The Essence, Impact and Symbolism of Light
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My Personal Investigation
The Essence, Impact and Symbolism of Light
How does the manipulation of light contribute to the
creation of a timeless masterpiece?
“Look at light and admire its beauty. Close your eyes, and then look again: what you saw is no longer there; and what you will see later is not yet”—Leonardo da Vinci
Light is what makes colours and shapes visible to the human eye. With too much light details become obscured and features flattened. Artists closely observe nature and can use their knowledge about the way light behaves to create realistic art. But they can also allow light to affect or interact with their artwork in different ways, from how a piece is lit, to the deliberate incorporation of the interaction of light within a work.
In the few years that I have been studying fine art, I have been intrigued by the paintings and the artists that have stood the test of time. The paintings of the great classical artists like Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Raphael and Vermeer; the paintings that hang in the most prestigious galleries, that fill our churches and that speak to our hearts. I have always wondered why these paintings were so captivating and why they held my attention so vigorously. I wondered if in some way the allure could be attributed to the luminosity, radiance and the quality of light. And so I began my quest to discover and identify what techniques were used to make these paintings stand out so obviously among others. What are the natural and visual elements responsible for the drama and atmosphere generated? How was light manipulated to such great effect?
I started off my project investigating the illumination of compositions and the wide range of effects and unique consequent emotions this evokes in the viewer. Focusing and honing down on what I identified to be my key interest, I looked specifically at the Chiaroscuro technique and the subject of enlightenment. These concepts are both central to the Renaissance era and specifically to the Baroque movement which began in Rome around 1600.
During the Renaissance the Church’s reform effort was to educate its members. To accomplish this, religious art was emotionally persuasive to fire the spiritual imagination and inspire the viewer to greater piety. In the face of new protestant denominations believing that churches should be simple, the Catholic tradition argued that a God of greatness should be worshiped with the kinds of churches befitting His divine qualities. This affirmation of the beauty and grandiosity of expressions of faith underpinned Baroque art. I visited the Prado Museum in Madrid to experience Renaissance and Baroque artworks first-hand. Picking out some of the key artworks that I saw at the Prado, I identified the common characteristics and specific features of the Baroque style. The artworks were direct, obvious and dramatic, inviting the viewer to participate in the scene. Depictions felt physically and psychologically real and emotionally intense. Most pieces made use of a dramatic colour with great contrasts between light and shadow. As opposed to Renaissance art with its clearly defined planes, with each figure placed in isolation from each other, Baroque artworks seemed to have continuous overlapping of figures and elements, and depict intense, classically timeless moments.
I learnt that in Baroque painting, the technique of chiaroscuro was used to produce heightened drama. Chiaroscuro, which means literally "light-dark" in Italian, refers to clear tonal contrasts exemplified by very high-keyed whites, placed directly against very low-keyed darks. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio used a high contrast palette in his artwork and I realised that in order to fully immerse myself in the richness of the Baroque style it would be necessary to follow in the footsteps of this great Italian artist - the artist most renowned for his use of chiaroscuro in religious scenes of the 16th century.
After watching a documentary about Caravaggio’s life revealing his personality and key events that shaped him, I realised that a great artist is not always an exemplary person. I understood that the events of one’s life help to infuse a true and genuine passion into what one paints, thereby making great masterpieces possible. The biographies written by contemporaries are the main sources of information about the lives of past historical artists. In the case of Caravaggio, however, most information gathered about him comes primarily from police records! From these, I have learned that Caravaggio had a bad temper, was extremely violent and was frequently arrested and imprisoned. In fact, he spent the last few years of his life on the run from the police after he killed a man over a bet!
Caravaggio was active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily in the 16th century. In his twenties he moved to Rome where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches being constructed. Caravaggio's innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close physical observation with a dramatic, even theatrical use of chiaroscuro which came to be known as tenebrism (the shift from light to dark with little intermediate value). Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Bernini, and Rembrandt, as well as artists in the following generation who were heavily under his influence were called the "Caravaggisti", as well as tenebrists. So acclaimed is Caravaggio in the art world that the 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy stated: "What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting.”
Caravaggio’s “The Denial of St. Peter” is considered the most important iconic work of art on display in New York, USA and is currently exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I have had the privilege of visiting.
