A multi-figure composition is a type of composition that consists of a large number of figures combined in one group. This variety is considered one of the most difficult in painting. Although silhouettes are of great importance in the semantic content of the picture, the interior space is equally important.
Multi-figure composition in painting
It is interesting to know how well-known artists of the past time and masters in the present coped with the problems associated with this artistic direction.
The Sistine Chapel is Michelangelo's greatest creation. For her painting, he used various biblical stories that tell about the creation of the world and the appearance of people on earth, etc. With the help of scale - the large size of the main figures - the painter achieved the effect of special expressiveness of key scenes.
Michelangelo’s figures of people are distinguished by vivid expression, each gesture has its own deep meaning. It’s easy to find and read. For example, a man who clasped his head in his hands conveys thoughtfulness, detachment. The image of a hunched figure expresses gloom and sorrow.
The multi-figure composition symbolizes in poses and gestures not only the expressiveness of the action, but also reveals its content.
It is interesting that often a gesture conveys the author’s intention and plays its role. The attention of the viewer to some phenomenon with the help of an outstretched hand helps to expand the boundaries of the plot, indicates what is happening outside of it.
No less important for this type of art is the look, what it is addressed to. Thus, you can connect individual figures or combine them into a group, cut off one character from all the others, thereby highlighting it.
In this direction of art, one-figure, two-figure and multi-figure compositions are distinguished.
Static group portrait
For many centuries, this type of painting occupied the most important place. Many artists earned by painting portraits. Indeed, at a time when there was no photograph, portrait writing was the only way to capture an important moment for a long memory, to perpetuate the image of yourself and your relatives. In posing, each of the participants sought to look attractive and rich.
New trends
Over the years, a static portrait has lost its relevance, as artists have always tried to create something new, to go beyond the usual.
One of these creators was H. Rembrandt - one of the largest representatives of the golden age of Dutch painting. He was not afraid to break traditions and made a revolution in the direction of drawings of multi-figure composition, creating the canvas “Night Watch”. The characters in this picture - fighters of an elite company - were not depicted in the front, but in the usual official setting. The portrait is filled with lively gestures and natural facial expressions.
The 19th century brought a new artistic direction to multi-figure composition - a genre group portrait. In these paintings, people were passionate about common activities - talking, playing with children. Background served as landscapes or home interior.
Religion and mythology in painting
In paintings with elevated themes, the most impressive multi-figure silhouette compositions are found. A perfect example of this is the work of Renaissance artists: Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Titian, Caravaggio, Donatello, Rafael Santi.
Contemporary artists
Painters of our time are far from often using complex multi-figure compositions. Stanley Spencer used this technique in his work, writing a series of paintings on the theme of Christ, including The Last Supper, Resurrection. The British artist interpreted these religious events in the customs of modern times.
Interior space
Creating an interior in a picture has certain difficulties. Even Giotto di Bondone, an Italian artist and founder of the Proto-Renaissance, wrote a multi-figure composition in the interior, which was often in open space. The painter added external architectural forms to the image: columns, pediments and roofs. Sometimes several interiors were depicted on one canvas.
At that time, this technique in the artist’s work was perceived not as an enclosed space, but as an architectural design that separates events and makes them deeper in content.
The evolution of the interpretation of multi-figure composition in the interior in painting is most successfully set forth in the writings of the Proto-Renaissance period. This is the period in the Renaissance, which lasted from the second half of the 13th and the 14th century. The attention in them is mainly concentrated on the development of direct perspective rules, which is easiest to show with examples of the interior, while the problem of isolation remained open. The term "interior" has always been tantamount to a departure from strict standards in the direct perspective, had a special figurative spatial tasks.
The enclosure and the magnitude of the interior began to be most deeply understood as soon as art reached an appropriate stage of development. Appeared tricks to create the impression that the viewer is present in the interior.
An essential component of the image is the enclosure of the frame, its size and a sense of the presence of the audience themselves in the picture.
Types of building space
As follows from the theory of constructing architectural space, the emergence of a direct linear perspective is associated with the need to use images of architecture.
Natural landscapes are less dependent on it, and in silhouette painting the use of direct perspective is even more difficult. After all, the construction of space directly depends on the plastics of objects and bodies.
In such canvases, where figures of people occupy a central place, space appears only as a result of synthesis, direction and movement of forms.
A striking example of such a picture is the work of El Greco's Resurrection. The central axis is the image of the defeated warrior and Christ. Around the central action you can observe the movement of the figures. In the background, the figures of warriors are screw-shaped.
The classic picture includes inseparable linear rhythms and the plastic construction of the group.
In modern painting, such a direction as a sculpturally constructed still life has almost completely disappeared. The use of a group of figures connected by plastic is also extremely rare.
Much more often the paintings depict a scatter of figures, a wide arrangement of objects.
Spatial structure
Each kind of image corresponds to its own figurative tasks and solutions.
At the same time, the classical perspective occupies a subordinate position, and the direct (linear perspective) helps to build an open wide architectural space or interior scene of the action.
The subject and space, the nature of the filing of the subject and space and the relationship between them is very important.
The type of composition also depends on this kind of connection.
Conclusion
The subject space and the system of placement (removal) of objects are created using color, tonal, linear perspective. In this direction, space obeys the subject. At the same time, another situation is possible when space dominates as a medium that absorbs objects.
For example, on Rembrandt’s canvases, dark colors dissolve the contours of objects, and the twilight of his later works is not just the color of the object changed by the environment, but a materialized space.