“The baroque example of Pietro da Cortona’s ceiling painting of The Glorification of Urban VIII (Rome, 1633-9) in the Palazzo Barberini is, in many respects, a paragon of seventeenth century baroque attitudes to spectacle and illusionism. The single, immobile viewpoint of the classical spectator is transformed into a dynamic process that changes as a result of its three-dimensional capacity to actively engage the spectator in spatial terms. The Renaissance ideal of a perspectivally guided representation (evident in Raphael’s School of Athens) is replaced by a baroque concern with complex, dynamic motion and multiple perspectives.
The baroque’s difference to classical systems lies in the refusal to respect the limits of the frame. Instead it “tend[s] to invade space in every direction” (Focillon 1992, 58), combining multiple, shifting view points and narrative perspectives – all of which operate to collapse the classical function of the frame. The frame is present so that its framing purpose can be undermined. Open systems typical of the baroque permit a greater flow between the inside and outside, and operate according to a polycentric logic. Cortona’s ceiling painting reveals precisely such a polycentric organization.
Whereas Raphael contains his narrative by framing it within a hemispherical border that rigidly encloses the composition, Cortona uses the frame in order to escape its limits. Despite the seemingly distinct narrative segments, Cortona isn’t concerned with a narrative and visual border such as that present in Raphael’s painting – a point witnessed in the fact that numerous figures and swirling clouds tumble and float in front of and behind the painted stucco frames with the result that the narrative from one panel literally spills into the narrative of another.
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Baroque Perceptual Regimes, Dr. Angela Ndalianis
