DOI article:
Kern, Ulrike: Shaftesbury's Dictionary of Terms of Art
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.56525#0027
26
ULRIKE KERN
2. Lucas Vorsterman the Elder after Rubens, Descent from the Cross, 1620, engraving, 58.2 x 43.5 cm,
London, The British Museum. © Hie Trustees of the British Museum
Shaftesbury refers to the pair of ‘masses or groups’ at a single occasion in the Plastics. At this instance,
he argued that distant views through a window in portraits neglected the ideals of rendering symmetry and
size, and that the same was true for masses or groups between the particular parts of the painting:
... e.g. in portraitures, even in half-lengths and heads, often a window open and a distant perspective of small and
lessened objects, no way, not by any medium or middle size united to the great. This a plain breach of symmetry, and
an errour in the magnitudes.44
44 Shaftesbury/Rand, p. 153. Shaftesbury had no high esteem for portraits in general, see ibidem, p. 134-136.
ULRIKE KERN
2. Lucas Vorsterman the Elder after Rubens, Descent from the Cross, 1620, engraving, 58.2 x 43.5 cm,
London, The British Museum. © Hie Trustees of the British Museum
Shaftesbury refers to the pair of ‘masses or groups’ at a single occasion in the Plastics. At this instance,
he argued that distant views through a window in portraits neglected the ideals of rendering symmetry and
size, and that the same was true for masses or groups between the particular parts of the painting:
... e.g. in portraitures, even in half-lengths and heads, often a window open and a distant perspective of small and
lessened objects, no way, not by any medium or middle size united to the great. This a plain breach of symmetry, and
an errour in the magnitudes.44
44 Shaftesbury/Rand, p. 153. Shaftesbury had no high esteem for portraits in general, see ibidem, p. 134-136.