The Art of Seeing:

As we enter the darker winter months in the Northern Hemisphere, this month’s The Art of Seeing will examine how artists have handled the effects and sources of light within darker compositions. Our focus will rest on a single eighteenth-century artwork, through which we will consider the layers of meaning embodied within its presentation of light in darkness through the four senses hermeneutic/ of interpretation. The four senses of interpretation, comprising the literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogic senses, are an ancient, half-forgotten framework through which we can begin to explore an image. This is one way in which we might begin to understand the intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual meanings that radiate beyond the painting itself.

Dr Christine Riding writes;

“Light’ and ‘dark’ had powerful theological, intellectual and cultural connotations beyond art at the time . . .’Let there be light’ signifies far more than the physcial creation of light: it represents God’s creative power and the establishment of order and time, of the celestial and terrestrial realms, contrasting with the initial state of formlessness and darkness.”

Drawing on ideas stemming from what we now call the Enlightenment, we will reflect on the impact of tenebrism—an intensified form of chiaroscuro characterised by stark contrasts between light and darkness—on the viewer’s experience. We will also explore how the practice of educating the eye by observing art slowly and attentively by candlelight, firelight, or moonlight was understood as a pathway to intellectual and spiritual insight.