Long Distance and Deep Distance

About

Chinese painting gave pictorial distance a precise vocabulary. In the 11th century Guo Xi described three ways of seeing mountains: high distance, looking up at a peak from its foot; level distance, gazing across from near hills to far ones; and deep distance, looking past the front ranges into layered valleys behind. His Early Spring (1072) combines them, and later painters stacked ridges up the silk so that mist, rather than a vanishing point, measures the gaps.

European painters pursued comparable effects by other means. Joachim Patinir developed 'world landscapes' seen from a high viewpoint in the early 16th century, Albrecht Altdorfer set The Battle of Alexander at Issus (1529) beneath a curving horizon, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder looked down over a frozen valley in Hunters in the Snow (1565). Atmospheric perspective, in which distant forms turn paler and bluer, deepens such views. Panoramic photographers extend the tradition.