From the assignment sheet:
This assignment focuses on the visual fragmentation and exploration of a Renaissance or Baroque painting through diagramming. To start, your instructor will assign you a painting from the list to study.You will then find the painting and everything you can about it (e.g., painter, style, technique, history); please use the Architecture and Art libraries. Each student must analyze the painting through a series of diagrams. Make sure the painting fits within an 8.5” x 11” sheet of paper
For this project, I was assigned Burial of Atala (1808), a Baroque painting by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson.
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| Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
My analysis began with breaking the painting up into it's layers, which get more complex as the background begins to recede. Of those layers, the second layer, as part of the foreground, creates a figure/ground relationship with the elements behind it.
Breaking up the painting elements into simple geometries shows the more complex relationship that the middle figure has with the rest of the painting. It exists only on a curve, one which dominates the line of dynamic movement in a rather static image.
The light of the image follows this dynamic line. The light source being the deepest layer of the image serves to create a relationship between the foreground and background of the painting. All of these elements serve to establish the hierarchy of the painting with Atala being the move important figure, her lover being the second most important, and the hooded man being the least prolific.
The complete sheet:
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