preview

Columbus Before The Council Of Samaca Analysis

Decent Essays
Open Document

The artwork my group of three chose to describe for this assignment is called Columbus Before the Council of Salamaca. William H. Powell painted it in 1847. The professor said to identify three stylistic characteristics, however I am going to identify four of my favorite stylistic characteristics. Theatricality, immediacy, human drama, and descriptive realism of particulars are the four stylistic characteristics from different stylistic periods I am going to pinpoint and describe in the painting. Theatricality is the use of light and shadowy dark to create a spotlight effect, also known as tenebrism. The artist painted tiny segments of windows behind the figures to allow the bright afternoon sunlight to penetrate through it and hit the figures …show more content…

All the figures in the painting have different expressions on their faces. For example Mr. Columbus starrs dirrectly at the group of coucil men sitting infront of him to convince them of the new world he had discovered. He stands infront of the crowd, looking like a honorable man, with his chesting bulsging out and his right footing pointing forward. His left hand is holding a map, while the right firmly points at it. There is a concil man sitted next to where Christopher stands, looks down at the map to validate Mr. Columbus agruement. There are three figures standing on the left excluding the king and his guides. These men seem so suppresed by what Columbus is telling them, that one of them grab the other firmly on the shoulder to perheps ask him how all of it is possible. The king on the other hand opens his month wide in disbelieve and his hands lift up at about a 30 degree angle, as if he was attempting to stop Columbus from fabricating more lies. On the far right of the painting, there is a boy with what appears to be a map that he is showing two men on his right.; they both starr at it while the other lean forward with his hand placed under his chin. Human drama remains me of Giotto style in Italy 1400-1500. He was the first artists to incoporate human drama into his work by including little details of gustures and emotions. This very artist was great at expressing different types of emotions on the faces …show more content…

Caravaggio painted it in the year ca. 1597-1601 and it can be found on page 539 of the texbook. The artworks named the Calling of Mathew and Columbus Before the Council of Salamaca are both similar in many ways. They both have the four stylistic characteristics of human drama, immediacy, theatricality, and discriptive realism of particulars. In Columbus Before the Council of Salamaca Powell used the same technique as Caravaggio to create windoms that allow the afternoon sunlight to reflect on the figures at a particular angle. Powell made his windoms visible to the viewer, however Caravaggio did not; he just gave the viewer a sense of having one. They both used light and shadowy dark to create a spot light effect on their figures, the term known as theatricality. Both of these paintings display a great deal of human drama, the first painting show Columbus infront the concil men trying to convince them of his finding, while the second is a babically scene of Jesus Calling Mathew, who was then Levi the tax collector. Those surrounding Jesus were surprise that he wanted a man that must of them thought was the biggest sinner of all to follow him and so were those listening to Mr. Columbus. The immediacy play a great role in both of the paintings, in Calling of Saint Matthew, Jesus raise his left hand to point at Levi,

Get Access