P
Perspective in Renaissance
Philosophy
Filippo Camerota
Museo Galileo – Istituto e Museo di Storia della
Scienza, Florence, Italy
Abstract
The term “perspective,” deriving from the
Latin perspicere (to see distinctly), indicates a
technique of graphic representation whose
rules were established mainly by the artists
and mathematicians of the Renaissance. The
term is a vernacular form of the noun
perspectiva, which in Medieval Latin desig-
nated the science of vision, translating the
Greek optiké. The philosophers of “perspec-
tive,” devoted to the study of vision from the
ninth to the fourteenth century, investigated
both physiological aspects, especially in the
Arab world, and mathematical ones, retaining
the ancient threefold division of the discipline
into “optics” (direct vision), “catoptrics”
(reflected vision), and “dioptrics” (refracted
vision). This science, called perspectiva
naturalis or communis, dealt with the visual
and light rays propagating in a straight line,
as established by a fundamental axiom of
Euclidean optics (Euclid 2007, Catoptrics,
postulates I and II). The artists and mathemati-
cians of the Renaissance applied its principles
to representation of the visible world,
# Springer International Publishing AG 2018
M. Sgarbi (ed.), Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_680-1
codifying the rules for a science of drawing
that profoundly influenced the development
of the applied arts and sciences in the modern
age. Lorenzo Ghiberti described it as “a part of
perspective pertaining to painting,” Piero della
Francesca called it prospectiva pingendi
(painting perspective), Jean Pelerin
perspectiva artificialis (artificial perspective),
and Daniele Barbaro perspectiva pratica
(practical perspective): all these definitions
converge on the basic concept of the practical
application of optical laws to pictorial repre-
sentation of the visible world.
Heritage and Rupture with the Tradition
Optiké: Optics in the Ancient World
In the ancient world, the theory of vision was
debated mainly between two schools of thought:
Democritus’s atomistic theory, holding that vision
resulted from the imprinting on the eye of images
emanating from bodies (èidola), and the Pythag-
orean mathematical theory, which maintained on
the contrary that a focus emitted from the eye
under the form of rays went out to strike the
surface of objects (Lindberg 1976, pp. 1–17;
Ronchi 1983; Wilde 1990). A third hypothesis,
postulated by Empedocles and Plato (Timeaus,
45b–c, 67e–68b; Theaetetus, 156 d–e), attributed
the phenomenon of vision to two flows meeting
inside the eye, coming from both inside and out-
side of it. For Aristotle, however, no rays were
2 Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy

emitted from the eye or from any object; instead
there was a modification of the medium inter-
posed between the eye and the object, the diaph-
anous matter that is potential in the dark and active
in the light (De sensu et sensibili, 2, 438a; De
anima, B 418a 26–31).
In spite of Aristotle’s authority, it was the con-
cept of the emission of rays that determined devel-
opments in optics and its scientific applications, in
both the “intromissive” hypothesis of the atomists
and the “extromissive” concept of the Pythago-
rean school. As reported by Alexander of
Aphrodisias in his commentary on De sensu
(438a 25), the mathematicians of the Pythagorean
school “maintained that we see by means of rays
that depart from the eyes and extend as far as the
objects viewed.” This idea was to be concretely
expressed in the geometric formulation of Euclid,
who elaborated a model of vision that remained
basically unchanged up to the modern era. Imag-
ining the visual rays as extending in a straight line
under the form of a cone whose vertex is in the eye
and whose base is in the object (Fig. 1), Euclid
attributed to the immaterial nature of visual and
light rays a measurable form that made it possible
to study the relations between apparent sizes and

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 1 Abraham Bosse,
Manière universelle de
Mr. Girard Desargues, pour
pratiquer la perspective par
petit-pied, comme le
geometral, Paris 1648,
Pl. 3: the optical cone
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy 3

real dimensions, thus laying the foundation for a
new mathematical science called geometric
optics.
In the Roman world of the first century BC,
these two main theories of vision were sustained
by the greatest commentators on Greek philoso-
phy: Lucretius and Cicero. In his De rerum natura
(IV.46–89), Lucretius embraced the atomist doc-
trine, stating that images – which he called “mem-
branes” or “rinds” – penetrate into our eyes after
having been detached from bodies, whose shapes
and color they retain. Cicero, on the contrary,
sustained the validity of the mathematical hypoth-
esis of rays emitted by the eye (Letters to Atticus,
II.3.2) and believed that things appear other than
what they really are, basically subordinating the
perception of objects to the judgment of the eye
(Academics, II.7.19). Cicero’s considerations had
a precise theoretical basis in the classification of
the sciences elaborated by Geminus – like him, a
pupil of Posidonius – which included among the
sections on optics the so-called skenographia, a
discipline that governed the application of the
laws of vision to architecture and the figurative
arts (Fig. 2).
Perspectiva Naturalis: Optics in the
Middle Ages
The ancient world’s knowledge of optics was
assimilated in the Latin Middle Ages through the
mediation of Islamic science, which proposed an
original and critical interpretation of Euclidean

