̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Francois Penz

Virtual Florence: religious art is ‘restored’ to its original setting

amb206 — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 08:00:00 +0000

An exhibition at the National Gallery tells the story behind some of the most remarkable examples of religious art in its collections. Two large-scale paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries, which show scenes of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin, originated as altarpieces in the church in Florence called San Pier Maggiore (or Saint Peter Major, so named to distinguish it from other churches dedicated to the Apostle Peter in the city).

Until recently little has been know about San Pier Maggiore as the setting for these masterpieces. Once one of the city’s oldest and most important churches, it was demolished in the 1780s to make way for a market place. Now detective work has enabled a team of academics and curators to produce a virtual reconstruction of the church complete with its bell tower which would have been a prominent landmark.

As an important church, San Pier Maggiore had been endowed with splendid altarpieces, commissioned by rich patrons. Today these paintings are dispersed around the world. ̽��ֱ��National Gallery in London holds ̽��ֱ��Assumption of the Virgin, painted by Francesco Botticini in the 1470s and ̽��ֱ��Coronation of the Virgin, painted by Jacopo di Cione a century earlier.

̽��ֱ��exhibition at the National Gallery is accompanied by a short film which explains some of the challenges that faced the small team who undertook the virtual reconstruction.

Combining their skills were Dr Donal Cooper (Department of History of Art) and Professor Francois Penz (Department of Architecture) from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, Dr Jennifer Sliwka, assistant curator in Renaissance painting at the National Gallery, and Dr Miguel Santa Clara, a film-maker and graduate of Cambridge’s Department of Architecture.

As an art historian of Renaissance Italy, Cooper knows Florence well. But when he arrived in the city in the hot summer of 2015 to begin the research, he felt disheartened. Walking around the area where the church once stood, he could see the arches of the elegant portico that was added to the church in the 17th century and a number of piers enveloped by later buildings. But there seemed to be few obvious clues to help create a clear picture.

“All I had to guide me were historic plans and maps which show more or less where the church stood. Today the area is a mix of small businesses and apartments with scooters whizzing through the portico arches,” he says. “Although street names indicated the former existence of the church, it was a real puzzle to imagine its ground plan and its structure – or to perceive where the paintings would have been situated.”

Cooper was joined in Florence by Penz, Santa Clara and Sliwka. ̽��ֱ��team’s fortunes began to change when they met café owner, Ricardo Camporesi, whose premises act as a hub for the local community. A flyer was distributed in the neighbourhood. It asked people to get in touch if they were willing to open their houses to the team. ̽��ֱ��response was overwhelmingly positive and the team was invited into several apartments and businesses.

“It was a mixture of archaeology and anthropology as we began to explore the elements of the church that exist within the present structures which had been wrapped around some of the remaining features of the church,” says Penz. “In a kitchen we found a chapel arch and in a bathroom a finely carved Renaissance column. One of the most exciting moments was when the owner of an apartment opened the door of an airing cupboard to show us some stone steps inside.”

̽��ֱ��spiral steps in the cupboard led upwards to a small roof terrace with a view over the city rooftops. ̽��ֱ��40 steps that remain today are part of a stairway that was originally inside a 14th-century bell tower or campanile.

Using a combination of site surveys and the latest photogrammetric techniques, the researchers have been able to create a visualisation of the church with the later buildings ‘wrapped’ around it. “We hope the 3D visualisation we’ve produced will help experts and the public to understand the context within which these paintings were experienced by Renaissance viewers,” says Cooper. “In museums they are removed from their intended architectural settings, which often informed their design and iconography.”

̽��ֱ��people of Florence were hugely enthusiastic about the project and the Florence edition of Il Corriere della sera carried a three-page article about it. But the team is keen to avoid the temptation of filling in the gaps in their visualisation.

“One of the key research aims was to visualise degrees of uncertainty in the 3D virtual representation of the church, reflecting a variety of hypotheses invariably present in art historical research of this nature. And this why we used the point cloud modelling technique that allows room for the imagination,” says Penz.

“Moreover, we see 3D visualisation as much more than the representation of research data. ̽��ֱ��process itself was a potent means for generating new findings that would not have emerged from conventional empirical research. But it is only the beginning and this pilot project has paved the way to more ambitious research projects in the future.”

̽��ֱ��project was funded by a Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme Research grant together with a Kress Foundation grant to the National Gallery.

Inset image: Campanile staircase photogrammetric reconstruction.

A team of experts has pieced together the architectural context of two treasures of Renaissance art in the National Gallery collection. ̽��ֱ��research behind the 3D-visualisation combines traditional and digital methods – and benefits from invaluable input from the local community.

One of the most exciting moments was when the owner of an apartment opened the door of an airing cupboard to show us some stone steps inside.

