Part 4 Research Point Foreshortening

Mantegna  (Pinacoteca di Brera)
The Lamentation over the Dead Christ..

Foreshortening is one of the most challenging aspects of proportion that figure drawing holds. It is the ability to create the "optical illusion that an object appears shorter than it actually is when angled towards the viewer." (Encyclopedia of Fine Arts) I found the discussion on this website about the difference between an artist's use of foreshortening and a photographer's use very interesting. I never thought of the fact that artists actually underplay foreshortening to some extent, as seen in the fact that the feet of Jesus in The Lamentation by Mantegna, is a "slightly less aggressive assault on the viewer's eye and ...the truncated image [is incorporated] more harmoniously into the overall composition." (Encyclopedia of Fine Arts) In contrast, in photography, the feet would have been correctly proportioned to the extent that the feet would have dominated the foreground, obscuring the truncated torso.

Work Cited

Encyclopedia of Fine Art, n.d. Foreshortening. [Online]
Available at: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/painting/foreshortening.htm
[Accessed 16 May 2016].