Abstract
By focusing on the architectural qualities inherent to quadratura painting, this essay embraces the acknowledgment of its perspective strategies, intended space/form, and achieved synthesis of both represented and built space. To accomplish such an inquiry, the imaginary architectures outlined by Luís Gonçalves Sena (1754) at Santarém’s Jesuit College were taken analyzed. In order to verify the compositional and spatial qualities underlying the outlined image, two methods are explored: (1) the perspective restitution, dismantling the quadratura through a reverse application of perspective procedures and removing parameters strictly related to the ars pingendi; (2) the reconstitution of the architectural idea by searching for its compositional matrix and confronting the illusory space with the wider practice of the scientia aedificandi. These methodologies allow a complete analysis of the quadratura’s architectural contents as well as the Baroque space perceived as a whole.
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Notes
Luís Gonçalves Sena (1713–1790) started his career as a studio painter who gradually developed his skills as a mural painter and, finally, as a quadratura painter. It was between the years 1748 (sacristy ceiling of Santarém's Misericórdia church) and 1754 (ceiling of the main chapel of Santarém’s Jesuit College Church) that he developed the theoretical and technical skills necessary to execute architectural perspectives.
Such formal references include the brackets detected either in the quadratura or in the internal elevations of the Church of Menino Deus (1711–1731, Lisbon), by João Antunes and João Nunes de Abreu respectively, or in the architectural elements represented and collected by Domenico Rossi in his Studio d’architettura civile II (1711, Rome) tav. 15, which are coincident with forms applied at the altar of Our Lady of Good Death (1740) by João António Bellini de Padua in the Jesuit college church at Santarém.
The perspective outline was obtained after an extensive survey that included both the architectural space and the quadratura image. This survey was an integral part of the research project being achieved through the crossing of data collected by metric survey and photographic survey.
References
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Cabeleira, J. Deconstructing the Imaginary Space of a Quadratura. Nexus Netw J 22, 25–44 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-019-00431-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-019-00431-w