THE FACTORS
The construction of a representational painting involves five basic factors:
1. scene,
2. visual vocabulary,
3. elevation
4. visualisation, and
5. rendering.
When these factors are in perfect balance, each providing an optimal contribution to the final work, the resulting painting arguably demonstrates the perfect style. This may called the essential, core or grand style of painting.
In periods when such perfection has been achieved, or nearly achieved, painters have been faced with an intractable problem, how to make something which will surprise and astonish the viewer. Once perfection has been attained, painters can attract attention only by departing from such perfection.
According to contemporary accounts, this is what happened in the 4thC BC, after perfection had been achieved by Apelles. Artists had to caricature certain aspects of Apelles style.
A similar departure may be seen again after near-perfection had been achieved by Michelangelo and Titian in the 16th C. Michelangelo’s grand, lumbering figures were made cruder by the Carracci, while Titian’s colouring was exaggerated into gloom by Tintoretto, or made purely decorative by Veronese.
After a period of such enforced decline, it again becomes possible for artists to attract attention by aiming for perfection. The history of art may be seen as a series of departures and returns to this core style.
I have summarised the main five factors in the diagram on page XX, and will describe these in more detail here: