mysterious master of light and shadow---Study of La Tour’s painting and discussion on my own production

• Main Authors: Chia-Lin Shu, 徐家麟
• Other Authors: SHEU KUEN-CHERNJG
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/38226526379778567703

碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 藝術研究所 === 94 === Light plays an important role in the painting’s representation. It directs us to go into a deeper mind besides helping us to feel the beauty of object. During the days of renaissance, Da Vinci used to enhance the third dimension of character or object by lighting and strengthen the three dimensional space of painting’s appearance. Furthermore, by the end of 16th century, Italian artist Caravaggio tried to describe tragic incident and produce ultimately dramatic effects by the diversification of lights and shadows. This almost affects the famous artist, Georges de La Tour, who is called the master of lights. La Tour is a famous French artist in the early 17th century. He devoted himself to the effect of light and shadow on the plane painting. In his painting, the objects were warmly surrounded by candela, lamp, or some mysterious light source. It seemed that the characters were liberated from an imprisoned dark space. Besides, La Tour annotated the lighting differently. Absolute brightness was mixed with absolute darkness. He also added the Holy Spirit into the artificial lighting. La Tour may be regarded as the first artist who endued the lighting and darkness with same symbolization. In this study, we started from the life and art of La Tour. We looked at his early work about realistic daily lighting, and then he turned to be in love with nightly lighting. The impact of Caravaggio on La Tour’s painting was also mentioned. The evolution of La Tour’s style was introduced in details. The value of La Tour’s painting is his grand spiritual power. His characters were unadorned and natural, full of humanistic brilliances. Especially his application of light and shadow, it affected author’s subsequent creative concept deeply. The author also added some analysis on personal production and concepts into the second half of the thesis. Based on La Tour, his usage of light and shadow and affecting elements in his work, the author reviewed his own carefully, trying to find a broader representation space in the future work.