Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting

by David Summers

Spanning more than 2,500 years in the history of art, Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting demonstrates how the rise and diffusion of the science of optics in ancient Greece and the Mediterranean world correlated to pictorial illusion in the development of Western painting from Hellenistic Greece to the present. Using examples from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, David Summers argues that scene-painting (architectural backdrops) and shadow-painting (in which forms are modeled or shown as if in relation to a source of light) not only evolved in close association with geometric optics toward the end of the fifth century B.C.E., but also contributed substantially to the foundations of the new science.

The spread of understanding of how light is transmitted, reflected, and refracted is evident in the works of artists such as Brunelleschi, van Eyck, Alberti, and Leonardo. The interplay between optics and painting that influenced the course of Western art, Summers says, persisted as a framework for the realism of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Goya and continues today in modern photography and film.

Genres: Art

232 pages, Hardcover

First published October 8, 2007

Reviews

[Jay Eckard · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the Afterward takes a largely philosophical serve away from the chief material of the rest of the text, this is detailed examination of the shared history of optics and painting, reconstructing the work of the earliest Greek painter like Apelles and Praxiteles, through its development in Rome (and loss after Rome falls), and through its re-discovery in both the Italian and Northern Renaissance.
It makes particular note of the works of Alberti and van Eyck and how their works integrated into the investigations of those artists' time, which for van Eyck means a reconstruction of his mappamundi and how it related to the later Crusades. Alberti's work is positioned to the works of Florence, from the Duomo to intellectual life of the Medicis.
I felt like I kept up well with the author's thesis until the Afterward, after which I just couldn't keep up. I don't blame this on any lack of coherence or failing of Summer, but I am not nearly well-versed enough in the Modern and Early Modern philosophy he flies through to intelligently comment on the points he makes. The book is not long, so I feel like it might be stronger as a text if had he fleshed out the Afterward into a whole chapter (or indeed a companion volume) -- but I might just be projecting my own intellectual shortcomings.