------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CS 99D - Light and shadow lecture #3 - February 20, 2001 Marc Levoy Stanford University (c) 2001 (with corrections, March 14, 2003) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *** History of light and shadow in art *** Relievo - relief through shading: ~70 AD "Fourth style" of Roman painting o invention of relievo (?) -> Wall painting, Herculaneum, Gardner, fig 7-27, p. 217 o frontal lighting <1337 Giotto o reintroduction of relievo -> Joachim and the Shepherds, Baxandall, pl. XII o frontal lighting again - more conventional than naturalistic o shading wrt observer - "second rationale" (Baxandall, p. 146) o Inventor's "headlight" Chiaroscuro ("clear-obscure") - light and shadow become primary players ~1427 Masaccio o lighting becomes a player in the scene o shading wrt lighting - "first rationale" (Baxandall, p. 146) -> Baptism of the Neophytes, Baxandall, pl. XIII o lighting from the side -> Tribute Money, Gardner, p. 696 o cast shadows to help place figures on the ground plane 1390 Cennini's Il Libro dell'Arte o three-tone scale: o hue in the shadows o hue + white in the light o hue + white + white in highlights o i.e. up-modeling 1435 Alberti's Della Pittura o a different three-tone scale: o hue + black in the shadows o hue in the light o hue + white in highlights o i.e. down and up-modeling -> Fra Filippo Lippi's Trinity Alterpiece (1457), Lamb, p. 13, compare right and left saints, Lippi is thought to have painted the left saint -> Michelangelo's Doni Tondo (1504) (optional) (Holy Family with St. John), Uffizi Gallery, Tartuferi's Michelangelo, p. 26 (or Berti's, p. 45), compare to cleaned Delphic Sybil, Tartuferi, p. 44 (best Doni Tondo is in Berti's Uffizi, p. 88) Three-tone drawings: o black and white on mid-tone paper o used by many artists for studies -> Michelangelo, Study for an Ignudo (date?), Hirst's Michelangelo and His Drawings, p. 16 -> Leonardo, Drapery study (date?), Baxandall, pl. XV o as an example of the power of local contrast -> Michelangelo's Archers, Hirst, p. 50 (detail), then p. 49 ~1493 Leonardo's On Painting o sfumato ("cloudy", "soft", "mellow"), the blurred outline, intent is to induce ambiguouity into reading of expression o observer can read into expressions whatever they wish -> Mona Lisa (1502), Gombrich SoA, fig 193, p. 301, and detail on p. 302 o aerial perspective to prevent harsh shadows "Light too conspicuously cut off by shadows is exceedingly disapproved of by painters. Hence...contrive a certain amount of mist or of transparent cloud to be placed between the object and the sun..." - Leonardo On Painting, quoted in Gombrich's Shadows, p. 20 -> Correggio (1489-1534), Adoration of the Child, Berti's Uffizi, p. 85, or Correggio's Jupiter and Io (1532), Gardner, p. 762 -> Compare to Berckheyde's The Marketplace... (1674), Gombrich's Shadows, p. 41 Tenebroso ("dark style"): 1573-10 Caravaggio o short, brutish life, murderer o harsh realism and lack of decorum shocked art world -> Doubting Thomas (1603), Gombrich, p. 392, or Caravaggio, p. 40 o many of his paintings were rejected by their clients -> Saint Matthew (1602), and second version (1602), Gombrich, p. 30,31, or Caravaggio, p. 31 o strong contrast of light and dark -> The Supper at Emmaus (1601), Gombrich's Shadows, p. 24, or Caravaggio, p. 37 -> Calling of St. Matthew (1601), Gardner, p. 837, or Caravaggio, p. 24-25 o observer can read into shadows whatever they wish o to make a scene more dramatic, make it darker o diorama-makers at natural history museums know this o created an "international school", incl. a Dutch following -> Honthorst's Supper Party (1620), Gardner, p. 854 1606-69 Rembrandt van Rijn o started by imitating Caravaggio -> Summer at Emmaus (1630), Gardner, p. 857 o evolved a narrative style based on lights and darks -> Night Watch (1842) Honour, p. 556 o sitters paid according to placement and