RAPE OF SABINE WOMEN
As you can notice; the figure above is an early Renaissance painting called Rape of Sabine Women and was created by the painter Nicolas Poussin. Its starting date was 1637 and completion date was 1638. It is represents the rape of Sabine women in the era of Roman Empire. That incident goes to 750 BC when the first generation of Roman men select women from the neighbouring Sabine families to be their wives. Here in this painting, "Rape" does not mean its modern English meaning but means abduction.
The painting can easily and effectively be analyzed with the ideas and thoughts of Leon Alberti on painting. To analyze it, the point to be focused on can be chosen as creating the historia. Alberti in his book "On Painting" emphasizes that a good painting should exhibit a high level of historia which means the painting should be comprised of many different elements to include an interesting and attractive story in it. For this to be occuring; the painting should have a great diversity of coloring, movement and people. This painting can be analyzed carefully to show that it carries the characteristics of that, Alberti mentioned for creating a successful historia.
The first thing that should be elaborated on the painting in the figure is the use of color. This discussion both focuses on the use of shading and different colors. As can be noticed from the painting, a square where people are running is being represented and between the buildings around the square, the sky can be seen. If the sky is analyzed by color, it can be said that the lower part of the sky is light grey whereas the upper part of it was colored with dark grey. This is not because of the usage of different colors but because of lower or higher usage of shading method. The lower parts of the sky was not shaded so much like the upper part of it and this difference between the two gives the sky the characteristic of cloudy air. Similarly; the effects of shading can be seen on the buildings. In a realistic case, the different faces of a building should be seen differently with lighter or darker colors because each face can not get the same amount of light from the Sun. If the main building behind the mass of people is analyzed it can be noticed that the inner parts of the buillding behind the columns are much darker than the outer faces of the same building. In reality all parts of that building is the same but the higher usage of shading in those inner parts gives a feeling of seeing a shadow on those sides. In addition to that usage of shading, the clothes on people are in many different colors. The clothes are consists of sorts of colors such as red, brown, gold, orange, blue etc. This usage of many colors contribute to a high diversity of different coloring and contributes to the historia as one type of diversity.
A second kind of diversity is the diversity of movements. This characteristic can be seen on the painting in a very effective way. Again the square where people take place can be analyzed for this purpose. It can be seen that many people run in the square and their movements are in a high diversity. The half of the people go to the right of the painting wheras the other half goes directly to the left side. The three people on top of a place are calmer than the others and one of those three moves his hands to high and tries to tell the mass of people something. All other people moves their arms and feet to different sides and this whole diversity of movement meets the expectations of Alberti from a painting. In this point the sentence of Alberti can be remembered as "Everything that changes position has seven directions of movement, either up or down or right or left, or going away in the distance or coming towards us, and the seventh is going around in a circle.I want all these seven movements to be in a painting."(pg. 78) Then again it can be said that as diversity is important in creating a histora, this painting sufficiently has that quality.
The final point to be focused on is the diversity of people. In the square on the painting it can be seen that there is a high mass of people moving continuously. Most probably; many people from different levels of the society takes place on the square which contributes to the desired diversity of people clearly. Probably; some of them are soldiers, some are governors, some are normal citizens etc. In addition to these; some of the people are men and the others are women. Plus; a white horse is also taking place between them. This high diversity of people is very significant from the perspective of a desired historia. When that combines with the diversity of face responses of people to the incident occuring, the historia would have all the requirements to emerge on the painting and a story would effectively be created. As can be seen in the figure; the men seem ambitious and the women seem anxious which can be commented as very acceptable and reasonable if they are thought with the name of the painting. Then the facial expressions can be claimed to contribute to the story required to create the historia.
As a conclusion; the claim was about the painting above and it was regarded that it carries many characteristics that Alberti finds useful for creating a historia in a successful painting. The historia was focused on from the point of view of diversity of different elements on the painting and diversity of coloring, movement and people were all analyzed carefully to see how they contribute to the historia that should take place in the painting for Alberti to find it successful and appreciate it. I have also found the painting effective when I have looked at it from the eye of Alberti according to his ideas on a painting. Especially; the high diversity of people and their facial experessions contribute positively to te story inside the painting.
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