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Show 84 place it in its setting. In this respect, Bodmer's painting is a study in realistic documentation. The river in the foreground dominates the lower third of the painting; the middle ground is taken up by the craggy banks through which the river cuts. These two elements of the painting are tied together by a herd of antelope filing down from the distant hills and across the river to the near foreground. But even though river and banks comprise two-thirds of the image, these elements are de-emphasized. The eye is drawn upward; all successive planes of river, banks, and rising hills converge, as all good traditional paintings were required to do, at a single vanishing point, where the illusion-the White Castles--is centered.6 It is here that all objective elements fall away and the illusion takes over, for it is the presence of the castles themselves that dominates this painting. It is the illusion-the art, rather than the document-that is in ascendance. It would appear that even Nature herself conspired to emphasize this illusion. Driven to shore by a thunderstorm, Bodmer was at leisure to paint, while Maximilian and the rest of the party explored the surrounding country. While "the trees bent under the fury of the storm and the thunder peeled in the very sultry air," Bodmer chose his position on the south bank of the river with an artist's eye7 The stormy sky Bodmer painted creates a receding vault which, aided by the convergence of planes in the lower part of the painting, at once draws the castles into the air while simultaneously pressing down with all the weight of its rain-laden thunderheads. The castles hover between earth and sky in a state of suspended animation. All the objective elements-river, banks, hills, trees, and antelope-reorganized and taken in combination, only contribute to the illusion. While |