Anamorphosis – ‘Distorted Perspective’ at Trinità dei Monti

by Ariane Varela Braga (columnist) | Thursday, February 28th, 2008

An ingenuous seventeenth-century ‘anamorphic’ fresco of St Francis of Paula can be seen inside the Trinità dei Monti church in front of the Spanish Steps. What’s it all about? Art historian Ariane Varela Braga reveals all.

Walking down the streets of Rome can offer fascinating experiences. Sometimes, a slight change in the atmosphere can completely modify the city’s appearance, turning an old palazzo into an architectural masterpiece or a broken statue into a divine effigy.
As with everything in life, our perception of reality changes according to our point of view. This is even more so in the case of an anamorphosis; an image represented as a distorted projection which only reveals itself when viewed from a precise angle.

Anamorphosis

Cousin of the trompe-l’œil, the anamorphosis (from the Greek ana, backwards and morphé, shape) is a visual game, “a rebus, a monster, a prodigy”, in the words of art historian Jurgis Baltrušaitis. We usually think of geometrical perspective as a way of representing depth on a flat surface, of creating the appearance of three-dimensionality on a canvas or wall. In the case of an anamorphosis, perspective is no longer the science of the real but becomes an hallucinatory dream, a contorted vision. The object represented is deconstructed, annihilated. It can only reconstruct itself from a very precise point of view or with the help of a special mirror, either curved or pyramidal, depending on the nature of the anamorphosis.
This visual game was probably invented in China and imported to Europe in the sixteenth century. Leonardo da Vinci and Dürer took interest in it, as did Shakespeare, who refers to it in his plays Richard III and All’s Well That Ends Well.
In most cases, the subject of an anamorphosis is a licentious scene, a secret portrait or a holy image. But whether metaphysical or burlesque, anamorphosis always has an ambiguous and unstable character, which places it on the border line between the grotesque and entertainment. The most famous anamorphic image is undoubtedly the skull in the foreground of Holbein’s Ambassadors (1533), a painting in the National Gallery in London. It was, however, in Rome, city of the Baroque, that the process acquired a scientific character, and became for the fist time the subject of theoretical treatises in the seventeenth century.

Trinità dei Monti

The city’s most famous anamorphosis is hidden behind the walls of Trinità dei Monti, a short walk from Piazza di Spagna and its continuous flow of tourists and elegant shoppers, at the top of the Steps.
One of the five French churches of Rome, Trinità dei Monti – or Trinité-des-Monts – was built on land bought in 1494 by king Charles VIII of France. The construction of the church and convent started in 1502 and lasted almost a century. From the start, it was considered a royal church and was given to the Order of the Minims, a religious mendicant congregation founded in the middle of the fifteenth century by the Calabrian Francis of Paula, who was canonized by Pope Leo X in 1519. After the French Revolution, it was given to the sisters of the Sacré Coeur, who took care of the church until last year, when they were replaced by the Fraternity of Jerusalemn.

The cloister’s anamorphosis
The construction of the convent and cloister started in 1549 and lasted 20 years. It is there, in the corridor of the first floor, that we discover the famous anamorphosis. Twenty meters long, it is painted in grisaille. When viewed frontally, it appears as a phantasmagoric landscape, providing several representations of the saint’s life , such as the miracle of his crossing at the Straits of Messina. According to legend, it took place in the year 1464. When Francis was refused passage by a boatman while trying to cross to Sicily, he laid his cloak on the water and could thus safely sail across the strait with his companions.
Walking the length of the corridor, scene after scene, delivers another miracle, right in front of our eyes. What first appeared to be only a strange and desolated landscape gives way to the a monumental vision of the saint, portrayed kneeling in prayers, in front of a huge and dark tree. The vision is dramatic and forces us to walk back and try to discover how this sudden alteration takes place.
The anamorphosis of St Francis of Paula was painted in 1642 by Emmanuel Maignan, a mathematician and friar of the Minims who lived in Rome in the mid seventeenth century. Maignan is also the creator of a meridian or solar clock, which he painted in the cloister’s north gallery and which calculates the time in the world’s principal cities. It also testifies to this great center’s tradition for scientific research.

The second fresco
Originally, there were two anamorphic frescoes: Maignan’s grisaille in the east corridor and a polychrome one in the west corridor, painted in the middle of the seventeenth century by the Parisian friar Jean-François Nicéron, who in 1638 had published the first and most complete treatise on the science of anamorphic representations. The latter fresco, depicting St John the Evangelist writing the Book of Revelation on the island of Patmos, was believed to have been lost after the French Revolution. It had in fact been covered by eight layers of whitewash applied when the corridor served as dormitory. A portion of the painting has permanently been lost. Saint John was depicted next to his symbol, the eagle, which disappeared when part of the wall was pierced, probably to make way for a passageway. The remaining work is now undergoing restoration, under the supervision of restorers Luigi De Cesaris and Cristina Tomassetti and will hopefully be visible in a year or so. Another treasure will then have been added to Rome’s cultural heritage.

Trinità dei Monti
Piazza Trinità dei Monti, 3.
Tel. 066794179
Guided tours are organized twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, at 11.00. Booking required.