Cathedral Interior 1

This is an architectural rendering of a clerestory wall of Ruen Cathedral. As a drawing it has a lot of similarities to the drawing Penn Station, that I posted  earlier. It is similar in that both drawings show a view which is over head and to the right of the observer. These drawings involve perspective to varying degrees, and in all my architectural drawings I have endeavored to explain some aspect or other of that science. The idea of placing the point of view below the picture plane began in the Renaissance just after the discovery of perspective. Artists like Mantegna placed the vanishing point below the bottom edge of the picture because it captures the point of view in which we are looking up at things and it gives the image a sense of grandeur. So in my drawing I chose this style of composition because I wanted to give the subject a feeling of being high up and far away.

Now I know that some people might feel that an interest in perspective is not fashionable, and as a matter of fact perspective hasn’t been mentioned or taught in art schools for sixty years. But the knowledge of perspective answers certain very important questions. For example. What if someone were to say to you, “Why is it that on the back of the five dollar bill, when you look at the columns of Lincoln’s Monument, they have no bases?” This is a fact. Now the answer to this important question involves perspective. Just take a look at a five dollar bill. At first glance the image of the monument on the back doesn’t seem to employ perspective, but on close examination we can see that the tops of the columns at the outer ends of the monument recede in space . The tops of those columns on both sides form diagonal lines. Those diagonal lines are perspective lines which meet at the vanishing point which is one eighth of an inch under the O of the word dollars. Those perspective lines touch the tops of all those receding columns. A line drawn from the same vanishing point to the bottom of the outside columns will show that the bottoms of all the columns are hidden by the steps of the porch.

But here are the two most important points of all. 1: that this engraving on the five dollar bill uses Mantegna’s composition of placing the vanishing point below the picture plane, thereby obscuring the column bases. And 2: Doric columns were used on Lincoln’s Monument, and Doric columns don’t have any bases in the first place.

This drawing measures 7.75” x 9.15”. It is drawn on laid, off white drawing paper with a a brown wax pencil. It is signed with an R on the front and full signature and date on the back Richard Britell August 8, 2001