Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Volterra, 1834
I made some notes on this painting of Volterra when I saw it in the Louvre two years ago. Volterra isn’t far from the apartment I rent in southern Tuscany and I can tell you that it still looks like this painting. I uploaded this Corot jpeg as large as possible to try to make a couple of points about how the painting might have been conceived. First off, without repeating my thoughts on Corot from an earlier post, I want to continue the idea of zones in the painting and how important they are for Corot and his approach to composition. There are a lot of devices in this painting that encourage us to circulate and travel through the picture. The circulation Corot achieves relies on the tension between sky and town, town and wood, wood and foreground. The mass of wood contrasts with the small and distant buildings and just enough tree trunks have been included that the trunks act like worms breaking up the deep green mass ensuring we don’t get trapped there. Intricate Volterra becomes a still-life pressed between two large shapes: green and sky. Were the tree trunks actually in the positions noted or did Corot introduce them all the while spacing the trunks like notes of music? Approaching Volterra with the idea of Corot as master editor offers further ideas. He isn’t just telling us about Volterra’s particular quality or look – he’s using Volterra as a vehicle for discussing how exciting and engaging paintings can be and how complex visual perception is. Thinking about the 38 year old Corot traveling through Italy carefully selecting and organizing views, seeking inspiration, helps one appreciate Corot’s impact on art history and those who followed him. It is also interesting to consider that Cezanne wouldn’t be born for another five years as this painting was being made. Yet Corot was already defining a new approach to painting and his concern for the plastic decisions in his work paved the way not only for Impressionism but most importantly for Cezanne’s mature work and even for the flat, quilt like color of Vuillard. Could there be a Cezanne or a Vuillard without Corot? There certainly wouldn’t be any Modernism without Cezanne and Vuillard.