Triangles were very popular in renaissance art, not the geometric figures per se but as enclosing abstract structures around a human body, a kind of intellectual cake-making template into which a human figure could be accommodated. I would like to start with one which has been remarked previously and that is the half-awake guard on the lower left of Piero della Francesca's Resurrection fresco. This figure forms so clearly a triangle that he is somewhat of an oddity amongst his fellow soldiers; he is nicely contained within the triangular shape and is in addition, shown completely in profile. In comparison, his companions are in various positions, the two central ones especially reminiscent of those in other artists' versions of this subject; the one with his back to us almost fully stretched out, somewhat unconvincingly. As well as the form of our awakening soldier there is also the larger 'structural' triangle formed by the guards - as a base - with imaginary lines traceable on the left from our guard's back and up along Christ's right arm, and on the right from the shoulder of the reclining guard through his helmet and upwards along Christ's left arm to His face. This larger triangle, as in Masaccio's Trinity fresco, not only directs our attention upwards on the 'picture plane' to the focal point of the image, but also inwards from the plane closest to us to some point deeper within the fictive space. For our purposes here however, the awakening soldier may be taken as a clear example of this use of geometry in figurative painting, albeit in a more or less occult manner.
The Resurrection, 1458 (?) by Piero della Francesca (c1412-1492): 'buon fresco' and 'a secco', recently restored. Sansepolcro, Museo Civico (Photo: the author)
A detail of the Resurrection, photo taken by the author during the restoration of the fresco
A detail of the previous image showing the pyramidal or triangular conformation of the waking guard
The next instance we shall look at is on one of the two so-called 'pulpits' made by Donatello (c1386-1466) and his assistants very late in his life; there is some question as to whether or not these panels were intended as the sides of pulpits but, in any case, that is how they are displayed today. The complex scene of the Lamentation over the Body of Christ has as its centre the profoundly expressive image of His mother contemplating the extraordinary figure of her dead son - again, completely profile. Mary's head is the apex of a triangle of which the horizontal corpse indicates a kind of mid line, with the ground and various feet below forming the base; Christ's pendulous legs form part of its right side.
The Lamentation, 1460s by Donatello, low relief bronze panel.
The church of San Lorenzo, Florence (Photo: the author)
Filippo Lippi (c1406-1469), a friar-painter like the next artist, is the author of the Barbadori Altarpiece. In this busy, crowded work with the standing Virgin Mary in the centre, Lippi has also made use of the triangle to focus our attention on her: the base is the floor of the room in which the scene is set and the right side of the triangle begins there at the shadowed hem of the kneeling saint's greenish cloak, moving up through his head directly to the Madonna's beautiful face; similarly, on the left side, starting at the hem of the red cloak of that saint, a line may be imagined passing through his head and finishing, as on the right, at the Virgin's face. This picture is a complicated exercise in the use of artificial perspective, with various other (partially hidden) lines also directing our attention towards the Madonna. In spite of the depth created by the illusionistic perspective structure, the 'vertical' triangle in the centre asserts the proximity of the three main figures to the physical picture plane, that is, to our space; another two or three paces and the Madonna could almost walk out of the image. This in turn, in a certain sense, obliquely hints at the flatness of the board on which the image is painted despite the apparent depth: an allusion about an illusion!
The Barbadori Altarpiece (detail), 1438 by Filippo Lippi, tempera on panel
The Louvre, Paris.
(Photo credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)
One might ask, what is the attraction of this particular triangular form? I find that the 'human triangle' is a very stable unit; because of the 'folding' of the limbs involved in assuming the form, there is usually weight and mass as well as the stability. For me as a painter, it is a uniquely satisfying structure. In the large fresco of the Funeral of Saint Stephen, Lippi has again used the 'human triangle' format in the two female figures seated at either side of the front face of the saint's bier. In the detail below the backs and heads of the two figures in question, together with the heads behind them, form another much larger triangle which, following the lines of the raised platforms, lead directly to the Crucifix on the altar situated in the apse at the deepest point in the fictive space. In addition, an inverted triangle, often implied in this kind of use of a distant vanishing point, can be seen in tracing the two lines formed along the 'cushions' above the capitals at the tops of the white columns, also leading straight to the altar Crucifix. Interestingly, the two large triangles just described, both intersecting at the same point (the altar Crucifix) form a Saint James' Cross!
The Funeral of Saint Stephen (detail), 1460, by Filippo Lippi, fresco
Cathedral, Prato
(Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)
Our next example comes from another friar, a fellow Florentine working at much the same time as Filippo: he is known as Fra (friar) Angelico or Beato (blessed) Angelico (born Guido di Pietro: 1395-1455). He is the painter of the exquisite small frescos in the cells of his monastery of San Marco and the painting we will look at is to be seen there still today although it is not a fresco. It is, like Filippo's picture, a large altarpiece painted on wood; like Filippo, Fra Angelico has given us an exercise in perspective illusion (it should be remembered that the 'rules' of mathematical or artificial perspective had only recently been [re]discovered by this time). In this picture, the two main orthogonals, those in the carpet, form the left and right sides of a large triangle and direct our gaze in no uncertain terms to the head of the Madonna. These same lines pass through the heads of the kneeling saints - reinforced by the more central orthogonal lines in the dais - straight to the face of the Virgin who herself, with her spreading blue robe, forms yet another triangle. The general triangular structure is further supported by the ranks of saints on either side. The very deep space in which the event is set, despite being abruptly interrupted by a curtained screen behind the throne, is indicated by the wonderful background forest through whose trunks may be seen even more distant hills.
