MML Computer-Assisted Translation

Victor Stoichita, from A Short History of The Shadow

Silke Mentchen

The primitive nature of the first act of representation described by Pliny* resides in the fact that the first pictorial image [1] would [2] not have been the result of a direct observation of a human body and its representation but [3] of capturing this body’s projection. The effect of the shadow is to reduce the surface volume. Initially[4] , there was no intervention on the part of the artist. Being [5] the representation of a representation (an image of the shadow), the first painting was nothing more than a copy of a copy. Some of the conventions of the early image included [6] the shoulder in the background being level [7] with the one in the foreground or the face being represented in profile but with an eye seen from the front.

Somewhere else[8] , Pliny tells us that it would [9] not be until[10] the advent [11] of the great artists that the stereotype of the flat projection would at last be replaced by relief and that shading would abandon its primary function as a matrix of the image to become a means[12] of expression. What is fairly apparent from his text is that the primary purpose of basing [13] a representation on the shadow was possibly that of turning it into a mnemonic aid[14] ; of making the absent [15] become present. In this case the shadow’s resemblance [16] to the original plays a crucial role.

* Pliny the Elder: Natural History, first century AD