Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting

Lovely exhibition at the National Gallery looking at how architecture was used in Renaissance paintings and how those pictures themselves fitted the architecture. 
This was partly a chance to a see picture you knew well in a new context but also introduced me to new ideas on the symbolism of architecture. It talked about the difference between using real and imagined architecture. Sometimes an artist wanted to put an event in a real space such as two of St Zenobius placing him in the actual streets in Florence in which his miracles had been reported. At other times artists had to create a space they didn’t know such at the Temple of Solomon which no longer existed.


I loved the first section which recreated the space where a virgin and child by Veneziano used to hang. It also talked about how architecture was used in a picture to draw the viewer into the scene for example threw an arch or an open door.


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