Andrew Enock
To master the illusion of light within a painting, is to also have mastered the ability to truly observe and retain the sights that you are seeing. An artist can do their best to mimic the intangibility of light, but the true amazement of light in artwork lays somewhere else in its composition. For the purpose of this piece, I will be analyzing and discussing the different core uses of light from the 17th century and Christian art to the 19th century, Baroque Period, when Romanticism and the worship of the tangible world begin to show in Western Art. During the highly religious periods, many well renowned artists used the illusion of light to represent figures like Jesus Christ, Mother Mary, angels, and saints within the narrative of their paintings. As civilization moved forward, this use of light slowly becomes overshadowed by artists such as Joseph Wright, whose piece “A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery” from 1776 perfectly grasps the tangible worship that artists felt at that time, and will be discussed later in this essay. While the techniques differ, and the standard of religious art is championed, light still acts as a conductor for any eyes that lay upon it. Sometimes it may be deceiving and point your focus in a direction opposite of the true subject of the painting, but light can also lead you straight to the subject of the painting. To expand on this, I will be speaking on the use of the illusion of light in three paintings from three separate centuries. The first painting being Carravagios “Supper at Emmaus” (c.1601), followed by Joseph Wrights “A Philosopher Lecturing” (c.1776) and ending with Peder Balkes “The North Cape by Moonlight” (c.1847). While there is a lot more to see, these three pieces reveal the very humble evolution of the illusion of light in western art.
Carravaggio’s “Supper at Emmaus” (c.1602) shows the instance that Jesus Christ, after being resurrected, shows himself to his disciples, Luke and Cleopatra in the town of Emmaus . While this is a religious piece, it is not as exaggerated as many 1 famous pieces of Christian art, such as “The Creation of Adam” or “The Liberation of Saint Peter”, where light is used to identify religious figures or places. The scene in the painting does not popularize with many, but during the romanesque and renaissance times, it began to surface more and more. With this painting, we can already see the 2 shift to a more realistic approach to painting, and one factor that plays a role in this shift is the consistent, realistic use of light. The painting “The Liberation of Saint Peter” is a perfect example of light representing religious figures, with the only light source coming from around an angel, and is a great reference to search later on. In Caravaggio's piece, we do not see this approach with light, rather there is a clear light source outside of the frame of the painting coming in at an angle, possibly coming from a window or possibly candles. If there is light and an object interfering with it, there will be shadows, and the application of shadows to the interpretation of this piece is greatly important. Through analyzing the shadows, it can be assumed that the light is coming directly from the direction that Christ is gesturing towards, which brings a slight religious aspect to the more realistic piece of Christian art. Caravaggio's techniques and choices helped him achieve the “appearance of verisimilitude” , which means depicting truth andJanis C. Bell, 119. 2 Richard Harries, The Passion in Art. (Routledge, 2004) 1 Janis C. Bell, “Light and Color in Caravaggio's "Supper at Emmaus, Artibus Et Historiae, (1995): 139. 3 realism. While it is considered realism, there is that slight religious factor being portrayed through Carravaggios application of light.
A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, by Joseph Wright of Derby
The eighteenth century brings us Joseph Wright of Derby, England, who composed the piece, “A Philosopher lecturing on the Orrery” (c.1776), a piece that has similar placement of characters to Caravaggio's piece, but is indeed of a very different time. No longer a time of worship of the intangible, but rather the worship and love for the tangible beautiful forms that we can see and feel. The dramatic approach that Wright took to the shift to scientific artistic expression attracted a lot of positive attention in the eighteenth century. The illusion of light in this piece can inform the viewer on what individuals believed at the time, and societal conflicts that specifically influenced the placement of the light source in this piece. Wright is portraying the change in beliefs during the enlightenment, from traditional religious subjects of art, to the scientific, more tangible subjects, like landscape art, which is featured in the last piece to be discussed. Wright had steered away from the basic styles of the British eighteenth century, and instead based his work on seventeenth century Dutch Masters. “This style was characterized by striking contrasts of light and shadow, calculated to produce images of great visual intensity”. In the painting, we can see a total of four older men, one woman, and three children. The children are located at the center of the piece, and seem to be entranced by what looks to be like a model of our solar system, but is in fact a calendar. If one looks at the part of the contraption that the boy is resting his arm on in the painting, you can see engravings labeled, “Cancer”, “Gemini”, and what looks like, “May”, “June” and “July”. The eyes of the young, the future of their world at the time, lay upon this contraption that represents science, rather than something of a religious association. While the light in this painting looks like it is reflecting something holy or religious, it is actually just a candle, which can be seen in a reflection below the silhouetted girl in the front of the painting. This light source comes off as mysterious and holy, but it is in fact not, hence the gradual fall of traditional religious styles. The intensity of the light immediately brings the attention of the viewer to the background of the painting, and in turn, creates a very heavy silhouette on the foreground of the painting. Realism attempts to display the truthfulness of a scene, and this truthfulness has taken a strong presence in this piece through the immense intensity that light and shadows produce.
The final piece, “The North Cape by Moonlight” (c. 1847), has captured the essence of the illusion of light, and what can be achieved through painting. This piece unlike the others is a landscape piece, and it also has a very clear light source, the moon. Peder Balke, the artist of this painting, has a very special skill to create immensely realistic illusions of light. In this painting, we see a landscape that we can assume is the North Cape of Norway, with a group of individuals on a rowboat in the center of the painting, being illuminated with what looks like sunlight because of the brightness, but is actually moonlight. Balke reveals the moon through the clouds slightly, to reveal something of a halo shape, which is producing the immense amount of light that is shining down upon the subjects, as well as the landscape. It is hard to look at the painting and not get this sense of worship of our land from it. In earlier pieces, such as 4 Kazuko Mende, “Light and Shadow in Painting: Concerning the Expression of Shadows in Western Painting,” University Art & Design, May (2010): 53. 5 Wright's painting, there is a very subtle hint towards science, not trying to infuriate the religious too much, however, Balke put the tangible, what he could see, directly on the canvas. Balke has taken the essence of worship of the tangible and put it on canvas, and has used the illusion of light to show the viewers the beauty that lies here on this Earth. It captures our interest for nature through a single moment encompassing the Sea, the Earth, and the Sky. A painting can have a very different look to it in person than online, and it is suggested that you go visit this piece in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to understand how realistic this light source looks.
Portraying the Illusion of light in a painting was more than just getting the colors and contrasts right, but rather it is used to compose the piece, and direct the viewer's eyes to wherever the artist wants them to go. In this piece we have looked at three different paintings from three different regions and three different centuries. We have looked at Caravaggio's masterful “Supper at Emmaus”, Joseph Wright's intense piece “A philosopher lecturing on the Orrery”, and Peder Balkes hypnotizing piece “North Cape by Moonlight”, all three pieces that use light to illustrate the big picture behind the painting. For Caravaggio's piece, the light reveals the mysteriousness of Christs resurrection, for Wrights piece, the light reveals the new worship of science and the tangible, and for Balkes piece, the light reveals the beauty and worship of all that we could see on this Earth. The illusion of light is used to both deceive and assist, and the three artists discussed in this piece have each harnessed the illusion in their own way. We see with earlier art, light is used to represent or lead to something of a religious nature, a god, an angel, heaven, hell. With calm, humble light comes the pieces like 6 Carravaggio’s “Supper at Emmaus”, but also pieces like Balkes “North cape by Moonlight”. We see the shift in the societal consensus on religion or science through these three pieces, and that idea is aided through each artists masterful skills with the illusion of light.