The scene, taken from the bible, was painted in the last months of Caravaggio’s life and marks an extreme stage in his revolutionary tenebrous style. Contemplating the piece immediately made me feel awkward, as though I had interrupted a conversation or walked in on a somewhat clandestine situation. The three characters are dynamically positioned with the man in the foreground facing backwards. This creates an intimate interaction between the subjects but also made me feel as though I was eaves-dropping on the conversation. The pose and positioning of the soldier in the foreground creates the sensation of a 3D space accentuated by the foreshortened elbow which juts out of the plane of the canvass, breaking the barrier. There is a piercing shaft of light that enters the scene from the side, illuminating the face of the woman in the mid-ground as if to accusingly shine a spotlight on a whistle-blower, but the light narrowly misses the soldier leaving him in an anonymous shadow. This shaft of light in the mid ground of the painting surprises the eye as it is not what we are expecting, adding to the sentiment of the betrayal that is transpiring in the scene. On the right we can see Peter whose expression is somewhat theatrical. The composition seems to be moment caught in time with Peter’s expression is so real and fleeting that we can feel his emotion as though we were looking through a camera lens and taking a photo of this split second in time.
In order to experiment with similar dynamic compositions I embarked on my own photographic exercises, taking great care in the set up compositions of fruit, bottles and then later groups of people. I created dramatic Baroque diagonals keeping in mind the ratio of parts to achieve the same dynamism and mood as in Caravaggio’s figure arrangements.
My aim in these exercises was to experiment with different lighting and composition. I used candles, torches and lamps to cast light from distinct angles with different intensities. Which light source created the most tenebrism? Which technique created most drama and intrigue? What kind of lighting should I use to develop my own personal response from what I have learned from Caravaggio’s style? Caravaggio clearly enhanced and darkened his scenes contrasting the shadow with sharp highlights until the mood created is quite climatic. I admired the exaggerated contrast of tone that is one of the most engaging aspects of Caravaggio’s work and I tried to capture this in my own photographic work.
I began to understand that there are two overriding techniques that make Caravaggio’s style so successful: well-considered lighting and dynamic composition. The lighting forces the viewer to focus on the figures; the dark shadows adjacent to the areas of bright illumination are responsible for capturing the viewers’ attention. The compositions generally are such that all the figures are in the foreground of the painting; so close we feel like we can touch them, breaking down the barrier between our personal space and that of the painting. The involvement of the viewer is key, and the painting draws you in and captures your attention at every turn. I realised that each character in Caravaggio's paintings have their own specific personality and is performing an individual action as well as contributing to the joint activity of the main scene. The expressions on the faces of the protagonists as well as their posture and the positioning of their arms and hands seems to belie the fact that Caravaggio’s compositions were created with live models over a series of weeks, rather than a carefully composed photo taken in a purpose lit studio. I realised that to be able to come close to replicating the essence of Caravaggesque, I would need to rely in part, on photography. My admiration for Caravaggio grew as I realised that despite my attempts to create the perfect composition, lit with state-of-the-art, adjustable studio lights, I still needed to enhance the photos digitally to bring out the “chiaroscuresque” drama so evident in his 17th century work. My next challenge was to transform my compositions into painted artworks which took me on a journey of the investigation, experimentation and heart-wrenching anguish of the techniques of oil painting.
The more we know of artistic technique, the more effects we have at our disposal in the execution of our artworks. It is understood that oil paint allows the widest range of possible effects of any fine-art medium. The earliest oil painting evolved from the discipline of egg tempera painting, as artists sought ways to overcome the limitations inherent in that medium. As this invention took place initially in Flanders, the method is referred to as the Flemish technique.
The Flemish masters painted on primed wooden panels which allowed the more transparent layer to glow with warmth from beneath the surface of the paint gaving an extra degree of brightness to even the most opaque colours. After reading ‘Traditional Oil Painting’ by Virgil Elliott I learnt that this technique involved the systematic employment of transparent, semi-transparent, and opaque layers in the development of the images.
The 16th century Venetian technique is similar to the Flemish methods in its use of transparent glazes for the darker darks, and for certain special effects, and in its use of opaque paints for the highlights and was adopted by many artists throughout Europe such as Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer and of course, Caravaggio.
In order to experiment with these oil techniques I conducted my own series of portrait studies using the traditional methodologies while at the same time testing the development of skin tones and the contrasting of the portraits against both light and dark backgrounds.
From my investigations into Baroque art, I developed a deep appreciation for light used and incorporated within a composition. Lighting was responsible for the unique aura given off by each individual artwork. My intrigue in seeing how light affected an individual character within a composition led me into noticing the ‘halo’. The halo, also known as a nimbus or aureole is a ring of light that surrounds a person in artworks. They have been used in the iconography of many religions to indicate holy or sacred figures and the power that comes from within. I visited the Bellas Artes Museum in Valencia to try to discover more about the halo that seemed to have a ubiquitous presence in both my religious and secular surroundings.
