MAKING CONNECTIONS

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M AKING C ONNECTIONS This activity will help you learn some techniques used by great artists of the past and the terms for those techniques. After studying the term and the printed sample, you will search through the galleries for other representative paintings. When you go home, continue your search using the Internet links. By studying the methods of some of the great masters in art, you will be able to transfer these methods into your own creative endeavors!

Instructions: Study the paintings, terms, and definitions in each section. Find paintings in the suggested galleries that illustrate the same technique and write the names of the paintings in the blanks.

Triangular composition—the artist’s layout guides the viewer’s eye through the painting in a triangular pattern.

Leonardo da Vinci was a master of this composition. Marco d’Oggiono, who studied in da Vinci’s studio, not only learned his master’s style but also drew upon two of da Vinci’s famous works in creating this painting: Virgin of the Rocks and Virgin and Child

Madonna of the Lake, Marco d’Oggiono, gallery 6

with St. Anne and the Lamb, both in the Louvre.

Use the link below to see da Vinci’s use of this compositional technique in Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Lamb.



Link: http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/l/leonardo/04/4stanne.html

gallery 4______________________________________________________________________ gallery 7______________________________________________________________________

One-point perspective—leads the eye to one particular point in a picture. This point is the vanishing point. The architect Alberti was one of the first Renaissance artists to grasp this spatial technique.

One potential disadvantage of using one-point perspective for drawing objects is that it makes objects appear larger than they actually are.



Use the link below to see how Perugino (Raphael’s teacher) used this technique in his Sistine Chapel Fresco.



Link: http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/Faculty/jhbrown/monoviewing/

gallery 8_________________________________________________________________________ gallery 18_______________________________________________________________________

The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, Jacopo Robusti, called Il Tintoretto, gallery 8

Foreshortening—when an object or individual seem to emerge out of the picture-plane toward the viewer.

This technique can take a flat circle and squish it into a 3-D object.



Pausias, an ancient artist, was the inventor of foreshortening.



The famous Baroque naturalist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio also used this techniquae in his painting The Supper at Emmaus. The painting

The Dead Abel, Peter Paul Rubens, gallery 20

now hangs in the National Gallery in London. Use the link below to view this moving work.

Link: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=NG172

gallery 14____________________________________________________________

Tenebrism—a distinct contrast of light and dark.

Caravaggio was a major proponent of this dramatic form of chiaroscuro. Tenebrism, which means clearly dark in Italian, was also used by many of the famous Dutch painters, including Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn.



Use the link below to see how tenebrism enhances the scene in Rembrandt’s famous work The Night Watch.



Link: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_assets/SK-C-5?lang=en

gallery 17 ___________________________________________________________________

St. Sebastian Aided by St. Irene, Trophime Bigot, gallery 17

gallery 20____________________________________________________________________ gallery 22____________________________________________________________________

Sluteresque—pooled drapery

This visual technique is named after the sculptor Claus Sluter. Although Sluter was a 3-D artist, his technique influenced painters as well.



Use the links below to view this technique first in Sluter’s Well of Moses and then in Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage.



Links: (1) http://www.wga.hu/index1.html [at the bottom of the page, type in “Sluter” in the artist field, “Well of Moses” in the text field, then hit “Search”] (2) http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-the-arnolfini-portrait

Madonna of the Fireplace, Jan Gossaert, called Mabuse (attr. to), gallery 27

gallery 27_______________________________________________________________________

11/09