Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
Plate 13: Sassetta and Cézanne
Although Cézanne painted 450 years after Sassetta, and although he
worked from the motif while Sassetta painted from his imagination, both painters
constructed their landscapes in a similar way.
Plate 13-1 Sassetta. Italian (Sienese). The Journey of the Magi.
1423-50. Copyright 2000-2009 The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York.
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In both
paintings the
main diagonal
which runs
back from the
lower-left
corner to
upper-right
corner is
contained by a
shorter
diagonal. In
the Cézanne, this pushes forward over the house to the lower-right corner. In the
Sassetta, the second diagonal pushes forward over the distant red castle and the
white slope on the right foreground.
In the Sienese painting a major tension is created by the opposing thrusts
of the yellow hill on the left (up, left and back) and the white hill (down, right and
forward). The foreground is pushed down and back while the background is
raised and pulled forward by its intense coloring, sharp detail, and enlarged
forms. The red castles and the birds and trees on the yellow hills, for example, are