Echoes and shapes

I hope readers won't mind one more post about art in Berlin... I've been to the Gemäldegalerie before, but it was before I started this blog, so I want to mention three paintings here with beautiful, detailed landscapes. They each illustrate ways in which shapes and repeated patterns were used to provide harmony and visual interest, linking distant space with details in the foreground.     

Johann Koerbecke, Christ Carrying the Cross (detail), 1456/57

Triangles dominate this first example, by Westphalian painter Johann Koerbecke. The clouds, trees and hillsides share a triangular form that is repeated at different levels of detail. White blossoms and clusters of leaves echo the overall shapes of the trees. The mounds, hillsides and distant mountain vary in colour but rise at similar angles. The sharper peaks of the building spires resemble the taller trees. In the foreground hats, arms, weapons and the angle of heads all follow the compositional scheme. And the cross on Christ's shoulder forms a triangle aligned with the hills behind, leading the eye into the landscape.     

Joos van Cleve, Triptych with the Adoration of the Kings (detail), c. 1520

Moving into the 16th century, Joos van Cleve from Antwerp provides a different kind of visual pleasure with shapes chosen for the building and rock formation. They echo each other, but contrast pleasingly too: golden stone fashioned in classical proportions for the tower and entrance; silvery grey for the towering, irregular rock arch in the distance. Negative space, allowing us framed glimpses of the landscape, matches the adjacent stone. That blue gap in the rocks is a version of the smaller outcrop on the left (or, in reverse, the larger one on the right). Similarly the green space in the entrance way emphasises the arches designed into each building, including the open dome under which the Three Kings are assembled.     

Joachim Patinir, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 1520

Finally, here is a Joachim Patinir landscape of the kind I was talking about on this blog recently. My attention was drawn immediately to the mountain which protectively encircles a city in the same way that Mary, in her red cloak, holds the infant Jesus. Once you notice this pattern you start to see versions of it elsewhere - on the right there is an oval-shaped clearing in which a single deer stands, beyond it a village which seems to be arranged in a circle, and then a windmill perched on a small, rounded hill. Circling paths lead through a peaceful, verdant landscape and everything has an aura of rest and security, a moment of welcome repose on the flight into Egypt.