these new artists then matched the very same themes popular one thousand years before!

The only sustainable explanation is that perspective wasn't re-invented at all. Compare the rise of Renaissance sculpture, which is routinely characterized as an explicit revival of styles expressly copied from surviving Roman statuary.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Artists worked to order, for a patron (usually the Church), their object was to please or promote the patron rather than 'show off' their skill to an admiring public. Painting was formal, stylised, not due to incompetence or ignorance of perspective but to restrictions imposed by church rules.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Hatty wrote:
Artists worked to order, for a patron (usually the Church), their object was to please or promote the patron rather than 'show off' their skill to an admiring public.

And where is your evidence that perspective displeased the Church?

And there were no private patrons? At all??? And no Leonardo's with their private sketch books?
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Wireloop


In: Detroit
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And no Leonardo's with their private sketch books?

Huh?

Giuliano da Sangallo



Baldassare Peruzzi



Raphael



Domenico Tasselli



Anibale Caracci



Michaelangelo

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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Every single one of the artists you mention is a Renaissance period artist. All of them are 14th century I believe -- perhaps there are one or two who are 13th? Not certain.

My point is that you cannot find such a sketch book in Italy from the period between 490A.D. and 1300A.D (or thereabouts). That's a millenium in which perspective art disappears -- because we find plenty of it on the walls of Pompeii.

And furthermore, the subject matter of the paintings in Pompeii matches that of the Renaissance period.

How do you explain this?
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Wireloop


In: Detroit
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That's a millenium in which perspective art disappears....How do you explain this?

I disagree,... in part.
Here is some (perspective) art from the 9th century.



Ish, initially the advent of the literalist Christian 'church' forbade the development of what it perceived to be 'pagan culture'. Any hint of 'pagan culture' subjected its bearer to ecclesiastical mistrust and clerical punishment (consider the Salem witch trials).
The creative arts in general (by the time of Nicene) became asssociated with paganism (idol worship) in that it was a 'craft'. This craft also had a history of depicting nakedness, licentiousness, anthropormorphisms, and 'deity' (in perspective), all of which could be taken as an 'icon'.

We can begin to see the mindset of the church as typified by Augustine (ca 420 AD). By 500 AD the words of Augustine, as you know, were almost on par with the Bible itself

Augustine:
"Anything invented by man for making and worshipping idols, or for giving Divine worship to a creature or any part of a creature, is superstitious."

My point is, is that anybody (between 400 and 800 AD) who 'crafted' an image of a man, animal, etc.. could be ACCUSED of constructing an idol for worship.

Over the course of time, like everything else, the church became more lenient towards the 'arts' and eventually allowed the iconography of Jesus and the Saints (as evidenced from various 9th to 12th century Basilica engravings, mosaics and sacramentals). And by the 13th century (because Satan got his foot in the door through iconography) the skill of perspective was perfected and broadened to include most anything that the eye could behold.

The Protestant reformation is first observed, IMHO, in the 14th century in what we call 'the Renaissance'.
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Keimpe


In: Leeuwarden, Frisia
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wireloop wrote:
My point is, is that anybody (between 400 and 800 AD)who 'crafted' an image of a man, animal, etc.. could be ACCUSED of constructing an idol for worship.

But perspective is best seen in pictures of buildings (churches!). Sorry, but I didn't find your "three men standing next to each other" a convincing example of perspective.

wireloop wrote:
by the 13th century ... the skill of perspective was perfected and broadened

But it was already there 1000 years before that. It didn't need perfecting. Nothing ever gets worse.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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I can't see perspective in the 9th century pic, Wireloop. In any case it's not perspective per se that's the point. It's the introduction of
a) mathematical rules of perspective and
b) the use of those lattice thingies and camerae obscurae ("Ooh, get him")
that transformed the art of then from the art of now. If Ish is correct these things didn't happen....are you saying that, Ishmael?

However it has yet to be explained why, once society in general is used to these novelties, artists no longer have to resort to the artifical aids. And, since children draw without perspective in any age, why can't we grasp the art historical nettle and say, "The trouble with Byzantine art is it's childish ie complete crap." I'm fed up with everyone going round saying how wonderful it is. And that goes for all primitive art as well. And L S Lowry.
Yours faithfully
A Phillistine Esq
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