Nigel Morgan
This paper sets out to establish the evolution of style in paintings from ca. 1250-1330 in central Italy, focusing on the significant changes in the use of light in art emerging at that time. These changes resulted in light being used consciously to support a more realistic and naturalistic compositional and pictorial style, in both formal art for worship and narrative art for theological education - whilst at the same time retaining and furthering light’s ability to add value to a work through introducing symbolism and theatricality. This change happened following a period when art had displayed a longstanding and overarching stylized Byzantine influence; but now paintings began to move away from this rigidity to convey more lifelike images, in both formal religious icons and scenes that realistically portrayed stories from the Gospels, which helped bring the Christian faith into the lives of the masses. The paper provides a companion piece to my paper previously published in Review of Arts and Humanities, Volume 13 August 2025, which served as a case study on pioneering lighting techniques in art by a group of artists operating out of Siena in the early 14th century. These two papers have been written by a (now retired) theatre lighting designer, who sees paintings as if they are stage settings and imagines how one would recreate the lighting if they were so.