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 2 Cesare Cesariano,
Di Lucio Vitruuio Pollione
De architectura libri
decem. . ., Como 1521,
Book III, fol. LX:
application of the laws of
vision to architecture
4 Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy

optics. Through the Arab translators, the Latin
Middle Ages discovered the founding texts of
modern scientific thought, such as Euclid’s Ele-
ments and Optics and Ptolemy’s Almagest and
Optics (Smith 1999). Euclid’s Optics survived in
both the Greek version, often confused with Theon
of Alexandria’s Commentary (fourth century), and
the Arab version, the basis for the subsequent Latin
translations. Fundamentally important for the
resumption of optical studies, starting from the
tenth century, was the acquisition of new anatom-
ical knowledge resulting from the development of
Arab medicine. And the fruitful combination of
optical knowledge and epistemological doctrines,
notably those of Avicenna and Averroes, with the
most advanced achievements of geometric optics,
resulted in a theory of vision formulated by
Alhazen (965–1039) that remained a fixed refer-
ence point throughout the Middle Ages.
Up to the development of modern optics,
Alhazen was famous for his doctrine of vision as
the phenomenon of refraction of light rays inside
the eye. In the Kitāb al-Manāzir (Book of optics),
or De aspectibus in the Latin translation, Alhazen
devoted the first book entirely to description of the
eye (Fig. 3), explaining that, in the visual organ,

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 3 Alhazen (Abū ʿAlī
al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn
al-Haytham), Opticae
Thesaurus, Basel 1572,
Book I, chap. iv: the
anatomical structure of
the eye
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
all the rays but one are deviated through refrac-
tion; the central one, instead, proceeds in a straight
line, bringing with it a distinct image of things
(Alhazen 1572, II.8, 1989, 2001).
The pyramidal arrangement of the rays is
thought to have allowed two types of vision,
always interconnected: the one called aspectus,
generated by all the rays in the pyramid, and the
one identified as intuitio, more distinct and cer-
tain, generated only by the central visual ray
(Alhazen 1572, II.65). Vision “by intuition” was
at the same time a sensitive and rational act,
revealing the qualitative and quantitative aspects
of all things, that is, color, form, and size. This
rational comprehension passed through
Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 4 Alhazen (Abū ʿAlī
al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn
al-Haytham), Opticae
thesaurus, Basel 1572,
frontispiece
5
mathematical reasoning that utilized the central
ray of the visual pyramid to calculate the distances
of things. Alhazen’s work was translated into
Latin in the twelfth century, perhaps by Gerard
of Cremona, and its dissemination was crucial to
the resumption of optical studies in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. Witelo (1230–1279)
wrote a paraphrase of it for William of Moerbeke,
who had translated Hero’s Catoptrics. An anony-
mous Venetian translated it into the vernacular
already in the late fourteenth century (Federici
Vescovini 1965a, pp. 17–49). And in 1572, it
came out in print, along with Witelo’s
Perspectiva, in the Latin edition edited by
Frederic Risner (Fig. 4). The hypothesis that
6 Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
images were formed in the crystalline lens
through the intromission of light and deviation
of its rays inspired a number of studies in the
thirteenth century that sanctioned the birth of
perspectiva as a philosophical science in the
Latin world.
In the humanist classification of the arts,
perspectiva was a discipline ranking lower than
the so-called arts of the quadrivium: arithmetic,
geometry, music, and astronomy. Its purpose was
that of studying the phenomenon of vision as a
physical fact, from both the geometric and episte-
mological points of view. These theoretical issues
were developed primarily by the doctors of
Oxford (Raynaud 1998): the Bishop of Lincoln,
Robert Grosseteste (1168–1253), and the Francis-
cans Roger Bacon (1214–1294) and John
Peckham (1230–1292). Peckham’s Perspectiva
communis (General Optics), in particular, was
very widely known throughout the sixteenth cen-
tury, when it was published in print in a Latin
edition and an Italian translation by Giovanni
Paolo Gallucci. This famous treatise was com-
posed while Peckham was engaged as lecturer at
the Apostolic Palace at Viterbo from 1277 to
1279, in the same place, then, and almost during
the same years in which Witelo composed his
equally famous Perspectiva.
Alhazen’s psychological-perceptive interpreta-
tion, which added knowledge of distance to
knowledge of the optic angle (Euclid) as a neces-
sary condition for determining the size of things,
was consolidated by Witelo and the other
perspectivi to the point of definitively sanctioning
the field of action of vision as a perceptible, ratio-
nal act. Seeing came to assume two meanings:
“feeling with sight,” when it is only a perceptible
appearance, and “discerning through sight,” when
it is a rational act in which the intellect distin-
guishes sizes and distances as they appear
(Federici Vescovini 1965b, pp. 223–237).
These subjects were central to the theorizing
about perspective of Biagio Pelacani from Parma,
who in the late fourteenth century masterfully
took up the heritage of Alhazen. In the
Quaestiones perspectivae (Questions on optics),
as in his commentaries on De anima and Meteora,
Pelacani declared that vision did not perceive
substantial forms or pure light, as was believed
in the Neoplatonic tradition, but rather corporeal
forms, which could be either superficial or solid
(Federici Vescovini 1960, 1961, 1965a,
pp. 240–267). The former were perceived as
“sizes” through measurement of their length and
width. The latter were perceived as “depth,” by
measuring the distance between the eye and the
object. The Euclidean proposition that established
variation in sizes with variation in the optical
angle was considered useful only for the percep-
tion of superficial figures. To understand forms in
their corporeality, knowledge of the third dimen-
sion was also necessary, that is, the depth or dis-
tance, measured by the central axis of the visual
pyramid.
Biagio Pelacani’s optical theory probably con-
tributed to reviving interest in Alhazen’s De
aspectibus, which, after its Latin translation by
Gerard of Cremona and Witelo’s paraphrase, was
translated into the vernacular in the fourteenth
century (see above) for a public that must have
been broader and more diversified than that of the
university. This vernacular version was utilized,
for instance, by Lorenzo Ghiberti in compiling his
third Commentary (Federici Vescovini 1980, II,
pp. 349–387). The scientific works translated into
the vernacular up to that time had been mainly
arithmetical and geometrical texts, which were
commonly used for teaching purposes in the aba-
cus schools. For example, Euclid’s Elements and
Leonardo Fibonacci’s Liber abaci (Abacus book)
were translated or compiled in the vernacular. We
know, however, that in the abacus schools,
perspectiva was also a subject of interest, and
one abacus master in particular, the Augustinian
Grazia de’ Castellani, is known to us for having
composed a treatise on optics, De visu, of which
an abstract devoted to measurement by sight
remains (Arrighi 1967, 1968). It is probable that
the reason for translating De aspectibus into Ital-
ian had to do with interests cultivated by the
abacus masters, who in their schools
experimented on the practical level with the “cer-
tified” principle of vision, developing the ancient
methods of measuring by sight that Euclid himself
had set out among the theorems of his Optics
(Fig. 5).
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 5 Johannes Stoeffler, Elucidatio fabricae ususque astrolabii, Mainz
1535, p. 74: measuring a tower using similar triangles
Innovative and Original Aspects
Perspectiva Artificialis: The Invention of
Linear Perspective
In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries,
perspectiva, or perspective, was explored in Flor-
ence on the highest levels. It was studied as the
science of vision, thanks to the presence in the
Studio Fiorentino (University of Florence) of
Biagio Pelacani. It was treated as a geometric
discipline for measuring by sight, thanks to the
abacus masters who served as bridge between
philosophical speculation and the practical appli-
cations of optical science; and it began to be
discussed as a technique of representation, thanks
to experimentation in painting conducted by the
school of Giotto.
Filippo Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) was the first
artist to earn the epithet of perspettivo, usually
reserved for the philosophers. He was called
“perspectivo” by the Italian poet Ser Domenico
da Prato in 1413, presumably because of the fame
of the experiments in perspective conducted by
7
him and reported by the sources (Tanturli 1980,
pp. 125–144). We do not know exactly when the
two famous “panels” that traditionally mark the
birth of modern perspective were invented. His
biographer Antonio di Tuccio Manetti dates them
to the years of Brunelleschi’s youth, around the
beginning of the century; but the critics have
never agreed on this matter. The “panels” were
two optical devices that confronted pictorial imi-
tation with visual reality by depicting two places
emblematic of the city of Florence: the Baptistery
of San Giovanni and Piazza della Signoria. The
baptistery panel was designed to be observed
reflected in a mirror, standing behind the painting
and looking at it through a hole drilled at the main
vanishing point (Fig. 6). The demonstration took
place in front of the baptistery, with the panel
placed few steps inside the central door of the
cathedral and turned toward the baptistery so
that, by removing the mirror, the observer could
also see the real building through the hole. With
the mirror partially outside of the field of vision,
placed at the right distance from the eye, the
observer could note the perfect coincidence
between the real scene and its painted image.
8 Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy

