Art students in traditional ateliers are most often taught to draw and paint from a central, head-on point of view: the object being represented is directly in front of the artist, at eye level. This is not surprising as the typical easel painting or commission demands nothing more. In addition, frescoed ceilings seem to be a thing of the past. But during the Renaissance and Baroque periods the ability to convincingly represent figures and architecture as seen from below was a sought after skill.

Di sotto in sù, also called prospettiva melozziana, is an Italian term from the Renaissance which means from below, upwards. It describes an extreme form of illusionistic foreshortening in which the figures or objects painted on a ceiling appear to be floating or suspended in space above the viewer.^[1] One goal of the method was to convince the viewer that the ceiling did not exist or that it was dome-shaped when it was really flat. An early proponent of this type of painting was Andrea Mantegna. His fresco for the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua is the first image, above.

Below is Correggio’s ceiling fresco, Assumption of the Virgin in Parma.

Here’s a detail, showing Eve offering the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Here are two of Correggio’s studies, one for Eve and one for another character, done from life.

The image below is Pietro da Cortona’s ceiling fresco in the Palazzo Barberini, from the 1630′s.

A variant of di sotto in sù is the term quadratura, which applies more to the painted illusion of architecture as seen from below.

1. IAN CHILVERS. “sotto in sù, di.” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. 2003. ^