HUM110CL Module 4 Lecture Notes Line and form are the first two elements. In , the form creates the line. In paintings, the line creates the form. Line can be an actual line or edge, or it can be implied by color.

Search the web for Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Mark Rothko’s Number 14.

In Pablo Picasso’s painting, he uses line to create the form. Notice how you can depict that these are a group of five women, because of Picasso’s use of line. Look how Picasso gives shape to the faces of the women in the middle with a very simple line to indicate the form of the face, the nose, the eyes and eyebrows. The form of the African masks worn by the women on the right also is shaped by line.

Compare Picasso’s painting to Mark Rothko’s Number 14, another modern work and you will see on Rothko’s painting an implied edge made from the color blocks. There is very little direct line in this painting.

Color is composed of three parts: hue, saturation, and value.

Hue refers simply to the name of a color like red or turquoise. Saturation refers to the intensity of the color, or, how much blue is in the blue color. Value is sometimes called key, and refers to how much white or black, or lightness or darkness has been added to the hue. A high value of color can be obtained by adding white, and the lowest value of color by adding darkness or black.

If you’ve ever picked up paint swatches, one would look like this. The hue of this paint swatch is blue. Where would you say the largest saturation of blue would be? Probably right in the middle. Remember that the key or value of color is how much white or black has been added to the hue. Where would you find the highest value of the blue? At the top. And, the lowest key would be the bottom where the most black has been added.

Texture, like sculpture, is a picture’s apparent “feel”, engaging our ability to feel a roughness or smoothness in a painting or print without actually touching it. Texture in paintings will be dictated by the medium the artist chooses. The texture in a painting or photograph might be implied: the medium is absolutely flat, but the nature of the art work lends itself to give the impression of three-dimensionality. Or, the texture of the painting can be real and literal because of the way the artist uses the medium.

Watercolor, as discussed, gives an ethereal feel to art, but very little if any actual texture.

Search the web for Sunflowers painted by the great Vincent van Gogh, you will notice immediately that it carries more “feel” to it. If you viewed the van Gogh in person, you could actually see tufts of oil paint on the canvas, because of Vincent’s painterly technique. Van Gogh adds a literal texture to his paintings, because he leaves so much paint on the canvas.

In sculpture, mass refers to the actual physical volume and density of an object. In a two- dimensional art such as painting, mass is implied. Certain two-dimensional art may “feel” heavier than others, but there really isn’t any discernible mass difference in paintings, prints, or photographs except in how tall and wide a canvas might be.

Techniques of Painters

Often times, a two-dimensional artist wants his work to give the illusion it is three- dimensional. Two ways to give the illusion of depth is through atmospheric and linear perspective, and chiaroscuro.

Perspective indicates relationship of the viewer to the target. Atmospheric perspective indicates depth by well defined in the foreground versus less defined in the background. Things that are closer to the human eye appear larger and more distinct. Things that are farther away are smaller and less distinct. Atmospheric perspective relies on this phenomenon.

Search the web for the early painting by Masaccio, The Tribute Money. In this painting, the people in the foreground are large, with more detail in their depiction. Compare the detail in the people to the mountains in the background. You will notice that the people in the foreground are more detailed, while the mountains, which in real life would be much larger than the men if they stood side by side, are smaller with less explicitness. Notice, that even though the mountains would be covered with trees and rocks, none of the specifics are painted in, because if you saw this scene in real life, you would not be able to see the specifics either. This is atmospheric perspective. Objects in the background appear less distinct in real life, and the painter tries to copy this.

Linear or One-point Perspective uses line and foreshortening to create depth. Have you ever driven along a highway over a flat surface and it seems like the road narrows from a wide v to one-point just at the horizon line? This is linear or vanishing point perspective. The lines foreshorten and narrow to one point because of the way our eye sees depth.

Linear or vanishing-point perspective is developed in the Renaissance and is used quite well by Leonardo in The Last Supper which we will examine later in this module.

Search the web for the painting, The Transport of the Body of Saint Mark, by Tintoretto, you can easily see the one-point perspective employed with the walls foreshortened point to Saint Mark’s Cathedral in .

Another painterly technique is chiaroscuro, a means of demonstrating the three- dimensionality of things in a two-dimensional medium. Your book describes chiaroscuro as a way of reproducing the interplay of light and shadow in the real world. Chiaroscuro is the shading and modeling an artist will paint to create the illusion of three-dimensionality. Let’s compare these two paintings.