Upon investigation, I discovered that with the rise of Christianity during the Renaissance, the popularity of the halo was reborn and its use became as prevalent among Christian artists as it had been centuries before in ancient Egyptian art. Jesus Christ began to be portrayed with a nimbus in the fourth century AD and by the end of the sixth century the use of this symbol became quite widespread. Soon saints, martyrs and royals also started to be portrayed with halos. It even began to be used for people who were merely famous, until 1600 AD when Pope Urban III forbade the use of the nimbus for persons who were not at least beatified. But halos did not entirely disappear; they only disguised themselves as hats or arches or a simply lit background glow. In Da Vinci's Last Supper, the halo is represented by an arch in the background and Vermeer used picture frames in the background of his paintings to add a halo effect. At the Bellas Artes Museum I found many permutations of the halo blatantly portrayed in the Gothic artworks and surreptitiously hidden in the 17th and 18th century artworks. I then embarked on a practical study of halos using print transfer techniques and mixed media.
The halo has been cleverly manipulated and used in more modern times, for example in the Impressionism movement exemplified by Van Gogh’s use of wild, colourful brush strokes. Although many of Van Gogh’s 32 self-portraits convey anguish, some have halos that seem to denote the artist's inner spirit. Van Gogh wrote about his portraits saying: "I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolise ... with the thoughts and the soul of the model in it." With Van Gogh the semblance of the halo returned, and with it the idea unseen spirit that resides within us all.
The halo seems to have undergone many transformations over the centuries, from being overused to being outlawed, and then on to being a powerful subliminal idea. Taking a look at where the halo stands today, I became aware that now more than ever, the ‘hidden halo’ is everywhere; in the streets, in adverts for movies, and in the quotidian things we buy every day. Most cleaning products have a clear areola of radiance or luminosity surrounding the brand name. These halos command our attention, preying on our subconscious, ideological understanding that the halo is good, trustworthy and in some way superior. The halo has become a marketing tool that has its success in our perception of its implied divinity.
Keen to refine my ideas and experiment further with the symbolism of the halo in my own artwork, I delved into the notion of radiance and light exposure. I was inspired by the striking and often overexposed photography of Tom Munro. His work led me to conceptualise the antithesis of Chiaroscuro, where the dark shadowy atmosphere pierced by bright contrasting light, transformed into a bright and light filled environment with areas of deep shadow. I imagined the type of shadow that a sun-hat would cast over the face of a child on a summer’s day or a portrait photo that was only lit from behind, the light extending radially from behind the face like the silver lining on a cloud in a dusky sky. I extended these thoughts practically in photo shoots and oil studies and their development has had great influence on my final piece.
My ideas for my final piece developed intuitively from the understanding I had gained from my investigations of the underlying characteristics of Baroque artworks together with my intrigue with the concept of enlightenment and my experimentation with oil techniques. As a result of the journey of my coursework study, I considered the following visual elements in the evolution of my final composition.
Subject
My final composition is a chaotic snapshot of an emotionally intense moment with my family – a subject of timeless significance to me. With my mouth open just about to say something and my sister’s expression, the composition suggests spontaneity and conveys an excited scene. My subject, just like Caravaggio’s biblical stories, is a narrative of a moment in time. The graduation mortarboard and the book in my sister’s hand symbolise education and the coming to a close of our schooling life. This piece, therefore, captures a timeless memory that we will keep and cherish forever. Furthermore, to emphasis the breakdown of space between subject and viewer, I felt it necessary to make the characters in my painting life size, just like those in most of Caravaggio’s work. The size of the figures allows a more natural interaction, again breaking down and making the scene look like its happening right in front of you.
Line
The diagonal lines within my composition suggest drama and speed. I specifically chose this composition as these lines create a strong impression of dynamic movement which is similar to the compositions typical of Caravaggio’s work, and may be one of the overriding factors that make his work so attention-grabbing.
My father’s arms create the most obvious lines in this composition that give birth to this drama, along with the overriding diagonal in the composition of my sister, mum and the graduation mortarboard.
Surface
Through my refinement of ideas, I developed an interesting concept of the shape of canvas I wanted my painting to be on. After exploring many designs of convexly curving my canvas to firstly, mimic a lamp shade, from which light would stream out , to a concave, sophisticated curve to model a cinema screen or large theatre, I decided on the latter. After working out practical issues with my concept, I was content with the effect of this arc as it was modern and original, different from any other Baroque painting I have ever seen, but yet served the ultimate intention of Baroque paintings, which is to embrace the viewer in the composition.
