Hardbound
2000 · New Haven, CT
by Puttfarken, Thomas
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. Hardbound. VG/VG. Dark green cloth with color illustrated dustjacket. viii, 332 pp., 167 color and bw plates. A rare and useful title, which has the added benfit of containing some paintings and discussions which are not bound by the time frame indicated in the title. Before 1600, a painting's overall composition was hardly ever discussed. Attitudes toward pictorial composition changed between the early Renaissance and the early 19th century. The author investigates this change. Contents as follows: 1: Rudimenta -- Easel painting and pictorial order -- 2: Why the Renaissance did not talk about pictorial composition -- Alberti and the composition of bodies -- Perspective and composition I -- Figure and ground -- Scale and presence -- In search of the whole and its harmonies -- 3: The discovery of pictorial composition in France -- Borghini, van Mander and Junius: northern approaches to pictorial composition -- Poussin's thoughts on invention and disposition -- The beginnings of the French theory of painting: public discourse and the image in the mind -- Perspective and composition II -- Du Fresnoy and de Pile's De arte graphica: a primer in pictorial composition -- The rule of the Tableau and its losses.
(Inventory #: 117404)