Attenuated Figure
Human figures stretched and thinned beyond natural proportion for elegance, spirituality or unease.
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About
An attenuated figure is stretched: limbs lengthen, torsos narrow and heads shrink until the body reads as line or spirit. The distortion is deliberate and ancient. An Etruscan votive bronze from Volterra, nicknamed the Ombra della sera (‘evening shadow’, c. 3rd century BC), is little more than a slender rod with a face, and the column-like saints on the Royal Portal at Chartres (mid-12th century) grow tall to fit the architecture.
Mannerists stretched bodies for grace, as in Parmigianino's Madonna with the Long Neck (c. 1535–40) and the flame-like saints of El Greco. In the 20th century Amedeo Modigliani lengthened necks and faces, while Alberto Giacometti's post-war bronzes such as Walking Man I (1960) thin the body almost to nothing, their rough surfaces catching light. The Gugging artist Oswald Tschirtner reduced people to long, spidery strokes of ink. Look for proportions that no longer obey the classical canon.
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Classical Mythology
