Il velo della pittura.Tra opacità e trasparenza, tra presentazione e rappresentazione

This essay explores the veil codified by Alberti in De Pictura (1435), to recover its role and function in relation to the perspectival construction, in the attempt to make emerge a use that was particularly well established among the artists, albeit care- fully concealed between the folds of painting and documentable at least up to Van Gogh. The use of the veil inexorably affects the gaze upon the world to be reproduced, to the point of being elevated to being a full-fledged protagonist in Peter Greenaway’s film The Draughtsman’s Contract, where the veil is not only a part of the narrative, but also entertains a special relationship with the cinematographic medium. Other devices as well — the camera oscura and Claude Glass (black mirror) — which apparently seem to be detached from the Albertian veil, actually reassert analogous functions in terms of representability of the real, even if declined differently. Lastly, this kind of scrutiny will necessarily lead to analyzing works that, in more recent times — e.g. Rahmenbau by Haus–Rucker–Co (1974) and The Veiling by Bill Viola (1995) —, retain the memory of the ancient veil instrument, making it autonomous and releasing it from its purely representative dimension.