Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

vanishing lines. They are not shown in the painting, the artist only imagines them."
Fascinated Alexandra watched this otherwise so impractical man insert the circular base
of the throne, its armrests, legs, and the high back of the chair into the framework of those
lines. For the first time in her life she saw a three-dimensional object being created on a flat
surface. A wave of recognition passed over her face. The method looked exceedingly simple.
Walter smiled satisfied at his drawing. "Brunelleschi’s Perspective in a nutshell!" He
looked around and then at her. "He must have guided my hand. I have never done that before!"
"Now I see what you see!" she exclaimed and clapped her hand over her mouth.
Walter smiled beguiled. He awkwardly hid the sketch in his pocket. "And now you don’t!
Look at the triptych again. What do you see?"
Excited she pointed at the receding armrests of the throne and the angels in the
foreground, which gave the painting depth.
Walter stepped away from her. "Yes, yes, but did you also notice that the Christ child is
a naked village urchin who sticks his two fingers squarely into his mouth? The same fingers
that used to bless the believers!"
Walter laughed happily as she nodded with a flushed face. She had been so
preoccupied with visualizing the imaginary vanishing lines that she had not paid any attention
to the child and his little gesture.
"Renaissance painting began with the Christ child sucking his fingers! Can you imagine
how excited Masaccio’s contemporaries must have been, awed and delighted? This child and
his mother lived in their villages! God himself was walking among them."
He pointed at the figures on the side panels. "Neither are these sturdy saints with their
beards and dark, gloomy demeanor any longer superhuman. You see how Masaccio uses light
and shading to give his figures body? Look at the face of the Madonna with its lovely dimples—
she is alive!"
Alexandra’s sensitive features were glowing. Walter looked at his rapt student.
"Unfortunately Masaccio died very young, he lived only twenty-seven years. But what effect he
had on his contemporaries!"
He made to leave. "Let me take you to another painting from a different part of Europe
to show you how quickly this new way of seeing spread in the fifty years following Massacio."
Without looking right or left, passing through droves of people, he walked her rapidly to
the farthest corner of the museum where in a narrow corridor hung a large triptych.
"This is the Pontinari Altarpiece painted in 1475 by the Flemish painter Hugo van der
Goes. It has been crammed into this forgotten corner, because it was not painted by an Italian
artist. We are standing much too close, but never mind, its details are so extraordinary that you
may as well examine them from close up."
Alexandra tried to take it all in. On the center panel the Madonna was kneeling before
her naked child—a real baby, no longer the future Christ—lying on a lowly blanket on the
ground. Still, this humble earthling was the center of attention. Three flocks of kneeling angels
in colorfully embroidered garments surrounded the child. Joseph in a red coat on the left and
three burly shepherds on the opposite side gazed at the newborn in rapture.
Walter, hands behind his back, quietly moved aside. Alexandra now noticed that directly
before her appeared two vases of flowers, a bunch of red tiger lilies and white and blue iris in
one, blue columbines in the other, their petals strewn all across the foreground in front of the
child. The lifelike detail of these flowers took her breath away. She turned to Walter. "This must
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