Perspective Design for a Stage Set of an Italian Cityscape, Antonio Mauro II
Pen and black ink, brown and gray wash and leadpoint layout lines, roughly 10 x 14 in. (27 x 36 cm). In the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, use the Enlarge or Download links under their image.
This beautifully crafted 18th century design for a stage set, with its complex perspective view of a city street, also works as a drawing.
The artist’s use of wash — both in the heavily shadowed wall on the left and the lighter applications that add dimensionality to the architectural details on the right — give the composition solidity and enhance remarkable feeling of depth created by Mauro’s command of linear perspective.
If you look closely (the high-resolution image on the Met’s site is considerably larger than my detail crops above), you can see some of the artist’s perspective construction lines.
I just love this type of stuff, and am waiting for you to ‘do’ Axel Haig.
Nice thought. Thanks, John. I’m also overdue for a post on Francois Schuiten.
So much to learn from this drawing. You can easily see the horizontal eye level line with the four black vanishing points. When you trace back to see which facades vanish to which points, you can see he has “opened up” the scene, like a classic stage set.
Thanks, James.
Yes, It’s impressive how the different buildings have different vanishing points to suit the arrangement he wants for the set, and yet he manages to make it all seem related as a scene and not incongruent.
I never knew you could use different vanishing points in essentially a one point perspective drawing. Thank you for pointing out the points !