We have spoken quite a bit here about altarpieces, be it carved wooden altarpieces, polychromatic marble altarpieces, gilt altarpieces and so on. However, there is also another kind of "altarpiece" we have yet to have truly addressed here. What we are speaking about here are 'altarpieces' that are in fact illusionistic paintings; paintings made to appear as though they are grandiose pieces of architecture, but in actually they are frescoes on a flat wall where, by use of illusionistic trompe l'oeil techniques, have been made to appear as thought there is in fact a fully three dimensional, architectural element. These are, to the altar what the illusionistic baroque ceilings paintings are to church architecture more generally.
Today we are just going to take a brief survey of some of these sorts of works, primarily within the Italian context where this tradition is particularly strong.
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| Brescia, ca. 1770-1799 |
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| Como, 1781 |
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| Como, 1756 |
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| Brescia, last quarter of the 18th cent. |
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| Trent, 1760-1764 |
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| Emilia-Romagna, 1741 |
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| Como, 18th cent. |
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| Brescia, 1925-1940 |
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| Lodi, 18th cent. |
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| Brescia, ca. 1750-1775 |
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| Como, 1775 |
To my mind, the lesson in all of this is that we have a tendency in our own days to often 'give up' too easily. By comparison, our Catholic forebears used their creativity along with whatever means they had to beautify their churches and liturgies. We could learn a thing or two from this.
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