Answer:
Renaissance art uses the same device and for the same purpose, even though you’ll seldom (if ever) find a Renaissance spacescape. But when you see a representation of The Madonna and Child or the Crucifixion, the use of distinctly horizontal or vertical lines is clearly emphasized. Sometimes the artist will go so far as to compose a painting to be visually similar to a pyramid so that the widest part of the subject is toward the bottom and the narrowest part at the top, because the pyramid is the most stable 3-D shape. Look below at “The Madonna of the Goldfinch,” which is presented twice to demonstrate the horizontal and the pyramid shape in an edited version.
the vertical line. In most cases, with the vertical line, there is still some form of a horizontal line that accompanies it, which is one reason that the cross for a crucifixion painting has always been so prominent. Also, this is not to say that there won’t be diagonal lines. What we’re discussing with the idea of stability in Renaissance art is the majority and the more prominent focus of the composition. In “Crucifixion” by Andrea Mantegna, the vertical lines are emphasized in the poles of the three crosses, but the three horizontal lines are created, at the top, by the three cross beams, in the midsection by the feet of the condemned with the tops of the heads of the spectators, and at the bottom with the lateral lines in the steps at the base.
While the keyword for the Renaissance is “stabilize,” the keyword for the Baroque is “dramatize,” but with the concept of drama also comes a noted instability or intense energy, and the artists of Star Trek employ some tactics that were well known in Baroque Europe. When they need to show that a ship or station is in trouble or adrift, they place the Enterprise or their station at an intense angle from the viewer’s perspective, usually with something else in the image to emphasize the off-kilter orientation—another larger or closer object, perhaps.
Hope this helps, have a nice day/night! :D
