Architectural perspective
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| Architectural perspective |
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| Unknown artist , ca.1490 |
| Tempera on poplar wood |
| 131 × 233 cm |
| Gemäldegalerie (Berlin) , Berlin |
Architectural perspective (also: Architectural Vedute ) is a painting from the early modern period , which was most recently attributed to Francesco di Giorgio Martini . It shows the view of a square with a view of a harbor. The panel painting is based on the principle of central perspective. Estimates of the period of creation range from around 1490 to 1500. The picture is tempera on poplar wood with the dimensions 131 × 233 cm. It is part of the permanent exhibition of the Gemäldegalerie Berlin (inventory number: 1615). Two similar paintings are in Urbino and Baltimore.
Material and technology
The picture carrier is an 11 cm thick wooden panel made of individual, glued poplar boards. The total size of the board is 131 × 233 × 11 cm. The artist then scratched most of the construction lines, including round ones, into the wood. These scratch marks could be made visible through grazing light photographs. The tempera paint was then applied to the image support.
frame
The picture has a striking frame. Instead of an ordinary frame, it has a painted frame (pilaster) on the side and a two-part frame at the top and bottom, which is also a reference to the painted architecture. The two-part framing instead of a surrounding four-sided frame can be explained by the depth of the painting of around 11 cm and the exposed, also painted side parts.
Status
The top layer of paint is badly damaged and cracked. There are also deep cracks in the wood at the bottom right and top left. The poor condition prevented the painting from being ideal for the 2012 thematically fitting exhibition La città. L'utopia del Rinascimento a Urbino tra Piero della Francesca e Raffaello in Urbino, for which it was requested.
description
The picture shows a square that is structured by a grid structure on the marble floor. There are different buildings to the left and right of the square. At the front on the left is a palace that looks very similar to the Florentine Palazzo Rucellai . There are also two other palaces. A part of a basilica can be seen above the third, red palace. Directly on the bank is a building that resembles Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome. There are four buildings on the right side of the square. The front building has a loggia on the ground floor, similar to the one through which our view of the square is directed. In the garden of this front building there is the only bit of life in the otherwise lifeless city: A tree crown looms over a wall. The adjoining, second building on the right-hand side with a crenellated wreath as a roof finish looks stylistically older. The windows of the buildings are black or have closed shutters. Apart from the partially open or closed shutters, no trace of any residents can be seen. At the back of the picture is a body of water on which six ships with partly set sails can be seen. The lower third of the painting is an imitation of wood paneling that separates the viewer from the rest of the picture and thus makes the picture look like a raised stage. The front area shows a colonnade through which the viewer's gaze is directed to the square. Here there are four free-standing, fluted columns in the middle, while two round arches are framed by fluted pilasters on the left and right . The pillars divide the picture into three equally large thirds and thus correspond with the third division of the wood paneling below. The ceiling area of the colonnade is elaborately coffered . The painting shows a consciously constructed space without people.
It is doubtful whether this has always been the case, as outlines of people can still be seen in the front left. It is questionable whether these belonged to the original depiction or were added afterwards and repainted again later.
Authorship
It is unclear which artist created the painting. Therefore the indication of the museum is unknown artist . The attribution has changed again and again over the years, most recently Francesco di Giorgio Martini was accepted as a painter. The attribution to Francesco di Giorgio Martini was based on a section from one of his architectural treatises in which he describes a section of the harbor that is said to be very similar to the one in the picture. He speaks of a port in a large square, connected to a fortress to defend the port. These elements are all present in the picture. However, it is only certain that it must have been a painter who mastered both architectural painting and the central perspective. The circle of artists at the court of Urbino is often assumed to be the origin of this painting, which is why artists at the court of Federico da Montefeltro such as Piero della Francesca or Luciano Laurana were previously considered .
Cityscapes from Baltimore and Urbino
There are two other pictures from this time that have parallels to this picture and are therefore used. You are in Baltimore ( Walters Art Museum ) and Urbino ( Galleria Nazionale delle Marche ). They, too, have been attributed to artists from the Urbino court and work with the central perspective. They show similar fantastic city sections. Apart from the similarity, there is no evidence for a direct connection to these two images. However, research often tries to present the Berlin image as a counterpart image and as a so-called “ ideal city design ”. These three paintings are not the only pictures of this time with such a central perspective structure of a city section. From the same period there are chests that were decorated with similar motifs.
See also: The Ideal City (painting)
Provenance and picture history
The picture comes from a villa near Florence. It was acquired by the Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein in 1896 and has since been on permanent loan to the Gemäldegalerie.