The panel depicting Piazza della Signoria with the
Loggia dei Lanzi was instead looked at directly;
but, unlike an ordinary painting, it was shaped
along the top to match the upper profile of the
buildings (Fig. 7). With his gaze, the observer was
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 6 Reconstruction of Brunelleschi’s first perspective
panel (by F. Camerota, Museo Galileo)
prompted to align the shaped border of the paint-
ing with the corresponding profile of the real
scene. As in the case of the first panel, Brunelle-
schi could prove by this experiment that the
painted image and the real one coincided perfectly
from a single observation point.
We do not know why Brunelleschi actually
performed these optical demonstrations; but his
purpose was, it seems, to demonstrate tangibly the
basic perspective principle of the distance of
observation, that is, the principle of “certified”
vision maintained by Alhazen and Biagio
Pelacani. This would surely have entitled him to
a place among the ranks of the perspettivi,
although his was a perspectiva pratica (practical
perspective) to be used in representing things: an
art derived from the theoretical perspectiva
described by Manetti as “a part of that science
[optics], which consists in effect of explaining
well and with reasons the diminution and enlarge-
ment appearing to the eyes of men in things either
far away or nearby . . . of the measurement that
pertains to that distance where they appear fur-
thest away” (Manetti 1976, pp. 55–56). That
experience was based on the application of a

