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Prior to the discovery of linear perspective in the fifteenth century, European artists based their compositions more on imagination than the direct observation of nature. Medieval paintings, therefore, can be thought of as ‘mental projections’ of space rather than optical projections, and were sometimes regarded as ‘primitive’ by historians as they lacked the spatial consistency of later works based on the rules of linear perspective.
There are noticeable differences in the way objects are depicted in paintings of the different periods. For example, human figures in pre-linear perspective works often vary greatly in size in ways that are not consistent with the laws of optics. Some art historians have attributed this to ‘hierarchical scaling’ in which larger figures have greater narrative significance. But there are examples of paintings that contradict this explanation.
In this paper we will consider an alternative to the hierarchical scaling hypothesis: that medieval artists used relative size to elicit empathy and to reflect the perceptual structure of imagination. This hypothesis was first proposed by the art historian Oskar Wulff, but has largely been dismissed since. We argue that artists of this period, far from being naïve, used sophisticated techniques for directing the attention of the viewer to a particular figure in a painting and encouraging them to ‘see’ the depicted space from that figure’s point of view. We offer some experimental evidence in support of this hypothesis and suggest that the way artists have depicted space in paintings has an important bearing on how we imagine and perceive visual space.
</abstract>

Prior to the discovery of linear perspective in the fifteenth century, European artists based their compositions more on imagination than the direct observation of nature. Medieval paintings, therefore, can be thought of as ‘mental projections’ of space rather than optical projections, and were sometimes regarded as ‘primitive’ by historians as they lacked the spatial consistency of later works based on the rules of linear perspective.
There are noticeable differences in the way objects are depicted in paintings of the different periods. For example, human figures in pre-linear perspective works often vary greatly in size in ways that are not consistent with the laws of optics. Some art historians have attributed this to ‘hierarchical scaling’ in which larger figures have greater narrative significance. But there are examples of paintings that contradict this explanation.
In this paper we will consider an alternative to the hierarchical scaling hypothesis: that medieval artists used relative size to elicit empathy and to reflect the perceptual structure of imagination. This hypothesis was first proposed by the art historian Oskar Wulff, but has largely been dismissed since. We argue that artists of this period, far from being naïve, used sophisticated techniques for directing the attention of the viewer to a particular figure in a painting and encouraging them to ‘see’ the depicted space from that figure’s point of view. We offer some experimental evidence in support of this hypothesis and suggest that the way artists have depicted space in paintings has an important bearing on how we imagine and perceive visual space.

Space and Scale in Medieval Painting Reflects Imagination and Perception

PhD is Professor of Fine Art at Cardiff School of Art and leader of the Fovolab at Cardiff Metropolitan University

Born in Bristol in 1980, Alistair studied Fine Art and Contemporary Multimedia at The University of Wales

Gestalt Theory

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

{"article-title":"Space and Scale in Medieval Painting Reflects Imagination and Perception"}

Prior to the discovery of linear perspective in the fifteenth century, European artists based their compositions more on imagination than the direct...

Space and Scale in Medieval Painting Reflects Imagination and Perception

Published Online: Nov 10, 2022

Page range: 61 - 78

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2022-0006

Keywords
visual space, linear perspective, Medieval paintings

© 2022 Nicole Ruta et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Space and Scale in Medieval Painting Reflects Imagination and Perception

Published Online: Nov 10, 2022

Page range: 61 - 78

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2022-0006

Keywordsvisual space, linear perspective, Medieval paintings

© 2022 Nicole Ruta et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
visual space, linear perspective, Medieval paintings