Beguiling Structures

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"Is it not true that painting is the mistress of all the arts or their principal ornament? If I am not mistaken, the architect took from ‌the painter architraves, capitals, bases, columns and pediments, and all the other fine features of buildings. The stonemason, the sculptor and all the workshops and crafts of artificers are guided by the rule and art of the painter. So I would venture to assert that whatever beauty there is in things has been derived from painting."  Leon Battista Alberti - De Pictura, Book II, Chapter XXVI

So runs Leon Battista Alberti’s famous claim for architects’ indebtedness to the creativity of painters. His words draw attention to the close relationship between illusionistic representations of architecture and its actual three-dimensional forms. Indeed, the prominence given to architecture within painting before and after Alberti’s lifetime has long been noted, though its presence is easily overlooked and its precise meaning often elusive.

This conference for graduate students and early-career scholars will explore this relationship in all its multifaceted complexity. Conceived to complement The National Gallery’s exhibition Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting, this event will look afresh at architecture’s place within European painting and reassess established interpretations. Why were buildings included in pictorial representations? What is their purpose and what do they do for the picture? The answers to these and other questions may well uncover a far more complex interchange between painting and architecture than Alberti’s straightforward assertion would suggest.

Organised by Alasdair Flint, James Jago and Livia Lupi, this conference forms part of the Galleries & Museums Research Partnerships Programme between The National Gallery, London and the Department of History of Art, The University of York.

Read the conference abstracts: Beguiling Structures Conference Abstracts (PDF , 126kb)
View the conference programme: Beguiling Structures Conference Programme (PDF , 103kb)
Download the conference poster: Beguiling Structures (PDF , 659kb)

Image: ‘The Purification of the Temple’, Marcello Venusti, after 1550. Oil on wood, 61×40cms © The National Gallery, London