Norris Kelly Smith: Perspectives on the Last Supper

"In order to make it perfectly clear why so little is gained by raising the discussion of perspective to the level of an abstract idea of "Renaissance space" or by reducing it to mechanical matters of technique and of vanishing points, and in order to be aware of the importance of the specificites of a given subject and a given commission, let us deal with a small number of images that are devoted to a single theme but conceived from different points of view"




***********



"Of all the events of the Passion, only the Last Supper has been endowed with a liturgical or sacramental significance that necessitates its being understood within the framework of both temporal and eternal time"

(unlike the flagellation (socio-historical)
or the Resurrection (visionary-transcendent)



The Last Supper is "reproduced thousands of times every day ... and subsumes, symbolizes, and actualizes within itself the theory and means of Christian salvation as they were universally understood in the 15th century"

Masaccio (1425)




"It is relatively easy to accomodate the story of St. Peter Healing with his shadow to the familiar conditions of direct optical perception" but that approach would put the devout viewer of the Last Supper "in the position of being a disengaged spectator"

Sassetta (1423)


"An artist as naive as Sassetta may have had no qualms about squeezing the scene into a nine inch high predella panel, but then Sassetta was content to work within the tradition he had received from the trecento; it seems never to have crossed his mind that composing a painting might have required him to take his stand with regard to the significance of some theme or idea or body of thought as it bore upon his own or any man's personal existence.

"Though he was perhaps responding to the new ideas about seeing when he shifted Jesus from the end of the table to the center, where he confronts us as we confront the image, Sassetto's interpretation was as uncharged as Giotto's had been"


Giotto (1305)


"..for even Giotto had not been able to infuse that quasi-liturgical subject with the kind of narrational intensity that disntinguishes most of his Paduan frescoes. It is the most inert of all his compositions"





But there is one component
of the Last Supper
that is not reproduced
thousands of times every day:

The revelation of betrayal.

Jesus has just announced
that one of his disciples
will betray him,
and only he, the culprit, and the viewer
know who it will be.

Sassetta has the viewer
standing right behind Judas
and staring face-to-face with Jesus.

Is it I who will betray you?"
is a question that the viewer,
as well as the disciples
may well ask.

So Sassetta's vision
does indeed prompt the viewer
to "take his stand"
(and perhaps he does not deserve
to be called "naive")

Such confrontation is
absent from Giotto's version,
which feels far less evangelical.

But it does have that sense of mystery
that infuses Scrovegni's private chapel,
as all of the disciples
seem clueless
to the drama
that is unfolding at the left
between Jesus, Judas, and John.

And Scrovegni wouldn't want
to have his faith challenged anyway,
would he?


Also,
one might notice
that both of the above paintings
present a deep, illusional space
within their architectural renderings.

Sassetto has a separate vanishing point
for each of the flanking predellae,
which emphasizes the frontality
of Christ at the center.

But he also makes the heads
the same size
regardless of whether they
are at the near or far
sides of the table,
which tends to pull the viewer
into the middle of it all.

So does Giotto,
but his vanishing point.
if there were one,
would have to be far to the right
of the scene.
Giotto has placed his viewer
outside the room,
separated from Jesus
by all the disciples.

And there's also that thin, curious
pillar (or pole) to the right
that both blocks and is blocked by
the disciple who is sitting
on the other side of it.

(just as it might appear
to a viewer's binocular vision)

"The first artist to understand the necessity of defining a consistent perspectival standpoint in terms of which to interpret the Last Supper was, so far as we now know, Andrea del Castagno"








"How should a lower-middle-class shopkeeper and perhaps angry young man named Castagno, caught up as he plainly was in the exciting ideas and potentialities of the ars nova, interpret the Last Supper for patrons who were so unlike himself"

(because , as Smith explains, the Carmelites were a severely ascetic order who practiced self-effacement as a path to the divine presence)


"First of all, he had to chose a moment in, or an aspect of, the story of the Last Supper. That story falls, of course, into two more or less separate parts, the one having to do with the identification of Judas as the betrayer, the other with the institution of the sacrament of the Eucarist."


But don't paintings often present as simultaneous events which were not?

Smith then offers various interpretations
regarding the exact moment being presented
and finally concludes that:





"Judas is unquestionably holding a morsel of bread, but the possibility of his making an immediate and dramatic departure (John 13:27-30) is ruled out, partly by the static and non-dramatic nature of the composition, partly by the fact that there is no exit"





"The painting is shown to be as silent as the nuns: every mouth is closed -- What the painting amounts to, then, is a mystical meditation on the Eucharist and on Christ's Passion (for the Last Supper must be seen in conjunction with the Crucifixion etc that are represented on the upper part of the same wall); it is not narrative illustration at all."


Yes,
it is interesting to note
that nobody's mouth is open
even if the disciples
seem to be communicating
with hand gestures.

(had the nuns of this convent
taken a vow of silence?)


And yet,
there is Judas all by his dark
halo-less self,
smack in the middle
on the viewer's side of the
that very long table,
with all that swirly stuff
in the background panel
seeming to emerge from his head.

That feels dramatic to me.

(note: John White discussed this painting here .)


Taddeo Gaddi (1335)


"Taking account of the old-fashioned orientation of the nuns, Castagno seems to have looked back deliberately to medieval, perspectival models for his composition. The one that most readily comes to mind is the Last Supper that runs across the bottom of Taddeo Gaddi's "Tree of Life" in Santa Croce"

























They are quite similar,
but Smith notes that
Gaddi has Judas to the left
(the unfavorable side)
and John to the right of Jesus,
while Castagno (like Leonardo)
has their positions reversed:


"in recognition of the fact that Christian salvation extends to him as well as to all other sinners - among whom, we must suppose,are the nuns of Sant' Apollonia"





BTW,
here's a breakdown
of the position of Judas
relative to Jesus
in various Italian paintings:



Giotto: right
Sassetti: right
Castagno: right
Del Sarto: right


Perugino: left
Leonardo: left
Gaddi: left
Bassano: left
Ghirlandao: left
Rosselli: left


Since there seems to be no pattern,
at least regarding chronology,
maybe this issue was less important then
to artists and patrons
than it is now
to art historians.