Seach the web for a Byzantine school of painting from the 13th century. It is not unlike the found in your book. Both authors are unknown. Both of these paintings depict just a small amount of shading of the human face. But, because there is not a great deal of chiaroscuro, the faces are rather flat, non-descript, and not very life-like. Compare the shading and modeling of these pictures to Rembrandt’s self-portrait. You now see a master of chiaroscuro.

Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1661) is a painter from the Golden Age of Holland during the Baroque period. Rembrandt is a master of capturing the personality and humanness of the sitter because of his mastery of chiaroscuro. It is sometimes startling to see one of his paintings in person, because the person painted appears three-dimensional and breathing, all as a result of Rembrandt’s talent and skill. Chiaroscuro makes a two-dimensional image look three-dimensional.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci: our “Renaissance Man” and “Infinite Person”. As you have read, Leonardo was an artist, innovator, scientist, thinker, writer, as the list goes on and on. da Vinci, like Michelangelo, was also a product of his times, and his works, too, carried our three dominant themes of the Renaissance that we studied in our sculpture module, Module 3. Let’s examine how da Vinci also demonstrates humanism, individualism, and scientific naturalism.

Search the web for Leonardo’s famous The Last Supper (1494) found in the refectory of a small church in , Italy. da Vinci has captured the moment from the Bible when Jesus says to his disciples “Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.” (Mark 14:18).

Humanism is the artistic interest in the human being. Leonardo hangs on to Christian subject matter for his content, a trend that dominated the arts of the Middle Ages, in which almost all of the subject matter of the arts of that era came from the Christian church. What is different in the Renaissance period is that the artist focuses on the human beings of the Bible, and da Vinci certainly has done that. Christ and the disciples are all human personages, and the focus of the painting is on their human reaction.

Individualism is the artistic interest in the specific characteristics of a human being. Christ and each disciple are specific human beings. Each has different facial characteristics. Each has individual emotions. Christ, at center, is calm, secure, but knowing. The disciples, except for one, are in an uproar, furious with Christ’s statement, each disciple painted differently, showing a broad spectrum of human emotion in facial expressions and gestures as they ask “Lord, is it I?” (Matthew 26:22).

Only Judas, who is not leaning in like the rest, is not imploring Christ for answers because he knows the answer, and is quiet and pensive.

With scientific naturalism the artist takes an interest in the natural world. da Vinci, like Michelangelo, attended autopsies so that he could understand what lay beneath the skin of the human being, and paint the body better. Later, you will visit a website that has many of his Leonardo’s drawings about the human body and other creatures, and you will be amazed at da Vinci’s understanding and knowledge of anatomy and the systems of the body. In The Last Supper, da Vinci also was perfecting the art of painting perspective and chiaroscuro.

As we discussed, linear or one-point perspective relies on the phenomenon of how our eyes see and compute distance. Leonardo understood this and uses both linear and atmospheric perspective in this painting. As we discussed, linear or one-point perspective uses a fore- shortening of the sides to create a V, and this narrowing ends at one point.

Do you see how the walls on either side of the painting narrow and form a V? Do you see where the one-point ends? Right over Jesus’s head, which gives a good focus to this painting.

Also, if you look behind Jesus, through the windows, you will see scenery of Milan. Atmospheric perspective is used here as the mountains and other flora and fauna are painted small and hazy, exactly as the human eye would see this scene.

And Leonardo’s use of chiaroscuro, his understanding of how we see light hitting parts of the face and shading other parts is remarkable. Up to this point in the Renaissance, no other painter had managed to develop chiaroscuro the way that da Vinci would use it. We will certainly see this phenomenal skill in the next painting we will discuss, The Mona Lisa.

Sometimes, a first-time viewer is underwhelmed by this painting. There isn’t much action and she’s just a lady sitting for a picture. However, does the lady look three-dimensional? Does she look real? Does she look like she’s breathing? Is there a personality elicited from this painting?

Search the web for two early Renaissance paintings, Portrait of Battista Sforza, Duchess of Urbino and Portrait of Princess (Pisanello). How much chiaroscuro does the artist use? How much personality is evoked? Are you drawn into the personage?

There is some modeling and shading occurring, but these are not sophisticated portraits. Now, compare these two to The Mona Lisa.

Notice how much more life-like the Mona Lisa is to the former portraits. da Vinci achieved this by his mastery of chiaroscuro. Mona Lisa seems three-dimensional and alive, the illusion a good painter strives for, and da Vinci was the first to master it.

Leonardo da Vinci is also one of the greatest minds the world has ever known. Take some time to search the web time to discover some of da Vinci’s very modern ideas and inventions. Also review his anatomy drawings and discover why these two museums pay homage to the great da Vinci. Some links have already been identified in the webliography portion of this course.