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 7 Reconstruction of
Brunelleschi’s second
perspective panel
(by F. Camerota, Museo
Galileo)
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
graphic rule thought to have been invented by
Brunelleschi (“and he implemented, he himself –
writes Manetti – what the painters today call per-
spective”). According to Giorgio Vasari, the first
to make an explicit pronouncement on this sub-
ject, the rule consisted of drawing a perspective
view “with the plane and profile and by means of
intersection” (Vasari 1973, II, p. 332). Brunelle-
schi would thus have invented what the sixteenth-
century codifiers called the “first rule of perspec-
tive” (Fig. 8), that is, the procedure through
which, given the plan and elevation of any object,
and having traced the visual pyramid in both pro-
jections, the perspective image could be deter-
mined with extreme precision, by intersecting
the visual rays with a plane corresponding to the
painter’s picture. Since this is a procedure typical
of architectural drawing (projections in plane and
elevation), modern critics have substantially
embraced this thesis, defining Brunelleschi’s
Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 8 Giacomo Barozzi
da Vignola, La prospettiva
pratica, Bologna 1744, p. 6:
the first rule of perspective
9
method as “legitimate construction” (Ludwig
1882; Panofsky 1927, pp. 258–330).
In reality, we do not know exactly what
“Filippo’s rule” was. We can only hypothesize
that its theoretical and practical basis was the
principle of intersection of the visual pyramid
that had already for some time been applied by
the abacus masters as a method for measuring
distances; a rod interposed between the eye and
object could be used to measure a proportional
segment of the distance or size in question. An
instrument described by the abacus master Grazia
de’ Castellani to measure where “the eye went
with the line of sight” is entirely similar to the
one illustrated later by Francesco di Giorgio Mar-
tini to show the principle of linear perspective; the
geometric laws that could be applied to measure
the distance of a point were the same that could be
used to represent its perspective image. Brunelle-
schi probably had the idea of replacing the rod
10
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 9 Albrecht Dürer, Underweysung der Messung, Nuremberg 1538,
Book IV: Alberti’s window as a perspective tool
with a transparent plane that allowed measure-
ment of the apparent diminution of things in rela-
tion to their distance from the eye, anticipating a
concept that was later masterfully expressed by
Leon Battista Alberti. In De pictura – the first
treatise on perspective painting, dedicated not by
chance to Brunelleschi – Alberti compared the
artist’s painting to “an open window through
which I look at what will be painted there” (I.19)
(Fig. 9). Modern perspective painting thus
resulted from a geometric operation that consisted
of intersecting the visual pyramid.
Leon Battista Alberti
To Alberti (1404–1472), we owe the first attempt
to establish rules and principles for geometric
drawing. Between 1435 and 1436, he composed
two works, closely linked and addressed primarily
to painters: the Elementa picturae (Elements of
painting) and the De pictura (On painting). The
title of the first book explicitly recalls the impor-
tant treatise by Euclid, the Elementa geometriae
(Elements of geometry), which since the Middle
Ages had been the chief reference point for math-
ematical studies, both in the universities and in the
abacus schools. During the fourteenth century, the
abacus schools underwent notable development,
especially in Florence, and among the pupils were
youths destined to become architects, painters,
goldsmiths, or sculptors. Filippo Brunelleschi
was one of them. In composing his “Euclid for
painters,” Alberti thus addressed himself to a
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
public already familiar to some extent with the
principles of practical geometry. His indications
serve to construct, by relatively simple steps,
plane figures both in their true shape and dimin-
ished through perspective. The booklet was
designed to furnish the rudiments necessary for
an understanding of De pictura, where the themes
dealt with, explains Alberti, “will be easily under-
stood by the geometer. But he who is ignorant of
geometry will understand neither these nor any
other discussion on painting” (De pictura, III.53).
De pictura is more conceptual than practical.
Apart from his explanations of the method for
constructing a floor in perspective and for using
an instrument for drawing from life – called
“velo” or “intersection” – Alberti was mainly
interested in defining the optical-geometric prin-
ciples that govern the plane representation of
three-dimensional space. The practical procedures
were, in fact, already familiar to painters, and
Alberti had been stimulated to write on this sub-
ject expressly by the perspective skill of artists
such as Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Ghiberti, and
Donatello. On the plaster underlying the Trinity
in Santa Maria Novella, for instance, Masaccio
had left incised a practical but impeccable method
for drawing the perspective of a foreshortened
circle within a square, while in the Nativity of
San Martino alla Scala, Paolo Uccello had left a
fine example of what is today termed “distance
point construction.” What was lacking was a text
allowing artists to explain the reasons for their
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 10 Leon Battista
Alberti, De pictura, 1518,
Lucca, Biblioteca Statale,
MS 1448, fol. 23
mode of operation, an “entirely mathematical”
book – stated Alberti – which would explain the
abstract concepts of geometry through the lan-
guage of painters. Since the painter “studies only
how to counterfeit what he sees” (I.2), Alberti was
concerned with explaining the manner in which
the eye perceives the reality around it, how the
lines of sight measure sizes “almost like a pair of
compasses” (I.5–6), how the Euclidean theory of
similar triangles explains the relationship between
real and apparent size (I.14), how in order to
construct similar triangles it is necessary to cut
the lines of sight (I.13), and how, in final analysis,
“painting is none other than the intersection of the
visual pyramid” (I.12).
The way in which these concepts could be
usefully transformed into a method of representa-
tion is explained by Alberti through a procedure
that critics have always interpreted as an abridged
form of the more laborious construction attributed
to Brunelleschi (Fig. 10). Basically, Alberti devel-
oped a method through which perspective could
be drawn directly on the painting, thus avoiding
the long architects’ procedure that called for the
use of preliminary drawings in plan and elevation.
With Alberti’s method, the principle of intersec-
tion of the visual pyramid could be applied to the
construction of the flooring alone, which being
conceived as a modular grid furnished the mea-
surements for all of the objects appearing within
the depth of the perspective field.
11
The Florentine Workshops
The lesson taught by Alberti was immediately
adopted and transmitted by some of the artists in
contact with him: Antonio Averlino, known as
Filarete, for example, who in his Trattato di
architettura (Treatise on architecture) presented
precepts and rules taken from De pictura and
Elementa picturae, and Lorenzo Ghiberti, who
in his Commentaries clearly expressed his desire
to play the role of the “erudite” artist called for by
Alberti. The subject of perspective is dealt with by
Ghiberti in his Third commentary, which in the
form that survives to our day is a collection of
passages taken from texts on optics by medieval
philosophers. The work, however, remained
unfinished; and it is probable that, after having
instructed artists on the science of vision, Ghiberti
intended to explain the rules of the art in which the
great masters of antiquity excelled, that is “that
part of perspective [i.e., optics] pertaining to the
art of painting.”
In the Florentine art workshops, perspective
was practiced with great skill, in both painting
and sculpture. Donatello had invented a new
bas-relief technique, called stiacciato (flattened),
expressly for the representation of space in per-
spective. Paolo Uccello was famous for the long
studies on perspective he conducted for his paint-
ings. And one category of artist, that of wooden
inlayers, earned the specific title of “masters of
perspective” precisely for the superb skill they
displayed in creating complex perspective
12 Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 11 Giuliano and
Benedetto da Maiano, detail
of the Studiolo of Federico
da Montefeltro in Urbino,
Ducal Palace

