Talk:San Marco Altarpiece

Good Effort

This is a really good start! Seems to be mostly accurate and based on good sources.137.222.14.132 (talk) 16:59, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

formal analysis section should be omitted

The "formal analysis" section is WELL BELOW the average professional standard in art history publications on Renaissance art (I speak as a professional--my Ph.D. is in Italian Renaissance art, and I have been teaching at a Tier 1 research university for 25 years). It reads like an undergraduate or amateur text, and contains literally meaningless assertions about the innovative aspects of this particular painting. The diagrammatic overlays on the photo of the painting are especially pointless: they do NOT clarify the perspective structure of the picture, and they DO add to the author's confusion between 2-D (surface) and illusionistic (virtual 3-D) elements in Fra Angelico's design. Among other things, the author misdescribes the objectively describable characteristics of the painting's composition. The vanishing point of the perspectival schema (embodied in the orthogonals of the carpet) is NOT at the Virgin's chin, but at her right hand. Likewise, the Virgin ALONE is ON the central vertical axis of the image (this is not a perspectival, but rather a 2-D design feature), which intersects the horizontal axis in the space between her knees; it is INACCURATE to say that the Virgin AND Child are AT the intersection between the two axes. Also, even in its ruined condition, this painting has noticeably different kinds of red pigment used in the various figures' garments and in the decorations. To write of a generic "red" tonality used to unify different figures, etc. is to disregard the not-so-subtle contrast between reds in which vivid vermilion pigment dominates, and reds in which madder lakes impart their rosier or more violet "flavor" to a figure's garments. The arrows drawn by the author are ARBITRARY and MISLEADING. PLEASE GET RID of that pointless and confusing analysis, before hapless undergraduates think its the right way to talk about a Renaissance picture. Paedagogue (talk) 23:06, 31 August 2010 (UTC)