Image composition
The painting is structured from a central perspective. The viewer's gaze is directed through a loggia onto the square in the direction of the harbor. The vanishing point is on the horizon line on the water in the center of the image, slightly to the right of one of the aft ships. In the Baltimore and Urbino paintings, however, the vanishing point is on the architecture in the picture. The picture in Baltimore has its vanishing point on the central triumphal arch . In the painting in Urbino, the vanishing point is on the door of the central building in the middle of the square. The Berlin picture plays with symmetry, although it is not strictly symmetrical. Rather, the symmetry is deliberately broken, for example with the opposite house fronts, the marble floor of the colonnade, the ships, but also with the mountains on the horizon and the clouds in the sky.
Original usage
There are numerous theses about the use of the painting. The assumption of use as a supplement to existing furniture, e.g. a bed or a chest, is stimulated by the wood paneling below and to the side of the picture. The three similar pictures could have served as the wall paneling of a study by Federico da Montefeltro. Richard Krautheimer also brings up its use as part of a stage design.
literature
- Hubert Damisch: The Origin of Perspective , Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-03734-087-5 .
- Johannes Grave : Architectures of Seeing. Buildings in Pictures of the Quattrocento , Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-7705-5800-1 .
- Richard Krautheimer: Scena tragica and Scena comica in the Renaissance. The panels in Baltimore and Urbino , in: Richard Krautheimer (ed.): Selected essays on European art history , Cologne 1988, pp. 334–353, ISBN 3-7701-2194-5 .
- Alessandro Marchi (ed.): La città ideal: l'utopia del Rinascimento a Urbino tra Piero della Francesca e Raffaello. Exhibition catalog Urbino, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, April 6–8, 2012, Milan 2012, ISBN 978-8-8370-8993-1 .
- State Museums of Prussian Cultural Heritage (ed.): Gemäldegalerie Berlin. Complete directory , Berlin 1996, ISBN 978-3-87584-984-4 .
Web links
- Video about the picture from smarthistory
- Image index entry with all technical data about the painting
About the three paintings from Berlin, Urbino and Baltimore:
- Interview with a curator about an exhibition in Florence 2006 (Italian) (here, too, it appears that the attribution is ambiguous. Court painters from Urbino are suspected as possible artists. He claims that the Berlin image (as well as that in Baltimore) are based on Rome , one could see the Castel Sant'Angelo and the Tiber.)
- More information about the three ideal city designs (Italian)
- Blog entry about the ideal city designs (2016)
- Connection of the three images visually in a collage to underline the similarity
- All three paintings in one 3D model (by Alessandro Deana, Università IUAV di Venezia)
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Catalogo . In: Alessandro Marchi (ed.): La città ideal: l'utopia del Rinascimento a Urbino tra Piero della Francesca e Raffaello. Exhibition catalog, Urbino, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, 6 April – 8 July 2012 . Milan 2012, ISBN 978-88-370-8993-1 , pp. 124 (Italian).
- ^ A b c Hannelore Vorteilmann: Architectural perspective. In: SMB Digital. Retrieved June 23, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Città Ideale. In: gallerianazionalemarche.it. Retrieved June 23, 2020 (Italian).
- ↑ a b The Ideal City. In: art.thewalters.org. Retrieved June 23, 2020 (English).
- ↑ a b c Christine Seidel: Staging in the picture gallery: New ways between old Italians. In: blog.smb.museum. April 28, 2016, accessed July 2, 2020 .
- ↑ La Città Ideale - The Ideal City. In: vallenuova.it. Retrieved July 2, 2020 .
- ^ Francesco di Giorgio Martini: Trattato di architettura civile e militare. Cesare Saluzzo, 1841, accessed July 7, 2020 (Italian).
- ↑ a b c Architectural vedute. In: kaiser-friedrich-museumsverein.de. Retrieved June 23, 2020 .
- ^ Francesco di Giorgio Martini: Trattati di architettura ingegneria e arte militare . Ed .: Corrado Maltese. tape 2 . Milan 1967.
- ↑ Luca Onniboni: The “Ideal City” in three Renaissance paintings. In: archiobjects.org. Retrieved June 23, 2020 (English).
- ↑ Ville idéale. Retrieved June 23, 2020 (French).
- ↑ Maria Angela Tolazzi: L'Arte Svelata . tape 3 , 2015, p. 217 (Italian).
- ^ Cassone con prospettiva di citta 'ideal. Retrieved July 9, 2020 (Italian).
- ↑ Véronique Mérieux: Le panneau dit de Berlin (1477) Appareillage pour l'imaginaire . In: Italies. Littérature - Civilization - Société . No. 17/18 , October 1, 2014, ISSN 1275-7519 , p. 411-428 , doi : 10.4000 / italies.4835 ( openedition.org [accessed June 24, 2020]).
- ^ Richard Krautheimer: "Scena tragica and Scena comica in the Renaissance. The panels in Baltimore and Urbino" . In: Richard Krautheimer (Ed.): Krautheimer, Richard: "Scena tragica and Scena comica in the Renaissance. The panels in Baltimore and Urbino - Selected essays on European art history . Cologne 1988, p. 334-353 .