But I'll agree with Smith
that Last Suppers
should be interpreted differently
if they were placed into
a monastery/convent's dining hall
where the monks/nuns
were invited to share a meal
with Christ and his disciples.










"Although Castagno chose to give his composition the retardataire appearance of a medieval relief or manuscript painting, his pride and self-esteem prevented him from abandoning the new perspectival usages ...and so we find him devising what was perhaps the most remarkable application of one-point perspective that is to be found in the whole body of Renaissance art"













"there can be no mistaking the fact that what appears to us to be a wide and very shallow stage was conceived by Castagno as a deep room, almost as deep as it is wide--- and if we assume that the room is a square, then the viewer's position lies about one hundred and fifty feet from the frescoes wall.. thugh the refectory itself is only about 93 feet long"




That is a funny space,
isn't it?

If those side panels
are as square as the ones
on the back wall,
then this is a very deep room indeed.


And as Smith notes,
the room has a different proportion
depending upon
whether you are calculating it
from the geometrics on the
floor, walls, or ceiling.

Is it possible that Castagno
was just using
whatever made the space
look best?

(of which the outstanding feature
is that long, white, horizontal table
before which the miserable Judas
pops out like a sore thumb)

Domenico Veneziano St. Lucy Altarpiece (1445-47)


"It is commonly said that the constuzione legittima was used to "create space". Castagno was probably the first artist to perceive that it can also be used to create an effect of spatial compression - that is, to eliminate or to drastically reduce an appearance of depth. (we cannot be sure of this precedence, for his sometime colleague Domenico Veneziano made a similar use in his St. Lucy altarpiece at about the same time"

Mantegna, The Dead Christ, 1480


"The effect of compression is of the kind we commonly encounter today in photographs that have been made with a long telescopic lens.. the same device was used some twenty or thirty years later by Mantegna in his painting The Dead Christ in order to give the body the big-headed, barrel chested, long-armed and short legged appearance of a dwarf to make it apear that Christ has been disfigured by death. Precisely the same effect can be produced by photographing a distant reclining figure with a 600-mm lens"



I think Smith is dead wrong that there would be
"precisely the same effect"
produced by a wide-angle lens,
since the width of the table
diminishes with distance
even though the proportions
of the Christ do not.

Apparently, the famous physicist, Vasco Ronchi,
placed a reclining person in the same pose
and photographed him,
but that photograph is unavailable to me.

I also do not view
Mantegna's Christ as
"disfigured by death"
into the proportions of a dwarf.

Rather, I get the feeling
that the viewer
is being pulled right on top of Christ,
making His presence overwhelming -
just as reverse perspective
does in Chinese painting.

It's been 40 years since
I've seen the actual painting,
but I still remember
how the figure of Christ
felt pushed into the room
where I was standing.

"It seems probable that Castagno chose his impossibly disant vantage point in order to achieve a sense of psychological disengagement that is related to the self-evident disengagement of the disciples from one another and of the silent and both self-absorbed and self-denying nuns from one another"



To agree with Smith,
it does seem, to me,
that the disciples have
taken an oath of silence
(just like the nuns)

But however distant that vantage point may be,
it does seem that the imaginary room
in which the Last Supper takes place,
has been thrust so deeply into the real room
that it would encompass
the nuns as they sat at dinner.

Even if there is a Judas
and a lot of empty space
in between the nuns
and the distant table
where the disciples are sitting.



"What Castagno was concerned to accomplish, it would appear, was the suppression not only of space but of time- the kind of time within which persons play roles, develope traits of character, bear children, pass on traditions, and pursue personal goals. This is the kind of existence the nuns had forsworn in taking their Carmaldolite vows"




Can you imagine
having dinner every day
with Judas sitting
at the end of your table?

That's what I would call dramatic,
and relates to the personal goal
of accepting or rejecting Christ.


Smith concludes his interpretation with:

"Yet even their emotional perturbation (expressed by the turbulent panel behind Jesus, Peter, and Judas) is somehow external, part of a larger design predestined from the beginning of time. Castagno seems to have argued, perhaps for the nun's sake, that people only appear to be driven by passionate emotion, only look as if they are freely making decisions in moments of dramatic conflict, whereas in fact their lives are shaped by an all governing pattern, and if there seem to be ambiguities and irrational discrepancies in that pattern, it is ony because now we see them through a glass darkly"

Perhaps Smith has never sensed
the turbulent aura
around an angry or disturbed person,
but I'm guessing that
it would be sensed all the time
in a community of spiritual women
who have taken an oath of silence.

And I can't think of any other
narrative painting
whose characters express their emotions
in this way.




*************


Jean Fouquet, 1452, St. Veranus curing the insane
(note: as an example of a museum behaving badly,
this is the ONLY image
that could be found on the internet,
since a commerical data library
has purchased all rights to it.)


Smith now begins
to compare the cultures
of northern and southern Europe
in the 15th C.

First, he presents Panofsky's distinction
between the Platonism of the south
versus the nominalism of the north.

But to get less theoretical,
he notes that the greatest distinction
in their artworlds
was that Italy paid attention
to the identity of the architects,
even if the architects of the north
had achieved greater innovations.

And he quotes Leonardo Olschki
to the effect that:

"In the first century of her creation,
Italy became a country of lawyers, notaries, officials, and judges"

... not that they were any more law biding
-- but that, perhaps, their complex world,
with it's factional violence provoked by
conflicting claims
needed more lawyers,
and the presence of stable, regulating institutions
to which architects would give a public face
and painters would represent
with the "lawful construction"
(of single point perspective)

Regarding Fouquet, Smith lays out the controversy:

"He seems to have been as much concerned with the theory of perspective as was any Italian - witness his introduction into several of his later works of those "optical curvatures" that have so beguiled generations of later theorists (such as Guido Hauck and Panofsky) but which, as Gioseffi and pirenne have made clear, are derived from an attractive but specious argument and simply do not correspond to the observable data of our visual experience"

while concluding that:


"It is typically Northern, however, that Fouquet's theoretical speculations had to do with the grasp of the comprehending eye rather than with the structural and quasi-mathematical regularities that were uppermost in Italian thinking at the time"




