Carlo Crivelli (1435/40-na 1493)Italian painter Carlo Crivelli came from an artistic family. His father, Jacopo, and younger brother, Vittore, were also painters. Carlo probably learned his trade from his father, who worked in and around Venice in the 1440s. Crivelli's oeuvre is entirely dominated by religious subjects. Most of his works are large, multiple altarpieces with bright colours set against a gold background. By using perspectivePerspectiveThe science of perspective consists of a collection of rules that enables the artist to represent a subject in three dimensions on a flat surface. Objects appear smaller the further they are from the viewer. To create an illusion of space the painter must therefore also present things in the distance as being smaller. To do this he can make use of lines drawn across the parallel lines of a surface and continued further till they converge in a single point on the horizon known as the vanishing point. The word 'perspective' comes from the Latin 'perspicere' meaning to look through. A painting with a correct perspective is like a window on the outside world, a hole in the wall through which the viewer can gaze. Crivelli managed to heighten the dramatic effect of his paintings. In the nineteenth century Carlo Crivelli was one of the most popular of the fifteenth-century Italian masters. |
