The Physics of ... Wrinkles

Renaissance artists worked hard on their wrinkles. Rich garments cascading in complex folds over knee, elbow, and buttock evoked the bodies they concealed—and sometimes something more. “The restless activity of the drapery, like the quivering of the fingers and the rippling descent of the curls, carries a new kind of feverish emotion,” the art historian Frederick Hart once wrote about Andrea del Verrocchio’s sculpture of Doubting Thomas. Wrinkles in the Renaissance were frozen lines of energy, psychic as well as kinetic; getting the wrinkles right in a scene helped the artist get the energy right. Not incidentally, it also showed what an accomplished artist he was.