Smith then asks us to consider
this Fra Angelico fresco of
St. Lawrence Distributing Alms to the Poor (1447-50)
where the figures feel
"regulated by the architecture"
as opposed to the Fouquet
where they are
"engulfed within a vast interior
whose overall shape and dimensions
we cannot even begin to grasp"

Then, we're presented with Fouquet's version
of the Last Supper
as "the most radical departure from convention that is to be found in any fifteenth-century version of the subject"












"While it is likely that the artist had seen Pietro Lorenzetti's fresco at Assisi... the sense of Fouquet's painting is quite different"

Lorenzetti "preserved the liturgical stateliness of the Byzantine models.... and the shape of his figure group corresponds to the architectural setting... and Judas is clearly identified as the man without a halo"

While Fouquet not only has a short count of disciples (only 9), but "he has chosen to concentrate our attention entirely upon the identification and dismissal of Judas; no reference is made to the Eucharistic aspect of the occasion..... and the oddest and most original aberration from convention consists in his introduction of twenty-five spectators.. the worldly adversaries of Jesus who have given Judas the moneybags he so conspicuously wears at his side"



Then, Smith points out
the cathedral in the distance,
which is being viewed from the back,
i.e. the area where the clergy
are performing their rites --
the same clergy appear to be
among the adversarial spectators.


Is Fouquet hinting
that church officials
were playing the same role
in his day
that the Pharisees did
in the life of Christ?















To further that argument,
he then directs our attention
to Fouquet's "Lamentation",
where the same view
of the church can be seen in the background,
while, in the middle-ground,
the good guys (Joseph of Aramathea and Mary Magdalene)
are on the left (i.e. the side where parishioners enter the church)
and the bad guys (a high priest and pharisee)
are on the right
being enlightened by Nicodemus.

And the 30 pieces of silver
that funded the betrayal
(here, painted in gold)
are placed on top of the coffin

Leading Smith to conclude:
"The painter's concern for ethical integrity stands in sharp contrast to the Limbourg Brothers lack of just that concern - for Fouquet was a great perspectivist"




Smith then relates the theory advanced by Emile Male, Molinari, and Claude Schaefer that Fouquet's approach to narrative was following medieval mystery and passion plays.

But he rejects it, in favor of the more recent moralities and farces, like, for example "Mestier et Marchandise", where four characters represent the issues of the times (Mestier (artisans), Berger (rural people), Le Temps, and Le Gens), and the popular morality play, La Vie et l'histoire du Maulvais Riche, where the poor man has his revenge upon the rich.

Which Smith tells us is similar to Fouquet's Last Supper "as one on which a group of poor laborers and fishermen have been betrayed into the hands of rich burghers and powerful priest who have used their wealth to currupt a man named Judas, even as the representatives of that same ruling class were using their power to persecute and exploit poor but righteous men who had a better claim than they, perhaps, to being called followers of Christ."

... and then to draw his conclusion:

"Nothing was more important to the expression of this new ethical standpoint than was the radical informality of Fouquet's perspective which is completely at odds with the legalistic institutionalism that is so frequently to be associated with the constuzione legittima"



But Fouquet's perspective
is only "radically informal"
in comparison with Italian
(but not northern European)
precedents,
and it doesn't necessarily
imply a stance that is
oppositional to church hierarchy
(even if other aspects
of that painting do so)

And, of course, Fouquet's images
appear in a book, not on a wall,
so they don't impact real space
the way a fresco does.

The issue here
is not so much perspective,
as it is architecture
as yet one more character
in a narrative,
and in Fouquet's narrative,
the architecture
is more compatible with Judas
than with Christ.






So, finally we come to the most famous
"Last Supper" of all,
and summoning a bit of hyperbole,
Smith proclaims:

"But we must not make light of the fact that Leonardo's Last Supper is the most dramatic image that has ever been painted in the history of mankind, so far as we know"

But, regrettfully, Smith immediately hands off the ball:

"In regards to Leonardo's "Last Supper" and all that pertains to its perspective, I have little or nothing to add to what Leo Steinberg has set forth in his admirably thorough analysis of every aspect of the painting. It would be superfluous for me to rehearse the observations he has made so well concerning this "polyvalent" or "polysemantic" work of art"

Which is doubly regrettful
because every work of art
can be said to be "polyvalent"/"polysemantic",
and Smith has little else to say
about Steinberg's analysis.


But Smith does want to tell us that:

"Leonardo made less use of "mathematical" perspective than did any major artist excepting Michelangelo"

Smith tells us about an early Annunciation whose perspective Kenneth Clark called "painstakingly and amateurishly correct", and about an only partially systematic perspectival grid in a Uffizi drawing for the background of the "Adoration of the Magi" --- but he doesn't tell what's wrong with the perspective applied to the "Last Supper"

There certainly seems to be a vanishing point (behind the head of Christ) and size of the panels on both the walls and the ceiling diminish proportionally as they recede.

How could perspective be applied
any more systematically that it already has been?

What is the problem?

Smith will never explain that,
even though he will then use a few thousand words to explain
why the absence of perspective
is appropriate to Leonardo's philosophic/political stance.

Needless to say,
I'm stunned that neither he,
nor the editors from the university press
noticed this omission.

The only aberration I see
is that Christ feels small.

Since the viewer is positioned
in the center of the room,
Christ is closer than the
disciples at either end of the table
so he should be a bit larger.

His smallness makes him feel vulnerable,
which is, of course,
the position that Christ was in,
not only during his last week on earth
but also in European civilization
as Christianity
was being replaced by secular humanism.

(although, the Christ figure
might not feel so small
in the actual room,
as opposed to in the resproduction)

Smaller or not,
the architectural framing
helps show Christ
as a center of calm
in a sea of human turbulence.

In this case,
the building, as a character,
supports rather than challenges
His mission.





