Write a Visual Analysis Essay of Uccello’s The Hunt (currently in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

Example answer:

Uccello’s painting The Hunt in the Forest has a highly regular composition. The painting is constructed almost symmetrically using linear perspective. The hunters, their horses, dogs and spears almost all point to vanishing point in the centre of the painting. The most prominent trees in the foreground of the painting are symmetrically, framing the centre foreground of the painting. Their calculated placement, placed so prominently in the painting, highlights to the viewer Uccello’s  almost mathematical placement of the objects in the painting.  The trunks trees which make up the forest are similarly painted in a highly regular way as they disappear into the distance. Each trunk is the same colour and Uccello uses a simple form to highlight their regularity. The regularity of their form works to highlight the measured decrease in the size of the trees as they appear farther from the foreground of the painting. Similarly, the little differentiation between the figures of men, horses and dogs in the painting (the men’s clothes are mostly bright jewel-like reds and purples, while horses, dogs and the deer that they chase are rendered in the similar shades of brown and white) highlights the measured way in which the figures’ size decreases as they disappear into the depths of the forest, away from the foreground of the painting.

The symmetry, regularity of the placement objects, and careful use of decreasing sizes strongly emphasises the artist’s use of linear perspective. This heightened, even exaggerated use of linear perspective suggests that the painting was made in the early European renaissance period—a period in which artists’ paintings and artists’ treatise (such as the Italian theorist Alberti’s exploration of linear perspective On Painting) often focussed on the creation of linear perspective in painting.

A guide to writing a visual analysis:

When starting a visual analysis essay it is vital to take time to look carefully at the image presented to you. First take a general look. What do you notice about the image?

Then take initial notes on these features

Material(s)SizeSubject MatterCompositionStyle

However, while it is important to note and describe features of the work, a great visual analysis is not simply a comprehensive description of the object. You need to use your close observations of elements of the work to help build ideas about the artwork, or suggest how these visual features might point to answers about the use of the object.

Think about why you noticed a feature or technique and what interested you about it.

Does it give a clue to the meaning of the work?Does it suggest the period in which the object was made?Does it help to shape the viewer’s reaction?

Answering these types of questions about the visual details you notice will help you move from description to a successful analysis.

Some questions that you might suggest answers for are:

The audience(s) the object was intended forHow that audience might have encountered the object (where might it have been displayed/is there any suggestion of their physical interaction with the object)Why it was createdWhen it was createdWhere it was createdThe meaning(s) of the work