The Italian Renaissance deals with the theme of the window by using the rules of perspective. Accodring to these rules, if the focus is a person or a thing inside the room, the outside landscape can be represented only from the point of view of an observer who is situated at a certain distance from the window.
In Renaissance painting of , especially in the Italian one, the window, the veduta, that opens to an outward space, is a pure intellectual construction, it is an assembly, something which comes to add to the scene of the inside. The introduction of the veduta has not for aim to represent what is simultaneously seen, the inside of the room and at the same time what appears through the window. It has for purpose to excite the imagination of the spectator of the picture, to remind him that the scene does not take place in an enclosed space, but has for background the Universe.
Titian - Venus and the Organist – c. 1545-1546 – oil on canvas
This is a superb picture, the eroticism of which is at the same time insolent and held back. The connection between the inside and the landscape has nothing realistic: the light does not come from the outside, but is irradiating from the body of the Goddess. Nature, here, a park with a rigorous perspective, could announce French classicism, which did not exist at Titian's age. It is like a mirage, the daydream of the musician, or rather the creation of both music and desire.
Titian - Venus and Cupid with a Partridge – c. 1550 – oil on canvas
Here, again, our gaze is attracted by the brilliant body of Venus. The landscape would have been a simple décor, if there were not the partridge, which is supposed to have flown from there, underneath, up to the sill of the window.
My approach of the window theme is different to the approach of Italian Renaissance one . In the wake of cubism that introduced multidimensionality, I broke the rules of perspective to express the link between inside and outside. Bonnard and Matisse in their beautiful paintings with windows, had already freed themselves from the perspective contraint by expressing on the surface of the canvas a depth where interior and exterior pass from one to into the other.
Albert Lichten - My Beloved has gone down in his Garden I – 2006 – oil on canvas
This picture is an illustration of a passage of the Song of Songs. The gaze of the fiancée (the people of Israel ) dives into the garden where her beloved (God himself) is gathering lilies for her. What the fiancée is seeing is shown to the spectator: what classical perspective does not allow to show comes here into view. In other terms, inside and outside penetrate into each other.
Albert Lichten - My Beloved has gone down in his Garden II– 2006 – oil on canvas
Another version of the same theme. Here the light and of course the connection of colors are different from those of the first version.
Albert Lichten - Couple and Window IV – 2001 – oil on canvas
The scene here is different from above. The gaze of the man embraces both the mountainous landscape outside and the woman lying inside. That circular gaze demands a torsion of space.
© Reproduction interdite.