Finally
we come to Tintoretto
who painted at least six
Last Suppers,
beginning with the one shown above
at San Marculoa

and ending
with the one
at San Giorgio Maggiore




In between
there was this one
at San Polo






this one
at Santo Stefano





and I've thrown in an image
of his "Wedding Feast" (1545)
just to compare it
with the other,
more dramatic banquet scenes




But this one,
at San Rocco (1576-1581),
is the one
that has drawn Smith's attention:




..it is in the nature of the scene itself and of the composition of the figure group that there is no standpoint from which one might discover the event to possess anthing remotely approaching the symmetrical orderliness that the Cenacoli of the quattrocento so commonly manifested. Number and geometry are irrelevant, as are the placement and scale of the figures : Jesus is the smallest and most marginal of the men at the table, while an unnamed disciple in the foreground appears larger than St. Christopher himself.


... which leads him to conclude:



Like most artists in the middle years of the sixteenth century, he had lost confidence in the Renaissance idea of center and in the notion that there exists a simple congruity between the patterned regularity of an established order of things and the symmetry of our own bodies. He seems to been fully aware of the precarious contingency of existence that so limits our abilty to comprehend the central significance of the drama we are caught up in.



What Smith does not mention
is that the painting is located
at the upper-right edge of its wall
which would be a good reason
to locate the viewer (and the vanishing point)
off to the far-left of the scene.

And that Tintoretto had indeed
placed Christ at the center
of his linear construction
when he painted the Wedding Feast
30 years earlier.

We might also allow
that the placement of the characters
(Christ, disciples, beggars, dog)
is not irrelevant,
it just suggests
that the miracle of salvation
is happening at the edge
rather than the center
of the human hierarchy.

And, though small (since distant)
the figure of Christ
is still closer to the viewer's center
than anyone else except the beggar.

A hierarchy
in which the position of Venice
was heading south,
especially with the recent
loss of Cyprus
and the declining population.

An idea which Smith connects
to the architecture of the room:



Though the room is apparently very large, its structure does not call to mind any domestic, civic, or religous institution -- one might say that Jesus and his disciples were stangers in the city -- were not part of , but were opposed by the institutional establishment.


And that big dark, lonely space
gives me the the same feeling.

But we can also notice
that the ceiling is supported
by a heavy pillar
which itself
rests upon the
glowing halo of Christ.

Everything seems to center
on Him,
while the enormous figure
of the disciple
at the other end of the table
feels peripheral.

If that figure were
identified as Christ,
Christianity would be a dead issue.









Smith cannot resist
the temptation to
wander off the topic of this chapter


One has only to look at Tintoretto's Massacre of the Innocents, which painted a few years later in the Sculoa di San Rocco, and compare it with Giotto's fresco, in order to see what extent perspectival standpoint had ceased to be an issue. Tintoretto's figures act tumultuously and incoherently upon a receding architectural stage that consists of fragments of several buildings, the full shape and nature of which we cannot discern.



The dates of these paintings
show that these various perspectives
were not especially chronological




Uccello, 1424









"The composition is more nearly reminiscent of Uccello's Deluge than of any earlier version of the Massacre."





Raphael: School of Athens, 1512


Raphael (workshop) : Coronation of Charlemagne, 1517

Fouquet: Coronation of Charlemagne, 1461


"Although they are separated by more than two hundred years, the step from Giotto’s Massacre to Raphael’s School of Athens is a relatively short one, since both pictures are equally governed by rational lucidity. However, the chasm that divides Raphael’s fresco from Tintoretto’s Massacre is oceanic a chasm similar to the one that separates the School of Athens from the same artist’s coronation of Charlemagne , which was painted in the adjoining Stanza deli’ Incendio only about five years later. The subject lends itself perfectly to symmetrical formality, as Fouquet well understood when he showed the coronation (in Les Grandes Chroniques de France) to take place as had actually been the case, in Old St. Peter’s Church. Raphael, who had no doubt seen that church before its destruction was begun, chose deliberately to invent a highly fragmented architectural setting and to shuffle the arrangement of figure groups in keeping with that new way of thinking we now call Mannerism".











Bruegel: Massacre of the Innocents, 1562







"On the other hand, if we compare Tintoretto's Massacre with Bruegel's version, which had been painted about 20 years earlier, we can see that for Bruegel perspectival standpoint was still a matter of the greatest importance, though it did not involve the use of the constuzione. In a wide and deep landscape setting he sought to establish a dialogical opposition between a Flemish village community and a troop of murderous foreign soldiers who are led by an officer clothed in black"



This may be a wide and deep setting,
but this panorama does not offer
a single perspectival standpoint
any more than
the tapestries of that era did.

It's just that
the townspeople
are standing
in between the viewer
and the mass of soldiers.

Tintoretto
had the viewer
immersed in the chaos
of soldiers and victims,
but that doesn't mean
that the viewer's standpoint
was any less important to him,
does it?

And come to think of it,
this kind of standpoint,
i.e. the relative positions
of the viewer and the various
things in view,
can be presented without using
single point perspective at all.

So one might argue
that the construzione
really was
nothing more than
an abstract idea of "Renaissance space"
that can be reduced
to mechanical matters of technique,
and all the issues
of "taking one's stand"
can be presented
with or without it.












Rubens, 1632




"By the time we come to The Last Supper of Rubens, the architectural setting has so shrunk that it consists of only a few fragments in the upper-right corner of the picture. The spatial volume is defined (or created) by the tightly compressed figures themselves, as they grimace and gesticulate, while the menacing dog looks not into the depicted scene but directly at us, as does Judas immediately above him. The occasion has become as dynamic and as internalized as a scene from Verdi’s Otello. The notion of dialogue within an institutional frame of reference has quite disappeared and, along with it, every vestige of the construzione legittima."



But these architectural "fragments"
are all acceptable
as suitable parts of the same building
in which the apostles have gathered.

The only part of the "constuzione leggitima"
that's missing
is a grid on the floor.

Smith's comment
is more relevant
to the drawing than the
final painting
in which the architectural space
has been more fully developed.
(to the detriment, I feel,
of the scene's dramatic force)

So why do we feel that "The spatial volume is defined (or created) by the tightly compressed figures themselves, as they grimace and gesticulate"?


You can imagine the background
with zero architectural detail at all,
and the power of the scene
would not be diminished.

(which would not be true
with all the other paintings
shown in this discussion)


************





Final Question:
Why did Smith ignore
this famous Last Supper
done in 1464
by Dirk Bouts?


Allegedly, it's the first
Last Supper
in Flemish panel painting,
as well as an early example
of one-point perspective.