compositions. One of the masterpieces of this
Renaissance perspective tarsia, the panels of
Federico da Montefeltro’s Studiolo in Urbino
(Fig. 11), was produced by the Florentine work-
shop of the brothers Giuliano and Benedetto da
Maiano. And it was just at the time that the famous
Studiolo was being built (1475–1476) that Piero
della Francesca composed at the court of Urbino
the first true manual of perspective drawing: De
prospectiva pingendi (On perspective for
painting).
Piero della Francesca
An exceptionally refined painter and mathemati-
cian, Piero della Francesca (c. 1416–1492),
accompanied his famous paintings with three
important mathematical texts: an abacus book, a
work on Plato’s five regular bodies, and a manual
of pictorial perspective. The manual marked a
fundamental stage in codifying the rules of per-
spective. Although it remained unpublished, the
treatise circulated through various manuscript
copies, inspiring the later writings of Albrecht
Dürer, Daniele Barbaro, and other sixteenth-
century authors (Camerota et al. 2015).
Piero was the first to write specifically for
artists. While Alberti was concerned with laying
the theoretical foundations of the new pictorial
discipline, Piero concentrated firmly on rules for
drawing. Prospectiva taught how to “commensu-
rate,” that is, how to represent things at the correct
size on the surface of the painting. To measure the
apparent size of things and replicate them, Piero
devised drawing procedures that painters could
adopt depending on the complexity of the object
to be represented. The first “way” (Fig. 12),
applied to the representation of geometrically sim-
ple objects, consisted of drawing a foreshortened
square destined to contain the object or objects to
be depicted. The front of the foreshortened square
coincided with the upper side of the square in true
form that contained the plane of the object. Hav-
ing traced the diagonal of the square in true form
and that of the foreshortened square, the proce-
dure called for a series of operations used to
transfer the points of an object from the plan in
“its own form” to the “degraded” plane. The sec-
ond “way” (Fig. 13) consisted in the methodical
use of the plan and elevation views as in the
abovementioned procedure attributed to Brunel-
leschi. That procedure was necessary for a correct
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy 13

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 12 Piero della
Francesca, De prospectiva
pingendi, Parma, Biblioteca
Palatina, MS 1576, fol. 9r

representation of the most complex objects such
as vaults, capitals, mazzocchi (toroidal-shaped
headgears), and even the human head, which
Piero geometricized with meridians and parallels,
almost as if it were a terrestrial globe (Fig. 14).
Leonardo da Vinci
Piero’s great geometric expertise won him the title
of “monarch” of the masters of perspective. This
is recalled by Luca Pacioli in his Divina pro-
portione (Divine proportion), reporting a compen-
dium by him, now lost, of De prospectiva
pingendi (Trattato dell’architettura, fol. 23r).
Pacioli’s work of dissemination contributed to
circulating Piero della Francesca’s among the
painters of his time, in particular Leonardo da
Vinci (1452–1519), who drew splendid tables of
Plato’s polyhedrons in perspective for Pacioli’s
Divina proportione. Leonardo, too, began to com-
pose a treatise on perspective; but, as with his
technical-scientific compositions, his writings
remained sparse and fragmented. His Libro di
pittura (Treatise on painting) is a posthumous
compilation by Francesco Melzi, one of his
14
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 13 Piero della Francesca, De prospectiva pingendi, Parma, Biblioteca
Palatina, MS 1576, fol. 41v
favorite pupils, who rearranged the numerous
entries scattered throughout his master’s note-
books. Leonardo had been interested in perspec-
tive since his time as apprentice in the workshop
of Verrocchio (Fig. 15); but his studies were con-
solidated during the first years of his stay in Milan,
when he began to study Euclid and the medieval
authors of optical texts, notably John Peckham
and Witelo (Codex Atlanticus, fol. 203ra). His
project for a treatise on perspective may date
from the 1480s, but Leonardo undoubtedly
worked on it in various stages up to his last
years in France. A “discourse on perspective”
copied “from one by the great Lionardo da
Vinci” was purchased in France in 1542 by
Benvenuto Cellini, who called it “the most beau-
tiful that had ever been found by any other man in
the world, because . . . said Leonardo found the
rules, and he explained them with such great ease
and order that any man who saw them was able to
apply them” (Leonardo da Vinci 1995,
pp. 27–28). Although the loss of this manuscript
makes it impossible to verify Cellini’s description,
it is probable that some of the rules for
foreshortening figures are the ones transcribed
by Carlo Urbino da Crema in the so-called
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
Codex Huygens (Fig. 16), the document most
representative of Leonardo’s studies on
foreshortening, the proportions of the human fig-
ure, and the so-called curvilinear perspective
(Panofsky 1940).
Impact and Legacy
Early Perspective Treatises
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the
artists’ science began to be disseminated in print-
ing, which led to rapid and progressive matura-
tion. The first printed work dates from 1505: De
artificiali perspectiva by the Bishop of Toul, Jean
Pélerin (Viator), who described the methodical
use of the so-called tiers point, two lateral points
similar to those used in architecture to draw the
curve of a pointed arch. The “third point” was to
be more appropriately termed the “distance point”
only in the writings of the great codifiers of the
sixteenth century.
Albrecht Dürer
When the fully illustrated booklet of Viator came
out, the German painter Albrecht Dürer
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy 15

