picture plane
1
8.1
- noun
- /ˈpɪk.tʃər pleɪn/
- Specialized
:
plano pictórico
- Like Velazquez's Las Meninas, this is an image composed mainly out of empty space, space rendered in such a way that it seems to extend beyond the picture plane to include the space between us and the picture, to implicate the space where we stand.
- parallel to the picture plane
Examples
-
The proximity of the sitters to the picture plane and the steady eye contact they maintain with the viewer reinforce the feeling of intimacy.
Academic text (2011) -
Everyone else is uncomfortably foreshortened and squashed into the picture plane.
Academic text (2003) -
His figures move on and off the picture plane.
Academic text (2004) -
The curves burst out of the picture plane.
Fiction book (1991) -
Rosemond, on the left, peers out of the picture plane at the object whose image is being captured.
Academic text (2007) -
All three sit with their lower bodies facing left and their heads and torsos rotating toward the picture plane.
Academic text (2007) -
In Poussin's The Funeral of Phocion, for instance, the picture plane is repeated as walls, buildings, and hills recede toward the final backdrop of sky.
Fiction book (1999) -
The streets and buildings progressively diminish in size at an angle to the picture plane, seeming to us as if they are receding into the distance.
Academic text (1995) -
Caravaggio adapts Mannerist tradition only to the extent that he again seems to penetrate the picture plane, not as an exhibitionist but as a dramatist who seizes our attention in order to illuminate the meaning of the story within the frame.
Academic text (2007) -
In this artwork, the artist emphasizes the foreground elements that occupy the picture plane.
Synonyms
81
7.8
A level of thought, feeling, or experience
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound combines 'picture' (an image) and 'plane' (a flat surface) to denote the flat surface associated with an image; a B1 learner who knows both words can reasonably infer this meaning. Although it's somewhat technical art terminology, the meaning follows a straightforward noun+noun compositional pattern and is cross-linguistically transparent.
Etymology
Picture plane comes from thinking of a painting as a flat window. The picture is what you look at and the plane is a flat surface, so imagining the artwork as a close flat sheet helps explain why the phrase means the imagined flat surface that is 'nearest to the viewer'.