HOW TO UNDERSTAND A WORK OF ART

Saint Mathew and Saint John

Saint Mathew
XIVth century

LEONARDO DA VINCI
Saint John the Baptist
1513 - 1516

Not only in architecture and sculpting materials and technique play an important role. A picture on a plane is also dependable on them. The first illustration is a fragment of a mosaic from the fourteenth century representing Saint Mathew, while the second one shows part of the painting Saint John the Baptist, made by the genious of the Renaissance period - Leonardo da Vinci. The first work strikes us with simplifications and the domination of contour. Saint Mathew's face seems flat, which is logical as those are the possibilities a mosaic offers. It is a technique based on making the picture from little blocks of different colours. Even though a mosaic requires a lot of precision, it itself isn't precise enough to show all the light and colour nuanses. The technique forces a certain simplification in the picture. The situation is different in Leonardo's painting made with oil paints (they dry very slowly and allow on corrections and painting in many stages). In the beginning on a well grounded canvass (immunized to the sinking in of paint) the artist made the first draft of his painting. After it dried out for weeks - moving gradually from general shapes to details - he "built" the painting, taking care that every tin of a colour was right. In a work done this way the artist could do without contours. To the viewers it may seem that his painting was created from light, which - encirling delicately the face - lights certain parts stronger and leaves other in a slight shade in such a way that it gives the composition full vividness. Leonardo had perfectionised the technique of chiaroscuro, he was a master in it. Later Rembrandt and other painters that lived during the Baroque period made use of his experiences.