Space in Classical Chinese and Italian Painting: Late Renaissance conceptual and geometric devices

Pedro P. Palazzo

Authors

Pedro P. Palazzo Author

Keywords:

Architectural Space, Perspective, Cultural History, China, Italy

Abstract

This article offers a comparative view of the development of representations of architectural and open spaces in Chinese and Italian paintings and drawings. Architectural historians have long discussed the concept of space within theories of aesthetic perception and cognition. Their works, however, have bound the study of spatial conception to extraneous notions such as artistic freedom, and to a teleological view of Modernism as the end(s) of all spatial development in architecture and its artistic representation. Examining the representation of space in premodern art makes it possible to understand spatial articulation in architecture, urban and landscape design in terms of the cultures that produced it, free from the assumptions of modern theory. Chinese and Italian art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as seen through the eyes of sixteenth century critics, is particularly relevant to such a study: both traditions reckoned with their past in light of contemporary efforts to assert new systems of territorial governance and to define the relationship between technical and gentlemanly approach es to art and architecture. Through a study of a few canonical works of two-dimensional spatial representation, the article explores concepts such as void and form, depth and shallowness, and their political and cultural significance in both societies.

Author Biography

Pedro P. Palazzo

Pedro P. Palazzo is Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Brasília. He holds a PhD (2010) and an MA (2006) from the University of Brasília, and a BS in Architecture with a Certificate in East Asian Studies from the University of Maryland (2003). An architectural historian and preservationist, he studies the relationship between learned classical architecture and vernacular building, and between traditional and modern construction, focusing on the western Mediterranean and the Portuguese-speaking world. He has directed historic preservation surveys for Brazil’s National Institute for Artistic and Historical Heritage (IPHAN).

References

Argan, G. C. (1973). El concepto del espacio arquitectónico desde el barroco a nuestros días (L. Rainis, Trans.). Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión. (Original work published 1961)

Bradburne, J. M. (Ed.). (2020). Raffaello and Zhang Zeduan: new perspectives on perspective. Florence: Mandragora.

Bush, S. (Ed.). (2012a). Early Chinese texts on painting (2. ed.). Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univ. Press.

Bush, S. (Ed.). (2012b). Introduction. In Early Chinese texts on painting (2. ed., pp. 1–17). Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univ. Press.

Cahill, J. (1978). Parting at the shore: Chinese painting of the early and middle Ming dynasty, 1368-1580. New York: Weatherhill.

Elkins, J. (1992). Renaissance perspectives. Journal of the History of Ideas, 53(2), 209–230. https://doi. org/10.2307/2709871

Evans, R. (1995). The projective cast: architecture and its three geometries. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Gombrich, E. H. (1996). The social history of art. In R. Woodfield (Ed.), The essential Gombrich: selected writings on art and culture (pp. 369–380). Lon don: Phaidon.

Kita, S. (1999). The last Tosa: Iwasa Katsumochi Matabei, bridge to Ukiyo-e. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Krier, R. (1988). Architectural composition. New York: Rizzoli. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/ architecturalcom0000krie

Lee, S. E., & Ho, W.-K. (1964). Scattered pearls beyond the ocean. The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 51(2), 23–39. Retrieved from https://www.js tor.org/stable/25151985

Liu, J. (2003). Chinese literature and painting. Comparative Literature: East & West, 5(1), 150–160. https:// doi.org/10.1080/25723618.2003.12015636

Liu, X. (2002). The Qin and Han dynasties. In N. S. Steinhardt (Ed.), Chinese architecture (pp. 33–59). New Haven: Yale University Press. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/chinesearchitec t0000unse

Ortiz, V. M. (1999). Dreaming the Southern Song landscape: the power of illusion in chinese painting. Leiden: Brill.

Panofsky, E. (1997). Perspective as symbolic form (C. S. Wood, Trans.). New York: Zone.

Pérez-Gómez, A. (1983). Architecture and the crisis of mod ern science. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Schumacher, T. L. (1987). Deep space shallow space. Architectural Record, 175(1), 37–42.

Schwarzer, M. W., & Schmarsow, A. (1991). The emergence of architectural space: August Schmarsow’s theory of “Raumgestaltung.” Assemblage, (15), 48. https://doi.org/10.2307/3171125

Scott, G. (1914). The architecture of humanism; a study in the history of taste. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved from http://archive.org/details/cu31924014760353

Soullière, E. (2018). Chinese visual culture traditions: looking back and looking forward. New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 20(2), 3–39. Retrieved from https://nzasia.org.nz/wp-content/ uploads/2025/10/nzjas_dec18_soulliere-2018-December.pdf

Trachtenberg, M. (2010). Building-in-time: from Giotto to Alberti and modern oblivion. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Wölfflin, H. (1888). Renaissance und Barock: eine Untersuchung über Wesen und Entstehung des Barockstils in Italien. München: T. Ackermann. Retrieved from http://archive.org/details/gri_33125006523688

Wölfflin, H. (1950). Principles of art history: the problem of the development of style in later art (M. D. M. Hottinger, Trans.). New York: Dover. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/principlesofar th00woel

Space in Classical Chinese and Italian Painting

Late Renaissance conceptual and geometric devices

Authors

Keywords:

Abstract

Author Biography

References

Downloads

Published

Issue

Section

License

Metrics