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| You are in National Portrait Gallery | Education | What is Perspective? | |||||||||
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The Art of Painting by Gerard de Lairesse, 1778 |
Perspective: Seeing where you stand This distance learning package is aimed at students aged 14+ including art students, teachers and adults.
'Perspective is a device used by artists to show the 3D world on a 2D surface - to make artworks look realistic'. Artists use perspective when they make art that suggests reality. Portraits are an area of art where realism is often very important too. Portraits tell you what a sitter looks like, how they dress, something of their social position and the time they live(d) in, but by placing the sitter in a setting, this context can provide an environment in which the sitter can tell you more than simply who they are. Through this relationship between the figure and their surroundings, an artist reveals something complex. Context can suggest things about the interior life of the sitter, giving clues as to what they are thinking about. It can sometimes tell us about the way the sitter wishes to be seen in the world, and how well they have communicated this with the artist. All good portraits are in essence collaborations between artist and sitter |
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Early portraits don't generally have much background but do incorporate symbols, for example; crowns, jewellery and special clothes. Holbein was an artist working during the reign of Henry VIII, and was famous for his portraits of the king. Holbein revolutionised portraiture by using symbols to illustrate political history. This can be seen clearly in the regal pose adopted in the magnificent drawing he made of Henry VIII and his father Henry VII. The image of Henry VIII is as powerful now as it ever was and he is instantly recognisable - an extraordinary feat considering that this drawing was made almost 500 years ago. Holbein was one of the first artists to use perspective in England. |
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King Henry VIII; King Henry
VII; Elizabeth of York; Jane Seymour This a copy of what the original Whitehall mural looked like. The Whitehall Palace burnt down in 1698. |
King Henry VIII; King Henry
VII |
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Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528),
the great German artist of the Northern Renaissance, was known
for his self-portraits and prints. Dürer's woodcuts (a type
of print) of 1525 illustrate how artists used gridded
frames to help them place their sitters in perspective. |
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Inigo Jones |
In 1614, Lord Arundel (1585-1646) visited Rome with his protégé Inigo Jones. Whilst Arundel and his wife Alathea were collecting antiquities, Jones furthered his studies of art and architecture. On returning to England, Jones worked for King Charles and his French Queen Henrietta Maria, producing masques (types of plays that glorified the monarchy) written by Ben Jonson. |
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 In 1617, Inigo Jones' drawing of the first scene the masque "The Vision of Delight" is described as "a street in perspective". His set gives the audience an impression of how a street of classical buildings might look; very different from the medieval styles that they would have been familiar with. Jones used perspective in his design work to educate the court, encouraging this strata of society to relate to and enjoy the new avant-garde architecture. This drawing illustrates the creation of perspective within the theatre by Gerard de Lairesse. |
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| Inigo Jones had been inspired by Renaissance and Classical Italianate architecture. We can see his cutting edge designs for the sculpture and picture galleries, which form the backdrops of the twin portraits by Daniel Mytens. We know that Jones refurbished these galleries for Lord Arundel, but Mytens' two portraits further embellish the redecoration. Contemporary accounts state that these portraits were painted as a gift for the art dealer Dudley Carleton, Viscount Dorchester (see NPG 3684). Carlton, who lived in Venice, was unlikely to see the real thing to verify the painted version of Jones' work). This is a good example of how portraits can not only enhance a sitters' vanity by improving their looks, but also their status by adding specific elements to their recorded (and invented) environment. | |||||||||
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This pair of portraits illustrates contemporary knowledge of the new system of perspective and also develops the idea of the sitter's personal context within the painted portrait. Receding behind them, we can clearly see their collections of portraits and marble sculpture. The use of perspective allows the viewer to feel that the corridors behind the sitters really do go off into the background, and that this is a prime example of creating 'depth' in a picture.
The Earl of Arundel's sculpture collection is now at Asmolean Museum, Oxford Collections of antiquities made by rulers and aristocrats had political as well as cultural significance. Earl Arundel infers here that possession of these objects links his family to ancient nobility. The sculpture did belong to him, but the setting was enhanced to impress Carleton in order that he might be persuaded to part with other antiquities that Arundel coveted, (these were eventually acquired by Rubens. (The intricacies of this story are revealed in Lord Arundel and his Circle by David Howarth Yale University Press New Haven and London 1985). We see him here portrayed by another of Arundel's 1636 travelling entourage; Wenceslaus Hollar. Rubens also painted Lord Arundel, in 1629, and it is interesting to see what he looks like eleven years after the Mytens portrait. The inclusion of portraits and sculpture within paintings act as symbolic credentials, in this instance transforming the Arundels into the Posh and Becks of their time.
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Useful names and dates Hans Holbein c.1465-1524 Albrecht Dürer 1471-1528 Inigo Jones 1573-1652 Sir Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640 Daniel Mytens c.1590-before 1648 Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-77 |
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Prime examples within the
Gallery's collection using perspective The parquet floor in: |
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| Perspective: Seeing where you stand was devised by Liz Rideal and Christopher Stevens | |||||||||
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All images and text are subject to copyright
protection. 20 November 2008 |
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