One of the paintings which will be compared and contrasted is by the French painter Hubert Robert, Capriccio of Classical Ruins with Pyramid. Robert painted this work in approximately 1760, using oil on canvas. This painting can be found in the Elvehjem Art Museum, a gift of Mr. & Mrs Firman H. Hass.
The other painting is Giorgione da Castelfranco’s Pastoral Symphony. Giorgione painted this work around 1508 in oil on canvas. This painting currently resides in the Louvre in Paris.
The work by Robert is enigmatic in its subject matter. It shows a scene where people are gathered amidst large classical ruins, with an out of place pyramid far into the background. The people in the painting are largely unaware to the mystery presented by the pyramid, they are either relaxed or pointing or glancing towards one another. Highlighting the mystery of the subject is the atmospheric conditions. The sky above the classical ruins is for the most part cloudless, blue skies. However, above and around the pyramid, the skies are cloudy; the clouds enshroud the answer to the mystery of the pyramid.
A viewer of this painting is led visually across the canvas from left to right. The vertical thrust of the columns leads the viewer’s eyes upwards, to the entablature atop the collonade. Through the use of one point perspective, the entablature leads the eyes back into the painting, and to an archway. The arch forms a sort of door, inviting the viewer through. The perspective is continued on the arch’s keystone, and brings the viewer to the pyramid in the background, the visual destination in this painting. The archway also serves as a bridge, linking the image of the classical architecture on the left of the painting with the non-classical pyramid which is located toward the right side.
Capriccio of Classical Ruins with Pyramid is done in a painterly fashion, using areas of color rather than lines and contours to define regions. The use of warm and cool colors alternates somewhat as the eye moves from place to place, especially from figure to figure. This painting takes advantage of the use of planes to show the illusion of depth. The light source is positioned somewhere to the left of the painting, so that everything appears to be slightly backlit. The columns help to filter the light and contribute to the alternation of warms and cools in the painting. There is the foreground plane which contains the people as well as the front of the collonade, the middle ground, which is defined by the front of the archway, and the background plane, which is formed by the side of the pyramid.
The subject matter of Pastoral Symphony is, like that of Capriccio of Classical Ruins with Pyramid, something of an enigma. With rolling hills in the distance, there are four figures in the foreground, two male and two female. Both of the males are fully clad; however, both of the females are almost totally nude. Giorgione left no direct explanation for this appearance of these figures.
There is no use of one point perspective, however the small, hazy views of the hillsides and the horizon creates the illusion of depth. Like the Capriccio, however, Pastoral Symphony is done in a more painterly style with less emphasis on line and more on regions of color. The foreground of Symphony is dominated by warm colors, lit by a light source which would be positioned somewhere above the viewer.
The paintings Capriccio of Classical Ruins with Pyramid and Pastoral Symphony bear many similiar and dissimilar traints. Both are enigmatic and mysterious in subject matter. Both are done in a painterly style. The light sources in both contribute to the effects of the warm and cool colors. Both create an illusion of depth, but through different means. The styles that each artist used to create his respective painting are thus compared and contrasted.