The Discovery of Pictorial Composition: Theories of Visual Order in Painting, 1400-1800 - Couverture rigide

Puttfarken, Thomas

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0300081561 ISBN 13 : 9780300081565

Editeur : Yale University Press, 2000

Synopsis

In this illuminating book, art historian Thomas Puttfarken examines how pictorial composition and attitudes toward it changed between the early Renaissance and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Before 1600, a painting's overall composition was hardly ever discussed. As far as art theory and criticism were concerned, pictorial composition was a "discovery" of the seventeenth century, the author explains. In the first part of the book, Puttfarken investigates why pictorial composition did not figure in earlier accounts of the art. In Italy artists and patrons focused on large-scale wall paintings or altarpieces and on the presentation of life-size saints or protagonists whose physical proportions and interactions in narratives were considered more important than notions of overall effect or pictorial format. The second part of the book discusses the discovery of composition and its consequences for both the theory and practice of painting, understood as the production of tableaux, or easel pictures. Puttfarken considers the effects on paintings of size, location, perspective, and relief, the relationship between ground and figures and between image and frame, and the different traditions defining Italian and Northern art. For readers with an interest in the theory and history of European art, this book is full of rich insights and fresh analyses.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Thomas Puttfarken is professor of the history and theory of art at the University of Essex, England. He was the author of Roger de Piles's Theory of Art, published by Yale University Press.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Yale University Press
• Date d'édition: 2000
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0300081561
• ISBN 13: 9780300081565
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 336
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible