Giulio Romano's Sala dei Giganti | tradition-modernity

Merging Two Worlds:

The Relationship of the Viewer and the Viewed in Giulio Romano's Sala dei Giganti

Excerpt of My Term Paper for Course "Michelangelo Architect: Precedents, Innovations, Influence".

Harvard GSD, Advisor: Prof. Christine Smith, Spring 2013.

Received "Distinction". Nominated for GSD Platform 6.

The topic of this essay is the spatial thinking behind the design of Sala dei Giganti ("Room of Giants") in the Palazzo del Te designed by Italian painter and architect Giulio Romano (1499-1546). Most amazing of all is this chamber's internal structure which was constructed without boundaries; its four walls and ceiling form an unbroken continuum that surround the viewer. I am going to argue that the existence of frame in a painting or a fresco actually indicates the viewer's control over the imagined world. By erasing the frame, we can reverse the relationship between the viewer and the viewed: the viewer loses his/her protection and falls into the control of the imagined world; the viewer, to some extent, becomes the viewed.

Location of the Room Axonometric Projection of Palazzo del Te

Mural Painting of Sala dei Giganti

a Corner of the Sala Dei Giganti

(EXCERPT)

The Role of Frame and Its Disappearance

The unusual design choice of the Sala Dei Giganti, namely, to eliminate the separation of walls and ceiling in order to consider the entire room a single scene, is its most striking feature. The disappearance of such customary architectural elements as doorframes, moldings, a cornice, friezes, and the like, makes the room different from any other frescoed chamber in his time. Its four walls and ceiling form an unbroken continuum that surrounds the viewer. Thus, the question arises of what the role of frames is and what the meaning of their disappearance may mean in a mural painting. In order to analyze this issue further, we can divide the use of frame in mural paintings into three different situations.

Situation1 Different Scenes inside Individual Frames

The first places paintings of different scenes into a system of frames dividing the walls or the ceiling which ordinarily follows the actual structure of the room.

Situation1

SS. Cosma e Damiano, 530 A.D ,Rome

This style of decoration can be traced back to the ancient Roman tradition. One of the best examples is the famous “Volta Dorata”(Golden Vault) of Domus Aurea which was a large landscaped portico villa, built by Emperor Nero in the heart of the ancient city. As we can see, the wall is divided into regular shape rectangular shapes, such that the paintings act as small windows. This window-like effect ofpaintings had been passed on to the mural paintings in early Christian churches and, finally, to Renaissance paintings. In early Christian churches like SS. Cosma e Damiano, 530 A.D., the paintings on the wall as well as on the apse are independent of each other and have strong frames. They are, to the viewer, independent worlds inside a frame, separated from the viewer’s world.

During the Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti himself had also acknowledged the window implications of the frame in his essay, “On Painting”:

Indent all lines hereLet me tell you what I do when I am painting. First of all, on the surface on which I am going to paint, I draw a rectangle of whatever size I want, which I regard as an open window through which the subject to be painted is seen.

According to Alberti, the existence of some form of boundary actually defines the edges of the image and, at the same time, separates it both from the sphere of the observer and from the world around it. In other words, the images are “trapped” in their own frames.

Furthermore, another development of the Renaissance framing mechanism enhanced this relationship between real and imaginary, viewer and viewed: mathematical perspective. Alberti explains in his treatise that representational space isto be thought of as the intersecting plane of a visual pyramid, one whose centric ray(or vanishing point) is designed to remain coincident with the eye of the beholder. In order for such a system to work ideally, however, the spectator is required to remain in a fixed and centralized position, a location that is coextensive with, yet distinct from, the area depicted. Thus, like the idea of the beholder with a sense of authority and completion and in this manner, enabled him to maintain an illusion of sovereignty over a circumscribed, fictive world.

Therefore, in the first situation, the existence of frame in a painting or a fresco actually indicates the viewer's control over the imagined world, which provides the viewer with a sense of authority, sovereignty as well as security.