Francois Penz

Donal Cooper/Francois Penz

San Pier Maggiore revisualised in 3D with the pointcloud outline nestling within today's buildings

̽��ֱ��altarpieces of San Pier Maggiore

Jacopo di Cione’s polyptych, originally more than 5 m tall, was one of the largest altarpieces ever painted for a Florentine church. ̽��ֱ��central scene depicts the Virgin being crowned as Queen of Heaven by Christ. ̽��ֱ��so-called ‘Coronation of the Virgin’ was believed to have occurred at the Virgin’s death and Assumption into Heaven. ̽��ֱ��Virgin and Christ are surrounded by saints and angels, with pride of place given to St Peter, as the titular saint of the church. Jacopo painted the apostle holding not only his traditional attribute of the keys of heaven, but also a miniature representation of the church of San Pier Maggiore.

Botticini’s altarpiece also depicts the Virgin being crowned in heaven, albeit in a very different fashion, set amidst ascending circles of angels and with an expansive landscape showing Florence and the surrounding countryside filling the base of the picture.

In Cambridge, the Fitzwilliam Museum owns another painting from San Pier Maggiore. Tommaso Mazzuoli’s Visitation (1560) is on permanent loan to Trinity Hall where it serves as an altarpiece in the college chapel. Others paintings from the same Florence church are in Russia and the USA.

Inset image: Jacopo di Cione St Peter (detail).

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Cinematic geographies of Battersea

fpjl2 — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:24:59 +0000

In a disused railway arch, Richard Burton guns down the man who framed him before charging across overgrown scrubland with the law in pursuit.

Dereliction surrounds on all sides as the corrupt life of his character – gangster Vic Dakin – unravels. Residents peer over the balconies of grimy tower blocks to watch Dakin get cornered by police.

In 1971, the makers of Villain needed a suitably gritty location to shoot the dénouement of this now little remembered British thriller, so, like a number of similar films of the era, they chose the urban decay of the borough of Battersea – which 50 years prior had been a thriving centre of industry.

Now, 40 years on from Burton’s foray into the crime genre, this very spot is about to become the site of one of the largest regeneration projects in London’s history, called Nine Elms, including an extension of the Northern Line.

Battersea is the subject of a new Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded research project from Cambridge’s Department of Architecture, looking at how film – fiction, documentary and amateur footage – has, often inadvertently, captured the changing fortunes of this part of south London.

Sifting through hundreds of hours of footage, the project aims to create a cinematic “archaeology” of Battersea, by building layers of scenes and clips from films that depict precise areas of the borough at different points of the 20th century.

Researchers are investigating a hugely diverse range of film, from Ealing comedies to social realist drama, Pathe news, amateur super 8 right up to modern YouTube clips.

“ ̽��ֱ��plan is to map for the first time a large number of movies onto a map of a city to chart its evolution in terms of the fabric, but also social change,” said Professor François Penz, who is leading the Cinematic Geographies of Battersea project with colleagues from the Universities of Liverpool and Edinburgh as well as English Heritage.

̽��ֱ��project came about through discussions between Penz, Professor Richard Koeck from the ̽��ֱ�� of Liverpool and his former Cambridge colleague Professor Andrew Saint, who now heads up English Heritage’s Survey of London.

̽��ֱ��Survey was created in 1894, a year before the advent of cinema, with a mission to record every parish in London – one it still pursues today, with each parish taking between three and four years to survey.

“I kept in touch with Andrew, and we often talked about how film depicted sweeping changes in London, so we put together this pilot project,” said Penz.

“At the time, he was working on Battersea, so we decided to start there, which has been great as it’s a movie-rich area, as well as one that has been through – and about to go through – huge changes.”

Penz notes that Battersea is a space where “a lot of the cinematic crime in British films was committed,” and that south London in general is prone to dystopian depictions.

Key films, such as Ken Loach’s sixties ‘kitchen sink’ drama Poor Cow, also reveal battles between classes, and contain moments of high architectural significance.

“In addition to ‘longitudinal’ century-wide study, we also engage in detailed ‘cross-sectional’ study – taking a few films and studying them scene by scene, even frame by frame.”

Penz highlights a single cut in Poor Cow that takes the main character from Victorian terrace to ‘brutalist’ concrete: “Suddenly she’s in the Winstanley Estate – an icon of modernism – then shiny and new, now sadly run down and high in crime.”

“Many of the Victorian backstreets seen in such films were cleared to make way for estates, and now only exist in films.”

^{Screenshot from Ken Loach's Poor Cow}

A key touchstone for the philosophy underpinning this research is the idea of the ‘soft city’, as set out by the writer Jonathan Raban in his 1974 book of the same name.

