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SACRED CODES

       Digging through obscure and arcane texts, closely observing and detecting marks in paintings that few would perceive, L. Caruana recovers perennial principles otherwise lost by the collapse of the academy system.

       Written in clear lucid prose by an experienced painter, these 700 pages distill years of academy lecturing and a lifetime of historical approaches to painting.

       Loaded with practical knowledge and new discoveries, SACRED CODES is an essential companion to all serious artists – a treasure-trove of insider knowledge, craftsmen’s secrets, and tricks of the trade. 

       Richly-illustrated with explanatory figures and hundreds of plates, the first volume of The Sacred Codes Series is dedicated to The Drawing Stage, and includes:

• The classical principles underlying the figure – proportion and the history of the pose, contrapposto and the movement around the plumb line, the contrasting forces of will and repose, to express ‘the passions of the soul’

• The development of painterly principles in the French and Italian Academy systems, including inventio (invention), disegno (design) and istoria (narrative)

• The principles of vision, and how the narrative construction leads the eye through the painting

• The roots of composition in sacred geometry and ornament

• The energetic movement of curving lines around invisible straight lines to integrate figures in the composition

• Armature: the rules of harmony and the construction lines for classical and dynamic compositions – root rectangles, ad triangulum and ad quadratum space

• The harmonic alignment of perspective with composition in Renaissance masters like Leonardo and Raphael

       These time-tested principles, tried and true, undergird all of artistic creation. In this volume, two major traditions are traced: the Hieratic style (Sacred art of the East: Egyptian, Hindu and Buddhist) and our Humanist inheritance (Western Classical and Renaissance painting, with its focus on Humanity and human feeling). Pursuing examples from Michelangelo, Blake, Moreau and Fuchs, the author illustrates how Humanist and Hieratic traditions finally meet and fuse in the Visionary Art of these four masters.

A QUICK FLIP-THROUGH OF SACRED CODES

SAMPLE CHAPTERS

Some sample chapters may be read online

and are available for download on academia.edu:

• Chapters 7 - 10 on The Figure, Pose & Narrative Groupings in Humanist Art

• Chapters 13 - 15 on Geometry & Ornament

• Chapters 26 - 28 on Consecrating a Work of Art

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