(although it's been noted
that the rear room has its own vanishing point,
and neither point is on the horizon of landscape)










What a fabulous painting!













One may also note that the size of the heads
does not diminish with distance,
effectively pulling the viewer
onto the table between the two disciples
who would be looking at you,
as if a place at the Lord's table
had been prepared for you.
The circularity of the plate and tablecloth
seems to enhance that effect.

Norris Kelly Smith : Two Allegiances

"Brunelleschi had made just this point, probably some twenty years earlier: to wit, that every Florentine had to recken with two different "points of view", the one defined by Christian faith, the other by the Republic, the latter not so much "human" as "citizenly". The first involves the submission of one's earthy goals and desires to the ultimate achievement of eternal rest in Abraham's bosom - the second involves playing one's role (be it as politician, banker, entrepreneur, condottere in the ongoing life of the city)"




And so, Smith is going to devote a chapter to the real significance of Brunelleschi's tavolae -- not as the discovery of one-point-perspective, but as the assertion of two allegiances (to church and state) that characterized life in Medieval Western Europe.









And he takes the graphic expression of this duality back to the "first great perspectivist", namely Giotto, with special attention paid to the curious "correti" in the Scrovegni Chapel.

"The "secret chapels" are not relevant to the nature of the building, for it contains no galleries or other kinds of wall articulation; they prompt us rather to think about the meaning of the building as a symbol of the Church, wose nature is exemplified not in hierarchical offices and dogmatic formulations but in the lives and deeds of people like ourselves -- only the coreti remind us that we too must imaginatively and personally participate in that larger order of things that constitues the vital reality of the Christian Church, a reality for which the Church-as-institution serves only as an articulating enframement"

Except that -- there are other faux-architectural features that frame the narrative scenes. Do all of them "prompt us to think about the meaning of the building as a symbol of the church"?

Or, is all of the illusional architecture used, just like real architecture, to compose the narrative scenes with the interior space of the chapel?






The coretti serve to hi-lite the scenes directly above them and transition between the two long, side walls and the altar niche to which they run.

Giotto (1267-1337)


Smith then looks at another panel in the Arena Chapel,
and compares it with
another artist's version of the same story
painted in Padua several decades later:





Giusto Menabuoi (1320-1391)



"Instead of Giotto's dramatic confrontation of seven men and ten women across a dense heap of dead children, Giusto Menabuoi chose to pack his scene with more than a hundred and ten figures, all of whom are placed, however meaninglessly, within the confines of a single symmetrical room. Although by means of perspectival orthogonals Giusto has created a deeper room than any that Giotto defined, he has no perspective in regard to his subject - that is to say, he has taken no stand, assumed no standpoint toward the issues involved in the massacre"




And yet... Giusto's perspective does place the viewer at a point on the floor of that single symmetrical room, so Smith has just demonstrated that one-point perspective does not necessarily "assume a standpoint" regarding whatever issues are involved.

The two paintings make an interesting contrast, don't they?

Obviously Giusto has seen Giotto's version and been influenced by how Giotto draws a heavy, dramatic figure. But Giusto's sense of drama is different, both in the overall design and in the drawing of individual figures. Giotto's figures have so much more character and tension -- and that has nothing to do with the use of perspective.

Which is not to say that Giusto's painting is without its own delights - but it's more like the delights of a well crafted B-Movie.

But without the unbearable tension incited by Giotto, Giusto's massacre is like a fight staged in a Roman colloseum. The participants may actually be killing each other, but it's nothing more than a spectacle presented as a diversion for a bored audience.

And I've got to admit that Giotto's version is quite adaptable to Smith's theme of "two allegiances" -- with the dramatic opposition/confrontation between the church on the right and the state on the left.

Proceding with some more examples of "the kind of ethical concern that lies behind the varied inventions of Renaissance perspectivists", Smith offers the above bronze plaque of "Christ Healing the Demonaic", possibly from Brunelleschi, amd the above painting, possibly by Masaccio, in which the central event is Christ healing the lunatic son.

"It is in keeping with the perspectivist's concern for ethical integrity that they should have been drawn to subjects exemplifying Christ's power to bring wholeness, sanity, and order into the world that perennially lacks just those qualities"


And... I'm wondering just how often, if ever, this theme has been treated by the visual arts of the last 300 years. Certainly the secular art of the last hundred years has specialized in the reverse, i.e. a presentation of "see how crazy I am", a condition under which a concern for ethical integrity is irrelvant.

"This is the burden of Masaccio's frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel which deal with the powerful presence of the man Peter as he brings to bear the force of his authority upon the sicknesses, both spiritual and economic, of the Christian community of Florence"

Can you imagine such a mural being painted today? High-end Contemporary art is collected by a financial community that has specialized (and profited) from exactly the opposite of economic health.

In the contemporary world, only children's book illustration would suggest:


"the possibility of a world this lawful, lucid, and intelligible, but only by virtue of our being willing to accept a responsive and responsible position within the order of things"

...as Smith feels is presented by Masaccio.



In the bronze plaque, the viewer must assume "my own position to be as closely defined or enframed as that of Jesus; I cannot imagine that I am a casual bystander like one of the marginal figures"

While in the painting, "my position, physically and psychologically, is unmistakably that of a mobile passerby who sees that something is going on within the precincts of an imposing building; but as an outsider.. I am quite unable to grasp the meaning of what I see".... this being "the earliest painting we know of in a fully systematic diagonal perspective.

And in the bronze, "the city we see is at once an ancient city..and a modern city as Brunelleschi and his followers would have liked to make Florence modern, freed at last from its ugly clutter of fortress towers and the partisan violence associated with them"

While in the painting "the cutaway building consists of an odd amalgamation of classical, medieval, and modern elements".. and ...




"the striding, twisting figure behind the near-central pillar is the key the artist has given us to his perspectival insight and intention"




Leading Smith to conclude:

"If the silver plaque was idealist in conception, the painting defends the stance of the nominalist.... and defends the liberty of the Christian citizen against the tyranny of ecclesiatical idealism that even then, in the 1452's was sending Hussites to the stake.... in many ways its sentiment is proto-Protestant. This painting is small in size and almost certainly was made to be displayed in the intimacy of someone's household"

"That the construzione legittima was on the side of idealist orthodoxy was understood by the better artists of the quattrocento"

BTW, Smith also notes that the detail areas of this painting
don't really look very good,
leading to theory that a good artist (Masaccio)
did the overall design
while a lesser artist (Andrea Di Giusto) painted the rest.