Raban describes “the city as we imagine it… soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration and nightmare” to be “as real, maybe more real, than the hard city on can locate on maps.”

For Penz, this is the essence of the Battersea Project: “People experience space physically and emotionally, their perceptions influenced by representations in the culture they are exposed to.”

“ ̽��ֱ��‘soft city’ of illusion is found in cinema. We aim to uncover this side of Battersea to complement the Survey of London’s ‘hard’ documentation of streets, churches and so on – together providing a more holistic vision of what an area is and has been.”

One of the main goals of the project is to use the layers of film history to provide a living ‘lieu de memoire’ – or site of memory – that the community can both share in and contribute to.

To do this, the team are using digital techniques to both “triangulate” the locations these cinematic fragments were filmed in, then pin the historical layers of film to the site on modern digital maps using geo-tagging, technology familiar to most users of Google Maps.

All this information is being built into a smartphone app, along with the Survey of London records, so that the public can experience both the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ sides of their neighbourhood “in situ”- and eventually even add footage themselves.

̽��ֱ��team plans to launch the app later in the year, combining it with screenings of some of the films – in surprisingly relevant locations.

“We want to resurrect the ghost cinemas of Battersea,” said Penz. “Can you believe that Battersea doesn’t have any cinemas anymore! At one time, there were around 25 – as described in the Survey of London – often ‘shopfront’ cinemas, with back rooms holding maybe 40 seats.”

“For example, one is now a bank, and its current manager remembers going to see movies there as a child. We hope to project films with key local scenes that were shown in some of these old cinemas.”

Penz aims to combine the film clips in the app with details of former cinemas and even, when possible, the programmes of the day: “ ̽��ֱ��app could tell you that the scene of a certain film was shot where you stand, show you the clip, then tell you it was shown at this ghost cinema that stood a mile, say, in that direction, on this date and what else was on there at the time.”

While Penz admits it’s difficult to research, the team are working closely with the British Film Institute and other local organisations. He says this level of detail would “unlock moments in history, and help to crystallise common local memories that can connect communities.”

While the Battersea project is a pilot, Penz can see the methodology being replicated, and is considering extending to further afield, and not just north of the Thames.

“We’ve created a research platform with Nanjing ̽��ֱ�� in China. We want to look at how this translates to other cultures. How can this be applied in a Chinese context where differences in spatial understanding and variations in screen language may result in a double translation effect? ̽��ֱ��effects of globalisation on how ‘sites of memory’ form in localities is, I think, a fascinating possible direction for this research.”

̽��ֱ��final act of the Cinematic Geographies of Battersea will be a conference at CRASSH on 3 and 4 October 2013 on the theme of Cinematic Urban Geographies.

www.cinematicbattersea.blogspot.co.uk

Research is combining film ‘archaeology’ with digital technology to create a new approach to ‘sites of memory’ for the London borough of Battersea.

It’s a movie-rich area, as well as one that has been through – and about to go through – huge changes.

François Penz

A screenshot from the 1971 British gangster film Villain, starring Richard Burton. Dir. Michael Tuchner

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Yes

Exchanging ideas with China

bjb42 — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:00:12 +0000

Cambridge is benefiting from two recent Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) awards that share a common goal: the creation of interdisciplinary research networks between China and the West.

‘Translations and transformations: China, modernity and cultural transmission’, which launched in March in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), aims to examine literary and cultural exchange between China and the West. ‘Modernity is transforming the China of today. Two-way translation is crucial, not just in commerce and business but also in culture – in art, film and literature,’ said Professor Mary Jacobus, Director of CRASSH. ‘This raises issues about how the arts can be translated and transmitted between China and the West.’

‘Narrascape: Urban environment as narrative system in the UK and China’ launches in July in the Department of Architecture and builds on the strengths of its Digital Studio in using digital media for studying architecture and cities. ̽��ֱ��project will examine urban places and experiences by investigating the role of human narratives in the fabrication of the urban landscape – using the camera as a tool to unravel how we experience the city around us. ‘Urban environments in Cambridge and China are very different and, through a series of workshops, this will provide a fascinating cross-fertilisation of ideas between researchers,’ said Dr François Penz, who leads the project.

‘Projects such as these foster international links and build research capacity for all concerned in a highly productive way,’ said Professor Jacobus. ‘Chinese academics are as keen as we are to make connections and exchange ideas.’

For more information, please contact Professor Mary Jacobus (mlj25@cam.ac.uk) or Dr François Penz (fp12@cam.ac.uk).

Two recently funded grants will build and strengthen research collaborations with Chinese academics.

Modernity is transforming the China of today. Two-way translation is crucial, not just in commerce and business but also in culture – in art, film and literature.

Mary Jacobus

ming1967 from Flickr

Shanghai Sky.

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Yes