Abstract

The first thing to stress is that although the orientation of the grave implies a point of view somewhere to its left, the attenuation of illusion in the rendering of the grave makes that implication anything but conspicuous. Consequently, a beholder who approaches the Burial by centering himself before it , and in so doing exposes himself to the full force of its solicitations toward merger , will very likely not even notice that the grave is skewed relative to the picture plane . Furthermore, the fact that the point of view posited by the orientation of the grave lies opposite the most active and, at first glance, the most confusion portion of the composition also serves to forestall an awareness that such a point of view may be held to exist.Here it is useful to compare the finished painting with the preliminary drawing. In the latter the grave is at the far left; a single procession, to be joined by the pallbearers, makes its way across the sheet; and two figures, the crucifix-bearer and the hatless man at the center , appear to gaze out of the drawing as if at a spectator centered before it. In the finished painting, on the other hand, various processional units are shown converging precisely there; and yet not only does no outward gaze place the beholder directly before the grave, it appears that a deliberate effort has been made to keep the center of the composition blank, as if to install at the ostensible heart of the painting a formal/ontological equivalent to the unemphatic emptiness lying open below it. Thus both the gravedigger and the dog turn their heads away from the vicinity of the grave; the mourner to the right of the gravedigger weeps facelessly into a handkerchief; and a barely modulated expanse of black pigment looms like a great blind spot between the gravedigger and the two veterans of ’93. It is as though the Burial’s curiously indeterminate affective atmosphere comes to a head in this portion of the canvas, which as we have seen bears the principal burden of facilitating the merger of painting and beholder.47 And of course the avoidance of overt address to the beholder that such a strategy implies also helps to reduce the risk of conflict between the generally centering character of the composition as a whole and the slant orientation of the grave. 47. Clark, Image of the People, p.81