Belvedere By M. C. Escher

M.C. Escher’s Belvedere made in May 1958 is a unique and complex lithograph which draws heavily from surrealism and the surrealist movement of the early 20th century. It delivers a deep and complex view of architectural structures, which are puzzling to the eye. Surrealism began in the early 1920’s. It was an art style which existed to promote the painting of works which blurred lines between fantasy and actuality or rather dreams and reality. This style contrasted some earlier styles which were explicitly focused on capturing things perfectly as they were, such as earlier paintings by renaissance men like Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. While there have been notable surrealist artists such as Salvador Dali and Max Ernst. Escher took the
The woman with two horns about to climb the staircase is modeled after a character from the right panel of an oil based painting titled The Garden of earthly desires painted by Hieronymus Bosch. Hieronymus Boschs painting shows heaven, hell and the desires of men in three different pieces. In 1935, Escher himself had created a portion of hell as a lithograph. The second floor is opened with a man facing southwest and somewhat admiring the view of the ridge. The ridge is part of the Morrone Mountains in Abruzzo, Italy, where Escher had visited several times while he lived there in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The pillars allow the building to be viewed from different perspectives which explains why the woman and the man are facing opposite directions. The four pillars at the corners of the building are wrongly placed making them intersect at a point and because of this the middle floor and top floor appear as if they are parallel to each other .The top and bottom surfaces of the impossible cube represent the first and second floors and the edges represent the pillars. The pillars allow the building to be viewed from two different perspectives which explains why the woman and the man are facing opposite directions. The edges on the top floor are at a different position and there is also dissimilarity in length when you look at the sides of each level. The railing the woman is leaning on is directly placed on the railing the man is leaning on and because the two levels are of different dimensions, it is impossible to directly place them on each