But we also might note
that the Philadelphia Museum
now identifies this painting
as a processional banner,
and the subject as
"Christ Healing a Lunatic and Judas Receiving Thirty Pieces of Silver"
by Francesco d'Antonio

So the diagonal perspective,
and the furtive twisting figure behind the pillar,
is used more to separate the two, dramatically opposite events
rather than to challenge the idealism of the church.


Viewers cannot stand directly in front of a processional banner
as it's being carried,
and so can only see it from one side or the other.
Wouldn't that account for there being two
separate scenes, one on each side?

(further discussion can be found here )


But even we disagree with
much of Smith's interpretation,
I would still buy his argument
that both of these artists are using perspective
to invite the viewer to "take a stand"
rather than merely to demonstrate
the technique of linear perspective.

Especially the painting of Judas/Christ
which seems to demand that the viewer
choose to face left (and sell his soul for 30 pieces of silver)
or face right (and accept the miracle of healing)







"Whoever casts about to find the classic application of Alberti's system will turn inevitbly to Perugino's fresco "Christ Giving the Keys of the Church to St. Peter""


Smith also notes that the other paintings in the Sistine Chapel are a "muddled lot" that were "undone by a taste for episodic historicity that quite overshadowed their concern for what should have been the unifying idea behind the whole series, the conception of Law"


And though it's been 40 years since I've been to the Vatican,
I kind of remember my disappointment with most of the paintings
- especially those by Botticelli since I like so much else of what he did.

Is a "taste for episodic history" the culprit here?
I'm trying to recall any such paintings that I've liked,
and so far, only The Night Attack on the Sanjo Palace
comes to mind

While Smith suggests that Perugino had "one great advantage...it fell to him to deal with the only subject in the series that in its very nature had more to do with an idea than with an event" -- Christ giving Peter, and those church leaders who follow, the keys to the kingdom of heaven - and the subsequent "indisputable authorization of their monarchical power"






He also notes that the composition resembles the B-A-B format of the facade of a French cathedral - but "what gives Perugino's fresco its cogency is not merely its architectonic simplicity.. but rather its dialogical nature"

"The principal opposition is symbolized by the keys themselves: a bright golden one points upward toward heaven and downward toward Christ's heart, while a dark one, silver, tarnished or in shadow, points downward toward the plane of the earth which here takes the form of a wide paved piazza."

"The downward, isolated key, located exactly at the center of the composition, is the item around which the argument of the painting turns, because for centuries it had been the pope's claim to temporary authority that had been disputed"






Concerning the two scenes in the middle-ground,
Smith is passive about their scriptural connections
- only allowing that the are "sometimes identified"
with the "Tribute Money" on the left,
and the "Stoning of Christ" on the right.





The power of the Apostolic Succession was, as Jesus explicitly declared, the power to bind and to loose. This is the dialogical opposition with which Perugino deals in the middle distance, ina pair of scenes that are addressed not to the Christian citizens in general but to the secular rulers of the various European statees - a point that is made clear by the relation of the two scenes to the two arches"







The Tribute Money










The Stoning



It remains a mystery to me
why these two episodes
were chosen to complement
St. Peter getting the keys to church.

One can note
that neither one concern issues
of faith or salvation or the kingdom of heaven.

Rather, they're just the inevitabilities of social life:
taxes have to be paid,
and radical prophets
have to be driven out.


But whatever the interpretation,
this painting, with its one-point perspective
on a public plaza stretching back
to imperial and eccelistical buildings
does seem to exemplify Smith's notion of
"taking ones stand" regarding church and state.

A stance that would be unthinkable
anywhere else in the world at that time.









Looks like a modern dance
doesn't it?








And I love
details like this.









Appropriate expressions
for being in attendance
at an event
both sacred and political.















And to demonstrate the importance of point of view,
Smith then commissioned an artist,
Robert Jordan,
to depict the scene as
it would have appeared to
someone standing among the figures in the middle.

Kind of amusing, isn't it?
(and not a bad painting!)


St. Peter and his keys are quite far away,
and we have no idea, now,
just why that group of people have assembled in the distance,
while some kind of conflict
is unfolding right before us.

And "with the sensitivity of a good artist, Mr. Jordan has grasped the fact that the standpoint is itself determined by architecture"




so he has added
some new buildings of his own
in the distance
to give some scale to the plaza.


This new P.O.V.
is quite 20th C., isn't it?

I.e.
St. Peter and his followers
no longer stand
between us
and the abusive rejection
of the Christ.

Smith then offers a brief contrast
with Ingres' treatment of
the same theme 300 years later,
but first he notes
two intermediary paintings
with a similar layout:



Raphael "Feed my Sheep"




Poussin "Ordination"



Both Raphael and Poussin shared Perugino's concern for relating the full group of disciples to a continuously receding ground plane and a deep and varied landscape

Ingres





But Ingres has reduced the group, minimized the men's contact with the ground (showing three feet for eight men) and has compressed the landscape into a shallow affair that, for all its optical versimilitude, oddly approximates the Ottonian artist's background... it is devoid of Perugino's kind of dialogical argumentation: it shows divine power to descend from uper left to lower right, through Christ to Peter, but does not invite us to "take our stand" with regard to any definable issue, nor does it in any way bring new insight into the meaning of Matthew's text. It no more reveals the artist's possession of a distinctive standpoint than does the average newspaper photograph"






The Ingres and Perugino versions
do make an interesting contrast, don't they?

(Though, I do count four feet in the Ingres instead of three.
Shouldn't an editor have caught something like that?)

I do suppose it would be more difficult
to "take a stand" in the Ingres landscape
since it is so broken and uneven.

But why doesn't Smith mention the architecture?

In Perugino it encompasses the stage,
while in Ingres, all we see is distant battlements
to tell us that we are outside,
rather than within,
a city.

