Cicero denounces catiline by Cesare Mecari

As promised from last week, here is the white toga painting that I love: 19th century Cesare Mecari’s depiction of the orator Cicero’s overwhelming victory against his political rival, Catiline, in front of the roman Senate circa 63BCE.

Notice how the artist uses space and value to drive home the theme of the picture. The senators sit on the left; Catiline sits be himself on the right. The crowd’s spatial arrangement echoes their frame of mind: they are with cicero.

This is likely not exactly how it happened. Even if the togas are really white this time, archeology reveals that the assembly chamber of the roman senate was little more than a town hall at the time. At a high-profile trial like this, the senators would have been sitting shoulder-to-shoulder: there wouldn’t have been enough real estate to give Catiline his ample, dramatic negative space. Likewise, Catiline’s pose is pure exaggerated villainy: It’s not a pose a real man makes: it is drawn to show his psychological state. (In reality, historians debate whether he was the villain at all: some suspect Cicero of setting him up!)

But isn’t this a grand scene you want to believe in? As we will revisit time and time again in this course: art is not about reality, it’s about telling the Truth.

Now, onto colors!

Axis of Color Design

from niji

Speaking of Cicero, he once remarked that rhetoric’s purpose is to “inform, persuade, and entertain.” I think it’s a pretty fitting goal for drawing, which is in many ways, the study of visual rhetoric.