Picturing History: A certain point of view
Feb. 1st, 2007 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Pieter Jansz Saenredam (1597-1665), was a Dutch painter and a contemporary to Rembrandt. His favourite subject to paint was churches. More specifically the huge, white interior of Protestant reformed churches.

There is an odd feel to his paintings. Look as I might I always end up feeling like I’m only seeing half of what is there. That the true motif is half hidden by that pillar and it is in fact the tiny man to the right that is seeing the whole of the thing. I, the viewer outside the frame, am reduced to a peeping tom by Saenredam. Forever trying to peer behind that pillar – to see what is really there.
In fact his paintings remind me more of photos than anything else. They have a feel of reality stopped and perfectly copied. A snap shot of urban Dutch life. The people in the paintings are not posing for the painter. They are not lined up for an easy overview. Contrast if you will with Raphael and his The School in Athens.

I love his paintings because they make me feel like I’m inside the church room. It’s almost as if I can hear the chatter of the people and the echoes they must make in the room.
The key is that Raphael, and most painters after the Renaissance used the laws of the central perspective to form their images. This states that the image should be harmonious and easily recognisable to the viewer outside the frame. There is a vanishing point, usually in the centre of the painting – and all lines and compositions are adapted to this point. Why in the centre? Because that is where our, aka the viewers, eyes would look first. So we, outside the frame, are the paintings major form of reference. Man is the measure of all things, as Da Vinci and others were so fond of saying.

For Saenredam this is not the case. In his paintings man is just a small part in the integrated whole. The world he shows is not one that is shaped to soothe the eye of the beholder. Instead the beholder, inside or outside the frame, is again and again shown that they are just a small part in a larger picture. But since we are so used to seeing old paintings composed after the rule of the central perspective his images can at times look a little strange to us.

We are used to seeing images that shape man as the centre and orders the world into harmony around his eye. But this is not something natural; it’s just a visual convention. I’m going to borrow a line from Obi-Wan Kenobi and say that "the many truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view." But I’m going to re-write it a little bit and say that "What we see depend greatly on our point of view".
- Elaine Hooper-Greenhill from Museums and the Interpretations of Visual Culture
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Date: 2007-02-01 08:03 pm (UTC)I'll miss your posts if you're gone very long!
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Date: 2007-02-01 09:12 pm (UTC)I'll not be gone that long - just till over the weekend.
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Date: 2007-02-01 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 09:11 pm (UTC)I'm so glad you liked them!
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Date: 2007-02-21 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-21 04:14 pm (UTC)