As indeed, the Roman Catholic Church
had recently been given the boot
by the French Revolution.


We also might note that Ingres' viewer
is standing lower than Christ,
while Perugino's is standing a bit above.


And doesn't that positioning,
as well as posture,
make Perugino's Christ
feel a bit more approachable and gentle,
while Ingres' savior is
more assertive, dramatic,
and just a little scary?




Here is the Ottonian version
to which Smith referred.
And yes, we do note that there
are only six feet for 12 disciples.
(so the ones in the background
must be floating on air!)

And here,
Christ looms above the others,
not because he is standing on higher ground,
but because he is a larger person.

To end his discussion of Perugino,
Smith notes that:

"His fresco constitutes an eloquent defense of a conception of Center that painters found increasingly difficult to affirm after about 1520 - that difficultly is usually associated in our minds today with the term 'Mannerism'"


He does not elaborate on
how that "conception of Center"
might differ from those came
before (Madonna Della Misericordia, Florence)
or since (Ingres)
or suggest that Alberti's grid
was necessary to achieve it.
what those words might actually be.

But he does contrast it
with the modern notion
that self is the center of the universe.

"The results of the modern artist's effort at transferring "center" to the mind of the solitary individual, without reference to anything of "central" importance out there in the world, have been less than generally satisfying"

It's too bad Smith never took that
assertion about "modern artists"
as the theme of another book.

But would Columbia University Press
have published it if he did?

"The adoption of Perugino's (or Sixtus's) standpoint magnifies or enhances certain aspects of one's distinctive selfhood, but it diminishes or supresses others. Whoever takes the stand that the fresco urges upon us will recognize that this order of things composes a balanced and harmonious totality only for someone who accepts the limitations of that position. All those aspects of his or her individuality that pertain to passion, sensuality, a potentiality for violence, and whatever we ordinarily mean by self-expression are necessarily minimized. The self that stands here is one's public self, closely corresponding to the impersonal image we commonly encounter in the profile portraits of the quattrocento"

And Smith adds
that it is only public selves
that can get together
and do any convening
(as citizens do in public squares,
or cardinals do in the Sistine Chapel)

BTW -- this contrast between
public and private selves
might also distinguish those complementary
architects of Chinese civilization,
Confucius and Lao Tse.

The self-centeredness
of the post-war American artworld
would be Taoist
except that it's out-sized expressions
reveal a burning desire to turn the private
into a public statement.

"So as to put the issues (regarding Church and State) in the clearest possible light, let us consider briefly another composition that is of about the same date.. the "View of an Ideal City" now in the Walters Gallery...... no one seems to have shown much interest in what the "ideal" is that the design exemplifies"


Which is the "Christian Humanist" ideal
with which Smith has so much empathy.

At the center of the picture is a triumphal arch,
symbolizing the political authority of the emperor.
To the left is a tightly closed baptistery,
the center of moral authority,
and to the right is the wide-open collosseum,
where passions and the lust for agression are ritually exercised.

And as Smith notes - no Renaissance city had a collosseum,
no ancient city had a Baptistery -
and why does this fantasy city has no capitol building or town hall?

Smith speculates that perhaps no town hall was necessary
because the real seat of power
in that historic period was in the family
rather than civil institutions,
as it was in Roman civililzation,
leading him to re-assert his thesis:

"No work makes it plainer that Renaissance perspective was not, and was not then understood to be, simply a technical device -- nor was it, in any sense whatever, a rebirth of Roman perspective.... rather it involved the act of taking one's stand with regard to an established order of things in the world"




But these frescos from the villa
of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale
(now at the Met)
also seem to be presenting
an established order of things:








Would Smith say
that the technique of perspective
was only applied to, perhaps,
make the scene feel more real (mimetic),
rather than
involving some kind of stand-taking?






This one, in particular
seems to place the viewer
directly in front of
some kind of shrine,
not as a tourist,
but more like a supplicant
concerned with the mysteries within.

Although, I don't think personal faith
was a public event in the Roman empire,
that seemed to tolerate any practice
that didn't drive too many people crazy
and allowed a statue of the emperor
to be displayed in the temple.



*****************


Regarding northern Europe in the early 15th C.,
"developments in perspective were as rapid and striking"
though
"in the genres of portraiture and landscape, both of which bear directly upon the devolopment of the self consciousness of the self centered person, northern artists were somewhat ahead of their Italian contemporaries"






Which brings us to Jan Van Eyck's Madonna of the Chancellor Rolin.

"In no other work is the confrontation of the temporal with the eternal, of the secular with the sacred, the State with the Church, so deeply meditated upon"




(And BTW, I'm quite fond of this piece
since it's so similar to
this one
that I've seen so many times
in the Frick Museum in New York.)







Isn't that hard-faced portrait
of the chancellor magnificent?

And Smith shares this contemporary quote
from Jacques du Clercq:

"The said chancellor was reputed to be one of the wise men of the kingdom, to speak temporally; with regard to the spiritual, I keep silent"
and Georges Chastellain:

"In as much as regards the world, this man was very wise ...but... in giving himself over too much to the one that was decrepit and fallible he seemed to remove himself from the most certain and memorable one..he strove to rise continually and to multiply what he possessed up to the very end"





As Smith notes,
Rolin also commissioned
the above "Last Judgment"
by Roger Van der Weyden.

In which:

"there is no far horizon, with all its implications as to future, hope, and expectation, for historical time will be at an end"

whereas in the Van Eyck:

"there is a wide landscape and a sweeping horizon, because the painting has very much to do with the world and with Chancellor Rolin's fervent hopes"

(which is probably why I have love the Van Eyck Madonna at the Frick so much -- that sweeping horizon where "towered cities please us then, and the busy hum of men")

So if Chancellor Rolin believed that eternal Hell awaited those who deserved it,
and if the Christian scriptures tell us that "it is easier for a camel to enter a needle's eye than a rich man into the kingdom of God" , how could he reconsile his rapacious accumulation of wealth and power?

Smith suggests that the image of the Princess (i.e. the Virgin) is the answer.
For she possesses "the virtues of gentleness, compassion, loving kindness, patience, and so on"

So it's not like Rolin has been evil -- it's just that he exemplifies the tough-minded virtues of masculinity, which are complemented by the feminine virtues of the Queen of Heaven.

