Illusionistic Ceiling Paintings and the Expansion of Scientific Knowledge

Mantegna, Andrea – Fresco of the Camera degli Sposi (1474) Mantua, Italy.

Pozzo, Andrea –  Apotheosis of Saint Ignatius (1685) Church of St. Ignatius, Rome, Italy.

Personal Thoughts

The illusionistic ceiling paintings shown above by Andrea Pozzo and Andrea Mantegna particularly amazed me because of each artists ability to create the visual of three dimensional space on a nearly two-dimensional surface. Specifically, the architectural objects included in the paintings, such the pillars in Pozzo’s painting and the ledge upon which the angels are situated in Mantegna’s work, helps to reinforce the illusion of three dimensional space. However, after seeing the above paintings I began to wonder whether or not the apparent three dimensional space portrayed was actually illusory or perhaps indicative of something deeper.

Illusionistic Ceiling Paintings and the Expansion of Scientific Knowledge

During the Italian Renaissance and Baroque era, many artists incorporated techniques which were used to create optical illusions. For example, Andrea Mantegna’s fresco Wedding Chamber, located in Mantua, Italy, gives a viewer the impression of three-dimensional space.  The patronage of the marchese of Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga, provided Mantegna income as well as the opportunity to create the Wedding Chamber; in the fresco Mantegna portrays a continuous decoration on all four walls of the room by means of extremely realistic architectural objects on walls and ceilings, which when viewed from ground level gives the impression of three-dimensional space (Sheard). The realism produced by Mantegna’s use of perspective in Wedding Chamber made it one of most influential illusionistic ceiling paintings of the Italian Renaissance.  Moreover, the idea of total spatial illusion which was pioneered by Mantegna was not fully explored until inventors of ingenious schemes of ceiling painting, such as Andrea Pozzo, during the Baroque era (Sheard).

In 1681, artist Andrea Pozzo was brought to Rome in order to work on the commemorative scheme surrounding St. Ignatius Loyola’s rooms adjoining the Gesù (“Apotheosis of Saint Ignatius”). In Rome, Pozzo painted an allegory of the Apotheosis of St. Ignatius. The painting serves to celebrate the apostolic goals of the Jesuit missionaries who were eager to spread Catholicism throughout the globe. Moreover, Pozzo’s work portrays a combative Catholicism which was incited by the Counter-Reformation.  For instance, Pozzo depicts the victorious warriors of the Old Testament such as David and Goliath, Samson and the Philistines, as well as others. Pozzo’s ceiling painting defines a viewing position on the floor which produces a unified and compelling perception of depth which is not actually present on the nearly flat painted surface (Hughes and Wade 1116).

Although, the paintings of Pozzo and Mantegna create an illusion of three dimensional space, the expansion of scientific knowledge, which has its roots in the Baroque era, has led modern day physicists to develop theories which substantiate the notion that the three-dimensional space in which we humans perceive may actually be encoded on a two-dimensional information structure much like illusionistic paintings. In addition to illusionistic painting techniques, the Baroque era was marked by the expansion of scientific knowledge. Prominent scientific figures of the Baroque era included Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei. The work of Kepler and Galilei helped to substantiate the Copernican heliocentric model of the universe and advanced the fields of astronomy and optics. Most importantly, the work of Kepler and Galilei (as well as others that came before them), provided the foundation for more comprehensive theories of the physical universe such as Newtonian Mechanics, Einstein’s General Relativity, Quantum theory, and String theory. According to a pioneering physicist of String theory, Leonard Susskind, “…the combination of quantum mechanics and gravity requires the three dimensional world to be an image of data that can be stored on a two dimensional projection much like a holographic image” (Susskind 1). Thus, the illusionistic ceiling paintings by Pozzo and Mantegna perhaps are not illusions after all. Perhaps, the extraordinary ability of such artists to depict such a realistic space actually serves to reinforce an underlying characteristic of the physical universe.

 

Works Cited

Hughes, Patrick, and Nicholas J. Wade. “Fooling the eyes: trompe l’oeil and reverse

perspective.” Perception 28. n.a. (1999): 1115-1119. Print.  

Mantegna, Andrea. Fresco of the Camera degli Sposi. Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica

Online. Web. 1 Mar. 2014.

<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/122468/Fresco-by-Andrea-Mantegna-completed-1474-on-the-ceiling-of>.

Pozzo, Andrea. Apotheosis of Saint Ignatius. Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. Web. 1 Mar.

2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sant%27Ignazio_-_painted_dome_-_antmoose.jpg>.

Sheard, Wendy S. “Andrea Mantegna.” Encyclopædia Britannica n.d.: n.p.  Encyclopædia

Britannica Online. Web. 1 Mar. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/362903/Andrea-Mantegna>

 

Susskind, Leonard. “The World as a Hologram.” Journal of Mathematical Physics 36. n.a.

(1995): 6377-6396. Web. <http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9409089v2.pdf> 

“Apotheosis of Saint Ignatius.” Dome. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d. Web. 1 Mar.

2014. < http://dome.mit.edu/handle/1721.3/122062>