Form
Form is the illusion of a 3-D effect that can be implied with the use of light and shading techniques in painting. Caravaggio had clear volume and shape in all his paintings. This was very pronounced through his use of tenebrism and chiaroscuro which produced overt modelling. As my own response to and development of his tenebrist style, my final composition has definite modelling, volume and thickness but is the ‘opposite’ of Caravaggio’s tenebrism, accentuating the light “chiaro” rather than the traditional “scuro”. This technique has allowed me to keep the drama in my painting while making my work unique and different from the Baroque era and more current with the work of the 21st century. Today with the new technologies of photography, electric lighting and camera flashes, I used the idea of strong contrast and pushed this idea to explore all its possibilities and effects. I believe that if Caravaggio was here today, he would have moved onto exploring different permutations of chiaroscuro, just like what I have tried to develop though my investigation and evolution toward my final piece.
Colour and Values
Colours and values are powerful image builders. After analysing many of Caravaggio’s pieces I discovered that despite the initial chiaroscuro shock given of by his paintings and deep dramatic reds, the colours and values that he most used were limited and very neutral, with many creams, beiges, ambers, whites and ivories. In my final composition, I selected a beige dress as well as a dress with slightly more colour - lilac - as I wanted my mother’s hand and more specifically, the ring on her hand to be the focal point of the painting. By adding the most vivid colour to her, the eye is drawn there first.
Furthermore, I placed my sister next to my mum as their dresses are complementary colours (yellow and purple). When placed next to each other, these opposing colours create maximum contrast, stability and harmony. Harmony engages the viewer and it creates an inner sense of order, a balance in the visual experience. Thus, the colour harmony of the two dresses delivers visual interest and a sense of order to my final composition.
In addition, though my investigation of the halo and its uses and effects in past and modern art, I felt it appropriate to give my final composition the same magic and drama the hidden halo creates so naturally. With the many spotlights in the photographic studio, I was able to play with the lighting and experimented with light coming from the back of the composition and shining out through the figures. This light source coming from the back of the scene creates an aura and a glow around the figures, giving them importance and attention. Furthermore, the idea of the hidden halo is again brought in though the use of the position of the mortarboard behind my mothers head just like the positioning of paintings in the works of Vermeer and the architecture in the ‘Last Supper’ painted by Leonardo Da Vinci. This speaks of enlightenment though guidance and education, reinforcing the role that my mother plays in our family dynamics.
Space
Space is the most comprehensive of all artistic elements. It is the stage on which all other artistic elements come together. It is not empty space, but is rather a spatial distribution of objects in a defined environment.
When I considered the space and the distribution of the figures in my final composition, I kept in mind the golden ratio. My sister’s vivid expression and open mouth lays on of the ‘soft corners’ on the top left corner as well as the only black graduation mortarboard in the there top corner. Finally, the bottom right corner is dominated by the foreshortened hands. Caravaggio’s ability to break down the barrier between the figures in the painting and the viewer is a key characteristic of his compositions and space management that makes his paintings dynamic and engaging. I purposely created emphasis on the hands jutting out so as to also breakdown the painting surface and allow the characters to enter the realm of reality. Furthermore, placing my dad in the foreground of the painting with this back turned to the viewer and his elbow sticking out, suggests an even more intimate scene, as we feel we are another character in this interaction. The scene no longer becomes unapproachable and distant; through the spacing of the characters, it creates a welcoming, inviting and thrilling experience as well as lending great depth within the painting its self.
Finally, through my investigations and artistic studies I have begun to answer the questions with which I began my coursework journey and have realised that the essence of great artwork is light, timeless significance and dynamic composition. I have felt privileged to have been able to understand some of the fundamental characteristics of the timeless artworks that fill our most prestigious museums and have been fortunate to have been able to personally visit and admire many valuable artworks. I would cherish the opportunity to continue to analyse the great Baroque artworks, making further discoveries about the symbolism of light and composition and honing my skills with oil paints. I feel that I have merely scratched the surface of the potential lessons that I could learn from the great masters. Despite my desire for more knowledge and practice, through concerted focus and interest in my coursework study, I have striven to bring together the ideas of luminosity, enlightenment and dynamism to develop a final piece that is filled with respect for and homage to the great “Caravaggists” while at the same time endeavouring to take a modern and creative leap into developing my own personal and innovative response – a response that for me, will always glow in my heart with luminosity, significance and celebration!
Galleries Visited
The Prado, Reina Sofia -Madrid
Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, IVAM
Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bibliography
The Story of Art: E.H. Gombrich, Phaidon, 1950, New York
Traditional Oil Painting: Advanced Techniques and concepts from the Renaissance to the present: Virgil Elliott, 2007, Watson-Guptill, New York.
An Introduction into Art Techniques: Ray Smith, Michael Wright, James Horton, 1995, Dorlings Kindersley Ltd, London.
http://artandcritique.com/caravaggio-deposition-the-entombment-of-christ/
