This post will hopefully equip you with some of the basic ideas to apply when trying to study a painting:
 |
| Boy with a Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio 1593 Click to enlarge |
- Identification- e.g type of object, materials, period and school of painting.
- Authorship- Artist's name, patron's name. Finding these out are key to developing your interpretation
- Subject Matter- What is shown in the painting? What is the artist trying to convey?
- Function- What is the artworks use or purpose in its original location. e.g. was it intended as a devotional piece- a devotional aid?
- Context- At what point in the artist's career was the work painted? Social situation, any historic precedences, the artistic customs of the time.
- Style- The use of specific visual forms, or the ways the artist creates their images (fluid brush-strokes, a vibrant colour palette ect.)
- Treatment- The decisions that the artist made when composing their composition; any narrative devices employed by the artist in presenting the subject? Especially to help guide the viewers' reading of the subject matter.
- Provenance- Similar to context, just a nice word to use.
Ticking each one of these off as you go through a painting will help you in your interpretation, they're useful when going around a gallery, writing an essay or just to test and develop your interpretative skills. (Read more after the Break)
Here are some good terms to use in your analysis, there in a random order:
Here are some good terms to use in your analysis, there in a random order:
- Composition
- Space
- Recession
- Three-dimensionality
- Linear-perspective
- Light source
- Warm/cool colours
- Gestures- how is emotion conveyed
- Illusion
- Illusionary lighting effects
- Picture plane
- Aerial-perspective
- Chiaroscuro
- Complementary colours
- Sfumato
- Contrapposto