Situation2 One Continuous Painting behind Frames

The second organizes continuous paintings of a complete scene behind a framing system. This situation differs from the first in that the paintings are actually a continuous scene and, therefore, the frame system becomes a “mesh” in front of the art instead of boundaries outside of it.

Situation Two

Camera Picta in the Palazza Ducale	Camera Picta in the Palazza Ducale
Ceiling of the Sala di Psiche

One of the earliest examples of this kind is Mantegna's camera picta in the Palazza Ducale, the so-called Camera degli Sposi, completed in 1474. This wondrous chamber had functioned as the main reception room of the Gonzaga until the middle of the 1530s. The mural paintings are actually continuous, easily recognizableby their common bright blue sky and white clouds. Compared to the paintings in the first situation, these seem to have escaped their structural limitations.

On the other hand, the element of frame, the painted pilastered piers and ceiling, looks like a pavilion in an infinite outdoor space under the blue sky. The frame itself doesn’t put boundaries on the painted world but defines the boundaries of the viewer’s world. It provides the viewer a separation from the imagined world, or a kind of protection. In this situation, the painted world is infinite and surrounds the viewer in a powerful and overwhelming manner; the frame is the shelter of or refuge for the viewer who has been placed at the center of an illusory expanse and seeks a sense of security and calm.

In this situation, the viewer is, in fact, under the “gaze” of an infinite imagined world. So the relationship of the viewer and the viewed is actually reversed. Connect para.

A similar example is the Sala di Psiche by our architect, Giulio Remano, in which the dark blue sky and the clouds unite all the paintings into an illusion of a night sky on top of the room, creating a sense of continuity.

In addition, the structural logic of the ceiling is delicately maintained, articulated as the frame before the illusion. The existence of the frame prevents the invasion of the viewed’s world into the viewer’s world. However, the frame stops when it reaches the lower part of the chamber-- which belongs the third situation, the disappearance of frame.

Situation3 One Continuous Painting without Frame

In the third situation continuous paintings cover the whole surface of a room, eliminating entirely the element of frame.

Situation 3

The Four Walls of the Sala Dei Gigan

Finally, we are left to ask what will happen should we erase the frames? If frames provide the viewer control over the viewed in the first situation and give the viewer protection from the viewed in the second situation, the Sala dei Giganti, which belongs to the third situation, with its lack of framing devices, denies the viewer such control and protection. In the Sala dei Giganti, Giulio's approach completely erases the distinction between the two worlds. As Vasari and his successors observed, the Sala dei Giganti forms a single, unified image, one that remains unbroken by frames of any kind.

If we compare Giulio’s approach with Alberti’s conception of painting, we can see that Alberti's images were conceived as spatial extensions of the painter's own world, his proverbial window opening out onto a carefully controlled and calibrated environment while Giulio's innovative schema, however, abolish the safety of Alberti's construction: the threatening mass of the false cupola, the falling Titans, and the precarious and crumbling walls of the Sala dei Giganti invade the visitor's territory, forcing her to become part of the surrounding event.[1] Therefore, the seamless structure of the Sala dei Giganti brings about a union of subject and object which actually creates an acute sense of discomfort.

The chamber's cycloramic structure destroys the pre-eminence of the viewing subject. Upon entering the chamber, the visitor finds herself the focus of a dynamic conflict, becoming the veritable center of the pictorial field. Surrounded by a fictive world over which she has little control, the observer not only sees, but is seen. Furthermore, there is no refuge for the visitor to escape; the viewer’s world and the fictive world merge into one. It is this sense of meldingthat gives rise to feelings of fear and a sensation of discomfort.

Through the analysis of the three situations, we can conclude that the existence of frame in a painting or a fresco actually indicates the viewer's control over the imagined world. By erasing the frame, we can reverse the relationship between the viewer and the viewed: the viewer loses his/her protection and falls into the control of the imagined world; the viewer, to some extent, becomes the viewed.