To: Janice Shell who wrote (4347 ) 10/6/1999 9:21:00 AM From: Puck Read Replies (2) | Respond to
Janice, upon reflection I realize that my question to you about art history isn't so much a question as a vexing observation. In high school I was taught that perspective in painting as a concept was introduced during the renaissance--that it is in fact one of the great advances of renaissance thought in the arts. In college I learned nothing to contradict that assertion. I took no art history courses. I did have one European History course but the focus was basically on the history of ideas and I don't remember learning anything about perspective in art. Two years ago, I spent a month traveling in Italy and the Mount Blanc region of the Alps. While in Geneva, I went to the primary art museum there and saw what my guidebook said was its prize possesion--a painting (from the fourteenth century I think) entitled something like "Jesus and the Disciples Fishing on Lake Geneva", as opposed to the "Jesus and the Disciples Fishing on the Sea of Gallilee"--a rather comical difference in my opinion. Notes to the painting provided by the museum claimed that it was one of the earliest known examples of the use of perspective in painting. I was greatly disillusioned, then, when in Pompeii two weeks later I saw tile mosaics from the first centuries A.D. that unequivocally demonstrated perspective. How could the American education system have taught me this myth as fact? (My high school was very well funded and in an affluent school district where student performance expectations were quite high.) In Florence, I had a tour guide who was an art historian. She was British. I mentioned this disillusioning experience to her and she immediately asked me what country I was educated in. When I said the U.S., her attitude seemed to change to one of resignation. Anyway, I wonder if you might have any comments about this topic.