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 14 Piero della
Francesca, De prospectiva
pingendi, Parma, Biblioteca
Palatina, MS 1576, fol. 61r

(1471–1528) started the geometrical studies that
led him to compose one of the most successful
manuals on geometric drawing ever written, the
Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirkel und
Richtscheiyt, in Linien, Ebenen, und ganzen
Corporen (Instructions for measuring with com-
pass and rule, in lines, planes and whole bodies),
first published in Nuremberg in 1525. The book
was intended to educate young German painters in
the secrets of the art “rediscovered by the Italians”
16
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 15 Leonardo da Vinci, Annunciazione, 1472–1475, Florence, Galleria
degli Uffizi
(Dürer 1525, dedication): those secrets that he had
learned in Bologna, from an unknown master, in
1506. Dürer stayed in Bologna only 8 days. On
returning to Venice, where he had been living for
nearly a year, he bought the very recent Latin
translation of the works of Euclid edited by
Bartolomeo Zamberti (1505) and began the stud-
ies in geometry that would lead him to compile the
Underweysung der Messung. The treatise was
designed to furnish the necessary geometrical
instructions not only to painters but also to “gold-
smiths, sculptors, stonemasons, woodworkers,
and others who base their art on the correctness
of drawing.” The themes dealt with range from
conic sections to the drawing of letters, from the
proportioning of architectural elements to the
design of sundials, and from measuring tech-
niques to perspective drawing. Each subject is
illustrated with drawings of exemplary clarity,
which made a decisive contribution to the dissem-
ination of the orthogonal projections (plan, eleva-
tion, and section or lateral elevation). The
potential value of those drawings, above all to
architecture, is fully demonstrated by the refined
illustrations to the subsequent treatise on fortifica-
tions, published in 1527: Eitliche underricht, zu
befestigung der Stett, Schlosz, und Flecken
(Various instructions for the fortification of cities,
castles and strongholds).
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
The most extraordinary applications of orthog-
onal projection are found in Dürer’s treatise,
published posthumously in 1528, on the propor-
tions of the human body: Heirin sind begriffen
vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (Four
books on the proportions of the human figure).
Here his refinement is expressed through a series
of multiple projections conceived to provide geo-
metric control even over the various positions of
the human body (Fig. 17). Piero della Francesca’s
attempt to demonstrate that it was possible to
geometricize even a geometrically undefined
body such as the human head was developed by
Dürer into a methodical system, subjecting the
infinite variations of nature to the control of geom-
etry. In these drawings appear orthogonal projec-
tions of bodies not only in frontal but also in
oblique view, seen from below or above: skillful
stereometries of human torsos, limbs, and heads.
Educated in a family of goldsmiths, Dürer pos-
sessed the expertise to dominate almost entirely
the field of geometric constructions; but he him-
self stated that this type of drawing originated in a
precise professional context, that of the stonema-
sons (Dürer 1528, dedication to Willibald
Pirchkeimer).
Dürer’s Underweysung der Messung con-
cluded with descriptions of the rules of perspec-
tive and an instrument for drawing from life which
expressed the concept that the perspective
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 16 Carlo Urbino, Codex Huygens, New York, Pierpont Morgan
Library, MS M.A. 1139, fol. 111
position of a point could be measured by two
coordinates, just as was done by cartographers in
defining the topographic position of a place. The
“small door” (Fig. 18), as the instrument was
called by Dürer (“türlein”), represents a constant
reference point in the literature on perspective of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Egnazio
Danti cited it in his commentaries on Vignola’s
perspective treatise (see section “Egnazio Danti
and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola”) expressly to
explain “what the foundation of perspective
17
consists of,” since with it “we will see distinctly
both the visual cone and the plane that cuts it.”
The line of sight is, in fact, visualized by a thread
tied to a nail which serves as eye. The point at
which this thread traverses the frame, which
marks the pictorial surface, is identified by two
orthogonal threads that measure its “longitude”
and “latitude.” The intersection of the threads is
then transferred on to the drawing sheet once the
“small door” has been closed.
18
Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 17 Albrecht Dürer,
De symmetria partium in
rectis formis humanorum
corporum: libri in latino
conversi, Nuremberg 1532,
fol. 121v
The success of the treatise when it was
published – two editions in German and no less
than four in Latin over a span of 30 years – pro-
duced the effect intended by Dürer. Artists, tech-
nicians, and mathematicians in the German area
paid due attention to the rules of representation,
producing in turn little manuals of practical use
and, at times, beautiful art books consisting of
collections of extraordinary perspective composi-
tions. Outstanding among these books, known as
Kunstbüchlein, is the Perspectiva by the Nurem-
berg goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer, with a text of
only three pages and a series of splendid copper
etchings depicting complex compositions of reg-
ular and irregular bodies, perfectly drawn in per-
spective (Fig. 19).
Sebastiano Serlio
The European dissemination of Dürer’s treatise
was ensured mainly by Joachim Camerarius’s
Latin translation, published in Paris in 1532
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
under the title Institutiones geometricae
(Geometrical instructions). It was constantly
referred to by later treatise writers, starting with
Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554), who in 1545
published in Paris the first and second of his
Sette libri di architettura (Seven books on archi-
tecture). The two books were dedicated to geom-
etry and to perspective and were the fruit of
knowledge acquired through contact with two of
the most refined perspective artists of the time,
Girolamo Genga and Baldassarre Peruzzi.
Undoubtedly deriving from their teachings as
consummate set designers is the importance
given to theatrical scenography as the perspective
art par excellence, a decisive aspect that explicitly
placed perspective among the themes of Vitruvian
studies (Fig. 20). The construction of stage set-
tings was contemplated in Vitruvius’s De
architectura as an art dependent on the laws of
scaenographia, which in its most common
Renaissance interpretation was synonymous with
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy 19

Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 18 Albrecht Dürer, Underweysung der Messung, Nuremberg 1525,
Book IV: the “türlein” (small door)

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 19 Wenzel Jamnitzer,
Perpsectiva corporum
regularium,
Nuremberg 1568

prospettiva. The authority of Vitruvius legiti-
mated the decision to include the treatise on per-
spective among books on architecture, leading
Serlio to consider as inseparable the skills of the
architect and those of the perspective artist:
“Perspective will do nothing without architecture,
nor architecture without perspective” (Serlio
1545, Secondo libro, fol. 25v).
20
Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 20 Sebastiano Serlio,
Il secondo libro. Di
Perspettiva, Paris, 1545, II,
p. 67: comic scene
Scaenographia: Perspective in the Vitruvian
Tradition
Serlio’s Secondo libro posed for the first time, in a
treatise of this kind, the problem of identifying
perspective with Vitruvius’s scaenographia,
inspiring the subsequent and more profound
reflections of Daniele Barbaro, who published in
Venice in 1568 one of the sixteenth century’s most
important treatises on perspective, La perspectiva
pratica (Practical perspective).
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
Daniele Barbaro
The idea of writing this treatise came to the mind
of Daniele Barbaro (1514–1570) while he was
working on the first edition of I dieci libri
dell’architettura di M. Vitruvio (Vitruvius’s Ten
books on architecture), published in Venice in
1556. His purpose was to fill a gap in Vitruvius’s
text concerning the techniques required to con-
struct the theatrical scenes mentioned in
Chapter VIII of the fifth book. Vitruvius had
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 21 Daniele Barbaro, I dieci libri dell’architettura di M. Vitruvio, Venice
1556, Book V, chap. viii: the tragic scene as interpreted by Andrea Palladio
limited himself to describing the typology of the
scenes according to the different nature of tragedy,
comedy, and satirical drama (Fig. 21); but modern
commentators turn to that chapter to indicate the
field of application of the third type of dispositio:
scaenographia. In his commentary on that chap-
ter, Barbaro announced that he was compiling a
treatise on perspective in five books dealing with
geometric principles, with the drawing of plane
figures (what Vitruvius called ichnographia), the
drawing of solids (orthographia), the perspective
representation of buildings (scaenographia), and
various other perspective themes, such as the pro-
jection of shadows (derived from Dürer), the
description of instruments for drawing from life,
and the anamorphic deformation of images
already anticipated by Piero della Francesca.
Piero’s treatise was, in fact, one of the sources
most frequently consulted and paraphrased, at
times quoted to the letter by Barbaro, in both the
text and the drawings (Fig. 22).
21
When the work was published in 1568, its
division into five books had been superseded by
a subdivision into nine parts that included two
Vitruvian themes not previously considered: the
measurements of the human body, as specified in
the third book of De architectura, and the plani-
sphere, the specific subject of the entire ninth
book devoted to gnomonics (the art of designing
and constructing sundials). The decisive sources
of these new sections were, respectively, the Vier
Bücher of Dürer (1528) and the commentary on
Ptolemy’s Planisphaerium published by Federico
Commandino in 1558. Commandino had skill-
fully used the painters’ perspective to explain the
geometric procedure adopted by Ptolemy for the
stereographic representation of the heavenly
vault, aware that the projective problem “concerns
that part of optics which the ancients called sce-
nography” (Ptolemy 1558, dedication). Barbaro
started the preface to his treatise with practically
the same words: “Among the many beautiful, and
22
Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 22 Daniele Barbaro,
La pratica della
perspettiva, Venice 1569,
p. 31: a perspective
demonstration derived from
Piero della Francesca’s De
prospectiva pingendi
illustrious parts of Perspective [that is, Optics],
there is one which the Greeks called Scenogra-
phy.” And later on the concept was expressed
again by Guidobaldo del Monte in dedicating his
Perspectivae libri sex (Six books of perspective,
1600) to “the part of perspective that is called
scenography by the Greeks.” In Geminus’s clas-
sification, from which the term used by Vitruvius,
scaenographia, undoubtedly derives, it was the
part of optics that concerned practical applications
to architecture and the figurative arts.
Vincenzo Scamozzi
In the wake of Barbaro’s treatise came a work by
Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548–1616), one of the most
important architects in the Veneto region. The
work is now lost, but the content is known to us
thanks to the Indice copiosissimo (A very copious
index) that Scamozzi compiled in collaboration
with his father for the 1584 edition of Serlio’s
Opere. Scamozzi’s “very easy and abundant per-
spective,” composed around 1574, consisted of
six books that gave ample space to both theoreti-
cal concepts and practical applications. Theatrical
scenography was one of the central themes, where
the reader could reflect on the significance of
Vitruvius’s term, precepts, and rules for attaining
the most spectacular illusionary effects, as well as
a description of the famous stage sets built by
Scamozzi in the Olimpico theaters of Vicenza
and Sabbioneta (Camerota 2016). One of the
most important geometrical contributions
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
concerned the use of the so-called horizontal
points, the vanishing points of generic horizontal
lines. The rules of pictorial perspective generally
contemplated the use of only two vanishing
points: the “central point,” where the lines orthog-
onal to the picture plane converged, and the “dis-
tance point,” where the lines oriented at 45
converged. These two vanishing points were suf-
ficient to construct the architectural features of
paintings in frontal view (Fig. 23). For the con-
struction of theatrical scenes, instead, it was useful
to have other vanishing points available, as many
as were the objective directions of the straight
lines and the planes. Scamozzi called them “hor-
izontal” because they all stayed on the horizon
line; later, the mathematicians Egnazio Danti and
Guidobaldo del Monte called them, respectively,
punti coadiutori (assisting points) and punti di
concorso (converging points) (Del Monte 1600).
Artists and Mathematicians: Art Academies
and the Teaching of Perspective
The contribution of mathematicians to the codify-
ing of perspective was intensified in the second
half of the sixteenth century, starting from
Commandino’s abovementioned commentary on
Ptolemy’s planisphere. The contribution of
Giovanni Battista Benedetti in De rationibus
operationum perspectivae (The rules of perspec-
tive operations, 1574) was not particularly influ-
ential, reaching neither the great public of artists
nor that of the academies. The work of Egnazio
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy 23

