VERACITY, VERISIMILITUDE, AND OPTICS IN PAINTING IN ITALY AT THE TURN OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

In Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, Armida's garden is an artifice, a simulation created by the sorceress, appearing completely natural. The art that created it is nowhere apparent. If the illusion fails, then it is the skill of the creator that we will admire, rather than its effect, and this ran contrary to what was required by the Counter-Reformation, which rejected the show of skill in Michelangelo and the obvious artifice and artificiality of Mannerist painting (see Fig. 1). The recondite and aristocratic productions of late Mannerism that had limited the audience to the initiated and cultured were replaced by paintings that would appeal to both the educated and the people, securely rooted in the tangible. Just as Gabriele Paleotti, bishop of Bologna, himself returned to direct involvement with his parishioners, preaching and being available in person, bringing the Church back to the people, so he also exhorted the painter in his works to be accessible and comprehensible to all, to educate, to bring to God, by moving and delighting the soul of the onlooker. In terms of religion, this meant a return to the origins and essence of the Church, to simplicity and the Scriptures, away from the sophistication and corruption that had led to the Reformation. In music, this same desire led away from the complexities of polyphonic music to a new music, one note one syllable, comprehensible to all. The painter ‘non ha da fare altro che ingannar gli occhi de' riguardanti, facendo apparire come vero quello, che solamente è finto’. In order to do this, objects and people represented had to appear in relief, as Leonardo wrote: ‘La prima parte della pittura è che li corpi con quella figurati si dimostrino rilevati, e che li campi d'essi circundatori, colle loro distantie, si dimostrino entrare dentro alla pariete, dove tal pittura è gienerata mediante le 3 prospettive’. The aim of this essay is to investigate the technical means taken by artists to implement these new requirements, creating works that through their convincing realism would lead the observer to participate in the emotions depicted and would evoke emotion by depiction: attaining veracity through verisimilitude.