Non-Generic Viewpoints as a Method of Composition in Renaissance Paintings

Abstract

In to spatially represent semiotic relations in a visual work of art, one needs to consider more than simple spatial relations since, in any group of figures, the latter are necessarily spatially related to each other whatever their semiotic relations can be. Thus, in to monitor semiotization one must resort to some kind of second order relations, that is, singular spatial relations, which can be identified as playing a functional role. Such a constraint pertains to the techniques of compodtion. There are in fact very few means to select and singularize spatial relations. Here, I will consider only Renaissance paintings, where the unitary Brunelleschian geometrical space acts as a framework. Much scholarly work is available about techniques of composition, which consist, e.g., in placing the vanishing point at a strategic place in the picture or in introducing geometrical schemas (circles, triangles, etc.) intended to regulate the distribution of figures. There are, however, other methods of composition that have never been thoroughly investigated. Among the latter, one of the most powerful consists in using nongeneric viewpoints. As a method, non-genericity is a very efficient way to pictorially represent semiotic relations whenever point of view plays a constitutive role in a given artwork. In several previous works (1986, 2004, 2009a,b), I have studied the use of non-generic viewpoints by certain Renaissance painters, particularly Piero della Francesca and Nicolas Poussin. In the present paper, I will focus on two other examples, one by Raphael, and the other by Mantegna. My approach will be stricdy methodological. the task consists in extracting, on the basis of purely formal criteria, immanent, intrinsically significant, morphological and non-conceptual relations which can legitimately bear meanings, be semiotized in the interpretation and thus ensure that the interpretation is not merely the speaker's subjective construction.