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Michael Baxandall: Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, (Oxford University Press paperback, 1974, f1) Reviewed by Adam Westoby.

Detail from Piero della Francesca's 'The Flagellation of Chri "Baptism of Christ by St John" - Piero della Francesca.

This is a book about the beautiful and the true - primarily the second. To be exact it is about the great steps forward which the 'Renaissance' artists of Florence and central Italy took, in the early fifteenth century, to know and to represent on flat, painted surfaces, the depth, colour, weight and movement of the world around them.

But unlike the great majority of books about art history' Mr. Baxandall's book does not concentrate just on the influence of For on the making the great innovations.

CHANGES

He tries to root the revolution' in painting in the swift changes in economic, social and intellectual life that were taking place in the Italian cities at the time: for example, the great increase in trade materials and books and works of art from outside Italy; the use of the Italian language, rather than Latin, by the intellectuals; the return to studying the non-Christian writings of Greek antiquity; the Church's political role in preaching dramatic popular sermons; the development of architecture, engineering, mathematics and geometry.

Earlier, medieval, paintings were almost entirely produced for the churches. Painters were specially skilled craftsmen organised in 'guilds' and apprenticeships, and their task was to produce religious images to show the bible stories to the (largely illiterate) congregation, helping prayer and the sermons of the priests.

Though Renaissance paintings are still mainly religious, there is a vast difference between them and most medieval paintings. To our eyes they are much more modern. In one word they are naturalistic.

The religious figures appear as real figures in the real world. But, in a contradictory way, this development away from mysticism and towards greater realism in painting strengthened the hold of religion. The new paintings had a much more vivid and immediate impact on the worshipper.

The central question of this book is - how was this new naturalism achieved? Mr. Baxandall sets about answering it with a wealth of beautiful examples, many of them excellently illustrated.

Take one central facet of the Renaissance.

One of the basic problems of painting is perspective. The world has three dimensions, while a painting only has two. How, then, to make it seem that some figures or objects are more distant than others? Medieval artists did not face this problem directly.

For them, the relative sizes of figures often represented their religious importance, not their distance from the viewer. Thus the surrounding saints in a medieval 'Madonna and Child' are generally smaller than the Virgin Mary, but this does not mean they are 'behind' her.

The main device which Renaissance painters used to show depth was a geometry of perspective lines - showing parallel lines which would (in reality) travel through the painting's surface as if all converging on a single point.

In the large wali-painting by Masaccio (1401-1428) of 'Saint ee grapes in Jerusalem (monated) he uses this technique with the greatest economy and strength. The building on the right plays the essential part. The two roof-edges, and the floor and steps, which recede from us converge on a single point. Unconsciously we place all the figures, and the trees and hills beyond, in the space which these lines construct.

It is true that linear perspective is not the only device Masaccio uses - he takes great care to fashion the draperies to give solidity and "relief to the figures, and if the illustration were in colour one could see the background colours becoming fainter. But what gives the perspective-lines their special almost = on is that she donyerge -It is this, not just the fact that he is the central figure in the main group, that makes him stand out from the Apostles gathered round him. Masaccio's genius (he made this huge painting, in about a month, when he was only 26) takes concrete form in his ability to concentrate our attention on Christ by using our abstract -but almost unconscious - knowledge that all parallel lines seem to meet in a single point.

Later (and lesser) painters used perspective lines more prominentiy, setting their figures in vast receding colonnades, but Masaccio uses a single building with much simpler and deeper effect.

GEOMETRIC

PERSPECTIVE Piero della Francesca (about 1420-1492) was an even greater master of geometrical perspective than Masaccio. (In fact, during the last 15 years of his life he did not paint at all, devoting himself to mathematics.) But in some of his paintings Piero finds a way -a sort of psychological way - of extending the picture's space 'beyond' perspective.

In his 'Baptism of Christ by St. John' (illustrated), for example, there is a group of three angels on the far left. They are obviously together. Two of them are looking to the right, where St. John is pouring the water over Christ's head. But the third (the right hand one) is looking almost straight at us. This seizes our attention, and from there we follow the line of sight of the other angels towards Christ in the centre.

But the effect is not merely to focus on Christ. The fact that we seem to look one of the angels in the eye brings us - the spectators - into a direct relationship with the trio of angels, and thus into the space of the picture itself. We become part of the painted scene. With purely geometrical perspective, space starts at the picture surface, and only recedes be hind it, but with this device -one abstract line of sight - space also comes forward to embrace us.

These examples are set out in Mr. Baxandall's book (though in exactly the same way) al with many others. He makes v (with many good photograpl what it was to be a painter patron or a viewer of ei Renaissance pictures - before camera was thought of.

'The imitation of nature' v naturally, by no means the paint only goal. In a multitude ways Mr. Baxandall sharpens understanding of the living ‹ ditions in which the pictures w made; in doing so he enriches enjoyment of them.

Why, for example, are Chri robe and other significant garme often painted in dark blue? Beca ultramarine was the most expen pigment on the market, and weal patrons wanted to display tl peity. The working painter to know and show this. At, stroke he (quite literally) pair onto the panel both a religi scene, and the pride and afflue of a Florentine merchant.

Mr. Baxandall is not a Mar› One result of this is that he te to treat his examples in an ad and empirical manner; another that he has no overall view of so development in the early fiftee not ong ivid hs!)

arly the vas, er's of 'onvere InO ist's ents luse sive thy heir had one ited ious ince rist. inds hoc : is icial inth are living refutations of all theories which see human knowledge as something ready-made, smoothly developing and simply coming closer and closer to the objective world.

Like all knowledge, painting can never be just a process of approximation, of weeding out the 'error' to leave the "truth'. Its limits are at the same time part of its power, its ability to reflect the world more truly:

The essential contradiction of early Renaissance painting is that came grips with the real problems of 'the imitiation of nature' - but still only through religious, imaginery subjects. Look again at Piero della Francesca's angel. Seen carefully, he does not seem to look straight into your eyes, and his own eyes are slightly lidded.

This cannot be an 'error' on Piero's part. If the line of sight were completely direct, there would be too great an intimacy. You would share not only the angel's space, but also his world. And since Piero believes in the basic sinfulness of man, he cannot allow this.

So he uses his pictorial device, he bends everything to greater naturalism - but then he sets a limit.

And the limit is a part. - a central part - of the painting's truth. Like the others of his generation he celebrates the things of the earth as no-one had ever done before - but stil on bended knee.

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SOCIALIST I ESS, Wednesdi y 12th November 1975 commodity prices, worsen the