During this period, artists became quite obsessed with the true representation of the spaces depicted in their paintings. On one hand this realism was astonishing with the trueness with which figures, plants, animals, landscape and buildings are presented within a convincing space but on the other hand all that the artist was doing was helping the viewer forge a sense of reality connecting the world of the canvas to the real world.
The technique of grisaille used to depict ‘fictive’ spaces and statues, however real, merely imitated real sculpture. The use of trompe-l’oeil (trick the eye) techniques and fictive frames as well as the representations of reflective surfaces enabled them to break the barrier between the real world and the pictorial space. Their mastery in manipulating the use of oil paint as a medium played a crucial role in achieving such effects.
But despite the objectivity of realism, Jan van Eyck’s paintings are also remarkable for their pure fiction – grisaille statues, , painted mirrors reflecting the unseen making the viewer a part of the painting, imaginary events taking place outside the pictorial space, three-dimensional images.
However, we cannot refute the fact that art gave people something to see and imagine as they learned the story of God and the famous disciples that followed Him or imagined the inside of another person’s dwelling place and took a look into his day to day life. Images were more realistically presented with much more intricate detail. Instead of just trying to convey a message, the artists took care with the images themselves, representing each part in a more realistic way. This was a great contribution.
shonalim 