"a polarization of masculine and feminine virtues for which no basis whatever is to be found in either biblical or classical thought"



Masaccio "Ananias"

In contrast to the renunciation of wealth
preached by St. Francis
or demonstrated in the Branacci Chapel
by Masaccio in paintings of "The Tribute Money"
or "The Story of Ananias"





"In the simulated relief above his head it is made clear that the world he finds himself in is not of his own making or choosing: it is the world of fallen man.. the world of murderous Cain and of drunken Noah"




(I can't see it, but Smith also notes
that the figures at the edge of the relief
appear to be gazing at a small, crescent moon
rising above the snow capped peaks
just as elswhere, the painter had placed a moon
behind the thief in his crucifixion scene.)


Yes,
I think Smith
has hit on why
I find this painting so delightful.








The eternal contrast between earth and heaven,
with prayers to heaven
but no denials for our earthly ways.

So I have to agree with Smith that:

"What is at stake in all this is not a Mariological typology, as Heinz Roosen-Runge would have us believe, but the spiritual condition of a specific man who found himself torn between his religious and his political obligations"








All of which,
conducted behind the ramparts
of a fortified castle,
would be quite above
the world of the tradesmen
who seem to have been depicted
in those two small, almost comical
figures in the distance who are looking away
(is the one in big, floppy red hat the artist himself?)

Unaware of the Chancellor's fervent prayers,
the stubby guy with the big hair
is gazing out through the ramparts
at the great river that divides,
and the small bridge that connects,
the great man of the world
and the infant savior.

A wonderful painting!

How I wish it were in Chicago!


Smith then connects it to the notion
that Renaissance perspective,
and especially this painting,
reflects:

"the emergence of territorialism that was so conspicuous a feature of European politics from the 13th Century onward. Whereas as men had once been united by their having been baptized into a common faith, their membership came increasingly to depend upon their having been born into the same teritory"

and


"The policy that the Duke of Bergundy and his chancellor were pursuing was plainly territorialistic, aimed at creating a state that could stand on equal footing with England, France, and the Empire"


But how can the historian distinguish territorialism
from the dynastic ambitions that presumably preceded it?

Perhaps a simple argument would suffice,
but Smith does not pursue this digression
any further.


And one might ask...
just how perspective connects
to these issues.

It certainly makes the painting
feel like a window into the real world,
apprpropriate for presenting a real dilemma.


But the viewer is not involved
(any more than those two figures at the ramparts)
and the viewer's stance
is not relevant.


Roger Van Der Weyden
"St. George and the Dragon"


At this point,
Smith launches into a digression
about castles in the paintings of that period.
(he is, after all, primarily an architectural historian)

He notes that the castle is
very important in the St. George scene
shown above.
(i.e. Sir George and his lady
have just come from there)






Robert Campin "Nativity"



...while the castle is more marginal
in this one.
(showing that nativity occurs out in the countryside)

Reflecting, he suggests,
attitudes appropriate
for the aristocracy or the bourgeoise
respectively.

And contrasting with the scene
where Rolin, the bourgeois administrator
is located within a castle
that may or may not be his own.

Whose castle is it anyway?
And which city
has been depicted so
realistically beyond the ramparts?

Smith notes that these are questions
which art historians have debated.
(New Jerusalem, Liege, Maastrict, Prague, Lyon?)
and Smith favors Liège,
as a town which often had
an adverarial relationship with
the Duke of Burgundy,
especially after the Maid of Orleans
was sent to the stake in 1431
(after being extradited by order
of Chancellor Rolin himself)
and Burgundy had to side with France
to the detriment of the Flemish towns
which depended upon commerce with the English.

"at the very center of Rolin's religious concern, we have reason to suppose, was his vision of a certain kind of reconsiliation between the Baptistery and the Town Hall - between the seat of ultimate and ultimately monarchial authority on the one hand, and the lives of busy men in the urban marketplace on the other. How understandable it is, therefore, that he should have assented with enthusiasm to suggestion that a radiantly idealized image or Liege, peaceful, prosperous, and secure by virtue of submission to God's will and to his appointed vicars on earth, should be included as an essential element both of his prayer to the Virgin and of his address to the duchy's townspeople"

(Smith cites the historian, Richard Vaughan,
for most of the relevant material
regarding the Counts of Bergundy,
and their conflicts with townsfolk)





"Just as the intensely personal presence of the specific man, Nicholas Rolin, sets Van Eyck's painting apart from the formulary works of medieval art, so too, does the nature of this city view announce to us that a new stand has been taken with regard to certain religio-political issues and concerns"



But what kind of stand
is being taken here?

Chancellor Rolin has declared his reverence
for the savior
and it is apparent
that he is a rich and powerful man.


But Rolin is just a henchman,
however pious he may
or may not be.

Neither he (nor the viewer)
is expected to act like a free citizen in the public square
of a republic.


This painting is hardly encouraging
of some kind of stand taking
on a religio-political issue
as Smith has suggested was involved
in Massacio's "Tribute Money"
or Perugino's "Keys of St. Peter"

But, nevertheless, Smith ends the chapter by concluding:

"Van Eyck invites us to take our stand within the circle of these battlements, and therewith within the circle of certain religious and political "theology", and to see for ourselves what the results of assuming that standpoint might be. They have to do with the most intimately personal aspects of sin and forgiveness, with self-awareness and world awareness, with aristocracy and egalitarianism, with ancient traditions and restless modernity, with the grievous limitations of temporaral existence and with an eternal blessedness.."






O.K. so submitting to authority
might be considered as
one kind of stand taking.



But why has Smith failed to note
that the pictorial space
of these 15th C. Flemish painters
differs from that of the Italians?

The distant background
may be following the basic rule
of perspective that size
is inversely proportional to distance,
but the foreground does not.

And the foreground space
of the Rolin Madonna
feels so weird.

Wouldn't both Rolin and the Madonna
be too large to walk through
those arches
that lead out to the garden?


And isn't Smith telling us
that the Rolin Madonna
is asserting that allegiance to church and state
is the same thing,
rather than the
"different points of view"
that he defined at the beginning of the chapter?