Fine Art-The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden
Introduction
Creative art is a form of visual art which is mainly given appreciation because of its aesthetic, intellectual or imaginative content. Fine art painted pieces consist of an arrangement of colors, shapes, tones, textures and lines which are placed on a two dimensional surface to make aesthetic paintings. There are different pieces of fine art which may be abstract or naturalistic. Naturalistic and representational fine art pieces represent real life natural forms whereas, abstract forms represent lifeless shapes that are of a geometrical nature. Naturalistic fine art examples include pieces by photorealist Estes Richard and abstract cases could be exemplified by works such as those done by Bridget Riley and Mondrian Piet.
Fine art pieces may also be a hybrid of both naturalistic and abstract art forms. Fine art pieces may also be differentiated on the basis of their genre. As such fine art pieces may be portraits, still life, landscape, genre scene or narrative history work that has some form of story to tell. The medium and painting material may also vary depending on the time, technology and preferences of the time. This paper reviews one example of a piece of fine art by Massachio (Casazza, 1990). The piece to be artistically reviewed is known as Cacciata dei progenitori dall’Eden (“Expulsion from the garden of Eden”). This fresco was painted by Massachio (Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone) who was the pioneering great painter of the Italian renaissance. Massachio is said to have been a great painter of his time and he applied great recreation of lifelike movements and figures as well as the development of a three dimensional perception.
The “Expulsion from the garden of Eden” is fresco from the early rennaisnace in Italy which was greatly crafted by Massachio (Casazza, 1990). This fresco constitutes of one scene among the array of paintings made by the same artsist and many others such as Masolono at around 1425 on the Brancacci Chapel in Florence Italy. This fine art piece shows the bibilical expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. This is pictorial representation of the story from the book of Genesis in the third chapter. However, it slightly differs from other accounts such as the canonical account. This is thus a historical narrative piece because it is used to tell a story-which in this case is the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (Chase, 1962). The fine art painting is just more than a representation of fine art, but acts like a narrative that has a story to tell.
This is a naturalistic form of fine art painting because it shows natural forms consisting of human figures, angels, fig leaves and palm leaves. The painting tries to represent natural forms with the least distortion as much as possible and can thus be termed as one great naturalism piece. However, it is not fully naturalistic because it contains some abstract geomertical shapes such as the vertical doors which depict the gates to the heavenly garden of Eden. The swords held by the angels are also not naturalistic and represent abstract shapes and thus the whole painitning is not solely naturalistic, but rather a mix of the two. Therefore, the picture is both naturalistic and abstract. This is perhaps the first expression of a dynamic painting implying movement as Adam and Eve move away from the garden(James, 2004).The pictures also have expressions of emotions through sobbing and crying. This is perhaps among the first paintings to have such features expressed and is an implication of an advancement of art at around this time.
There is good use and enhancement of proportionality within the picture and the artist may have been very good for his times and the natural figure of the human anatomy is represented with better considerations of proportionality. However, there was a slight mishap on the right foot of Adam which is being drwn forward. A keen look at the foot shows that it is slightly curved and quite unlike the left foot. However, there is a clear lack of the use of perspective within this piece of fine art painting. The fine art painting seems to have no foreground, middleground nor background and as such it appears crowded and feels too much packed into a limited space. The artist failed to create an impression of depth and distance. This lack of spatial expresssion makes the painting miss the interesting look it would have had, had he captured the art of expressing distance and depth through use of perspective or different tonal variations of color as an alternative to the use perspective(James, 2004). As a result of this, there is a clear lack of volume and space within the picture. The lack of depth suggests shallowness and as such the aspect of volume is not well expressed.
The artist makes great use of line to make divides within the painting. The bold vertical pillars demarcating the entry are perhaps the strongest use of line that serves to show the separation between the garden and the outside world. The lines also sharply cut the skyline from the land and there is more application of curved rather than straight lines within the painting. The mass in terms of both color and images within the painiting is evenely distributed within the painting.
The painter does very well in expressing textural differences between surface. Despite the use of closely related colors on both the ground and the subjects of the painting, he still manages to portray the differences between these two by maintaing a textural variation that becomes evident through the use of different textures for the ground and their bodies.
This painting was meant for the Brancacci Chapel in Florence Italy and as such it implies that this was a picture meant to impart some religious teaching, probably moral teachings which were meant for the visitors of the chapel (Chase, 1962). The moral teaching of the picture is that evil is punishable and by sinning we lose the favor of the almighty and m religious era in which ay end up being expelled from his presence. This implies that the painting may be from a religious era within which religion was of greater significance and importance (Chase, 1962).
In context this painting may be compared to Michelangelo’s work on the Sistine Chapel. The paininting has the same theme, but has greater size and crafting in comparison to Massachio’s work. The two are quite similar in the effect of proportionality application which is well observed. However, the Sistine chapel work is by far much better in the use of color compared to the “The expulsion from the Garden of Eden.” In conclusion Massachio’s work is indeed great if looked at from the perspective of the time within which it was crafted, because a variety of artistic colors had not developed, neither had fine art rules and guiding principles that would guide artists in their work.
References
Casazza, O. (1990),. Masaccio and the Brancacci Chapel, Scala Publishers
Chase, E. A. (1962),. The expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Platt & Munk Publishers
James, P. N. (2004),. Masaccio – Trinity: The Emergence of a Psychodynamic Image, CV Publications
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