brightness! o a more mature example - lights provide drama and tension -> Syndics of the Cloth Guild (1662), Gardner, p. 860 o the tension of an interrupted business meeting o a late work - light used to paint emotions -> The Prodigal Son (1669), Honour, p. 560 Dutch still lifes: o colored reflections from metal versus white from glass -> Willem Heda's Still Life with Oysters, Rum Glass, and Silver Cup (1634), Gardner, p. 864 o half-shadow, interreflection, and specular highlights in shadows -> Willem Kalf's Still Life (1650-90), Honour, p. 564, or o relative shading that changes in light versus in shadow -> detail from Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks (1485), Kenneth Clark's Leonardo, front cover o multiple reflections -> Willem Kalf's Still Life with...Drinking Horn... (1653), Gombrich, p. 431 o diffuse interreflection, objects indirectly illuminated -> Jan Vermeer's The Kitchen Maid (1660), Gombrich, p. 432 The French academic tradition: 1712 Gerard de Lairesse's Groot Schilderboek o Walloon living in Netherlands o proponent of French academic tradition o the effect of diffused and reflected light on shadow o empirical approach o aimed at artists -> examples of light reflected from water, Baxandall, p. 94 1750 Edme-Sebastien Jeaurat's Traite de perspective... o Ecole Royale Militaire in Paris o sciography (drawing of shadows) taught as a discipline o used in architectural, engineering, and military illustration -> examples of shadows cast onto complicated surfaces, Baxandall, p. 87 1753 Charles-Nicolas Cochin's On the Effect of Light in Shadows o systematic but pseudo-scientific treatment of light, shadow, reflection, and aerial perspective o light from near walls weakens with distance, hence darkens o light from far walls is weak due to aerial perspective o thus, shadows should be strongest in the midground o he argues against "repoussoir" - a dark foreground to set off a brilliant second plane, then common in paintings -> illustration of receding wall, Baxandall, p. 105 Rococco virtuosity: -> Jean-Baptiste Oudry's Hare, Sheldrake, Bottles, Bread and Cheese (1742), Baxandall, pl VI o variously specular surfaces - green versus brown bottles o light source shown in reflection - a Netherlandish conceit o penumbrae and global illumination - bread and cheese o bravura treatment of anisotropic surfaces - fur and feathers -> Nicolas Largilliere's Portrait of a Man (1730), Baxandall, pl VIII o virtuoso performance with clothes - leather, satin, lace, silver The professional scientists move in: 1760 Pierre Bouguer's Treatise on the Gradation of Light (1760) o we have already covered some of its observations o highly mathematical, hence inaccessible to artists 1760 Johann Lambert's Perspective Liberated from the Encumbrance of the Ground Plane o also mathematical, but o included explicit advice for artists -> illustrations from Lambert (1759), Baxandall, p. 101 (already shown) Optical science had little effect on art: o scientists and artists had diverged since the Scientific Revolution o the science is hard - many reflectance effects are still unexplained o science answers questions about absolute photometry, but art, due to its limited dynamic range, depends on local contrast effects ("relative gradations", Helmholtz) o local constrast depend on perception, which is still pooly understood o styles shifted away from precision in chiaroscuro Romanticism and Impressionism: -> Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830), Gardner, p. 946 o exaggerated lighting for drama -> Turner's The Slave Ship (1840), Gardner, p. 951 o exaggerated optical effects combined with rough brushwork -> Edward Degas's Interier (1870), Gardner, p. 986, or --> Auguste Renoir's Le Moulin de la Galette (1876), Gardner, p. 993 o strong but only approximately correctly rendered optical effects -------------------------------------------------------------------------------