painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and a ...

, staffage () are the human and animal figures depicted in a scene, especially a

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

, that are not the primary subject matter of the work. Typically they are small, and there to add an indication of scale and add interest. Before the adoption of the word into the visual arts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, ''Staffage'' in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

could mean "accessories" or "decoration". The word can be used in two senses: as a general term for any figures in a work, even when they are, at least ostensibly, the main subject, and as a descriptive term for figures to whom no specific identity or story is attached, included merely for compositional or decorative reasons. In the latter sense, staffage are accessories to the scene, yet add life to the work; they provide depth to the painting and reinforce the main subject, as well as giving a clear scale to the rest of the composition. During the

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...

, painters such as

Nicolas Poussin Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for ...

and

Claude Lorrain Claude Lorrain (; born Claude Gellée , called ''le Lorrain'' in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in It ...

commonly used staffage. Some landscape specialists had other painters who were more adept at painting the human form add staffage to their canvasses. Staffage figures in the second sense defined above are always unnamed and should be distinguished from equally small figures with an identity, who were also used in landscapes in what is technically a very similar way. However, when named biblical or mythological figures are used, instead of unnamed "shepherds", "soldiers" and so on, this had the effect, according to the contemporary theory of the hierarchy of genres, in turning a landscape painting into a more prestigious, and often more valuable,

history painting History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than any artistic style or specific period. History paintings depict a moment in a narrative story, most often (but not exclusively) Greek and Roman mythology and Bible ...

, even when the figures are small and inconspicuous amid a large landscape. Such works are often given modern titles in the form "Landscape with ...". Staffage should also be distinguished from the figures in

genre painting Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attache ...

s, who are also anonymous and typically from the common people, but who are the main subject of the painting. By the 19th century, books with patterns for hundreds of different staffage figures were published for painters to "cut and paste" into their compositions.''Staffage''
p. 310 in ''The encyclopedia of ephemera: a guide to the fragmentary documents of everyday life for the collector, curator, and historian'', by Maurice Rickards & Michael Twyman, Routledge, 2000, , . Earlier artists had often kept drawings of such pattern figures, and the same figures often recur in several of the works of an artist, and can sometimes be traced passing to other artists.

Notes

{{Authority control Painting Composition in visual art