東西の繪畫における空間構造の比較 : レオナルドオ研究の一節

Abstract

To speak fundamentally, painting has nature as its object to represent--nature in its broader sense, including human beings, animals and so forth. It is impossible, however, to represent every single attribute of nature. All that can be done in painting is to represent coloured forms found of the nature, which means not merely colour and form, but the space with its specific kind of contour which distinguishes colour and form, closely related with other attributes, of one thing from those of the others. The existence of one thing fundamentally takes for granted the existence of other things. To represent nature thus means to manifest various space constructions of things in relation to others. Space comprises three directions. When we speak of something having its specific space construction, we mean that it has its own particular way of extending in these three directions. We find in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci, represented as their background, ranges of high hills as seen from great distance. In the Western landscape paintings from Renaissance on to the nineteenth century, the background as a rule has the touch of depth and distance. Mountains were painted nearly always as from great distance. Far Eastern painters on the other hand took for the most part high mountains as the chief object of their landscape paintings. Of course, not a few instances with high mountains as the background are found, and even some theorists of painting refer to such. As a rule, however, high mountains were painted as the chief object as seen from much nearer distance. We even find cases where the difference of distance is represented as that of height. In the Western World, the demand for height manifested itself rather in the construction of Gothic cathedrals; in landscape paintings the demand for depth is more to be observed. Far Eastern landscape paintings, on the contrary, have shown a remarkably stronger demand for height.