San Marco Altarpiece, 1438-1443 (?) by Fra Angelico, tempera on panel
San Marco, Florence
(Photo credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)
Finally, two images chosen at random: the first to show, in perhaps one of the clearest examples, the use and power of the 'human triangle', Giovanni Bellini's sublime Madonna of the Meadows; and the second, a small panel by Duccio as an example of an alternative tradition. The Bellini is self-explanatory in that the triangle formed by the Mother and Child is obvious, strong and dynamic: while the figures themselves are static, their form, as a unit, contrasts markedly with both the space (horizontal) and the distance (profound) in the rest of the image. The mainly blue triangle of the Madonna form is however not a rigid geometric sign but constructs a quasi-mountain, so to say, and in that way succeeds in not being a too strong contrast.
The Madonna of the Meadows, c1500, by Giovanni Bellini (?1430 - 1516), oil and egg on panel
National Gallery, London (Photo: the author)
The small panel by Duccio (c1260 - 1318), also in London but originally part of his very large Maestà in Siena, demonstrates satisfactorily I think an older or at least more usual type of composition: the frieze-like procession of figures across the bottom of an image even if, as in this example, there is a valiant attempt to create a space in which the figures can move. In this image nonetheless, there is no fundamental relationship between the action and the setting which functions more like a theatrical backdrop than a real environment. The same comment could indeed be made about the Bellini above except that other things come into play to make the Madonna, albeit very close to us, 'blend in' to the bucolic landscape which is not simply behind her, but, because of the manipulation of the light, 'envelops' her as well. The light in the Duccio panel is consistent on both buildings and figures - coming from the left - but is 'on' them and not 'throughout' them, if I may put it like that, as it is in the Bellini; Duccio's buildings are lit in such a way as to detach them from the foreground action (or vice-versa). The 'human triangle' serves different purposes (Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Lippi) and in the painting by Bellini it serves to provide a strong, stable, central form which commands but does not dominate its setting: unlike the Duccio, we read it directly, at a glance, and not like a story, from left to right.
Christ Healing the Blind Man (1308-1311) by Duccio di Buoninsegna, tempera on panel
National Gallery, London (Photo: the author)
In my last article, Massacio's 'Trinity' Fresco in Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, it was there observed how the use of the triangle, both on the two-dimensional flat surface (the picture plane) and as an indication of depth, was fundamental to the structure of that image. In this relation a question about the significance of the triangle might be raised. In the analysis of many renaissance paintings the presence of geometric figures has been noted, functioning as 'structural' scaffolding on the picture plane but often simultaneously, with perspective drawing, as indicators of depth - as is the case with the Masaccio Trinity image. This is mathematics and geometry but there is of course the theological meaning of the triangle, hardly more obvious than in the title of Masaccio's work, the Trinity! A triangle has three sides which create three points; 'three' and its multiples are significant numbers in Christian theology, beginning with the three persons of the Trinity itself. But Christ rose from the dead after three days, there were 12 apostles, a multiple of three, images of the Crucifixion often show three figures: Jesus on the Cross, His mother Mary and Saint John; and so on and so on. Renaissance paintings - in particular - made use of this basic, fundamental figure, both for its structural potential and its religious significance.
Note:
Mention may be made here of the recently more explicit descriptions by art historians of the techniques used in paintings and especially of those used in frescos. It had been common to describe nearly all frescos, that is, pictures painted on walls in the 'buon fresco' technique, as simply that, "fresco"; however, due to the confirmation of recent restorations (including Piero della Francesca's Resurrection), it is now certain that even medieval artists used the 'a secco' technique much more commonly than might have been thought previously; 'a secco' refers to the application of colours mixed with various binders (but not plaster), including oil (especially for lead white), to the almost completed but dried 'fresco' painting; hence the Italian expression "a secco" meaning basically 'once dried' or 'when dry'. This was done in part because certain colours cannot be safely applied to the wet plaster critical to the 'buon fresco' technique; such colours were liable to drastic change, even to the extent of a 'white' becoming a 'black'! Probably one of the most famous examples of the alteration of a pigment in fresco painting is the famous - but nevertheless beautiful - Crucifixion fresco by Cimabue in the church of St Francis at Assisi.
As far as panel paintings are concerned (that is pictures painted on wooden panels, very often altarpieces), the usual description for pictures painted before the common adoption of oil paint (and canvas) was "tempera"; this term indicated pigments which had been combined with a range of binders, normally egg but possibly glue or oil. These days, indications of the techniques used to produce panel paintings are also more explicit, showing that very often a mixture of techniques was not uncommon.
See Simona Rinaldi's Storia Tecnica dell'Arte: Materiali e metodi della pittura e della scultura (secc. V-XIX), Carocci editore, 2014, p 16.