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 23 Sebastiano Serlio,
Tutte l’opere d’architettura
. . ., Venice 1584, Il secondo
libro di prospettiva, fol. 19v

Danti was, by contrast, decisive; it developed up again by Johannes Kepler in his “additions” to
precisely from the direct relationship with the Witelo’s treatise (Ad Vitellionem paralipomena,
teaching activity conducted in the academies 1604) and in the Dioptrice (1610), the two
of art. works that laid the foundations of modern geo-
metric optics.
Among the mathematicians who worked on
Egnazio Danti and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola
optics and perspective, Egnazio Danti was the
In 1573 Egnazio Danti (1536–1586) published the
one most attentive to practical applications and
Prospettiva di Euclide (Euclid’s optics), the first
dissemination of this discipline in the artists’
Italian translation of Euclid’s Optika kai
schools. His teaching of mathematics at the Acad-
katoptrika (Optics and catoptrics). Danti dedi-
emy of Drawing in Florence was decisive in this
cated it to the “Academicians of Drawing” in
sense. It was for his students that he first translated
Perugia, his birthplace, in the awareness that art-
Euclid’s Optics, convinced that this science was
ists had been responsible for keeping interest in
necessary to philosophers, to cosmographers and
optical studies alive; interest, in his opinion,
to artists: to the first, for the study of natural
abated “in the schools of the philosophers”
philosophy, to the second for cartography and
where optics had been nearly “banned”
astronomical observations, and to the third for
(dedication). Optical studies had, in effect, been
the ever more refined applications that were
interrupted in the late fourteenth century, and only
being made in architecture and in “all the other
around 1520 was the long silence broken by the
arts of drawing.” To teach the rules of perspective
first work of theoretical commitment: the
as a drawing discipline, Danti used the treatise,
Photismi de lumine et umbra ad perspectivam et
still unpublished, of Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola
radiorum indicentiam faciente (Radiation of light
(1507–1573), which he published years later with
and shadow, concerning perspective and the inci-
an ample commentary, leaving us one of the
dence of rays) by Francesco Maurolico which,
richest sources of technical, scientific, and histo-
however, remained unpublished until 1611. This
riographical information. Le due regole della pro-
work focused mainly on the phenomenon of
spettiva pratica di m. Iacomo Barozzi da Vignola
refraction already discussed by Alhazen, and it
(The two rules of practical perspective of
explained for the first time the phenomenon of
m. Iacomo Barozzi da Vignola) was published in
the formation of images on the retina. In the
Rome in 1583, richly illustrated with fine copper
early seventeenth century, the subject was taken
24
etchings. The very clear, concise text of Vignola
was alternated with the extensive technical and
theoretical considerations of Egnazio Danti, iden-
tified by a smaller typographical font and illus-
trated by woodcuts. The two rules mentioned in
the title were the method for intersecting the visual
pyramid in plan and elevation and the method of
construction with a distance point – rules whose
most lucid and complete codification is found here
(Fig. 24).
In the late sixteenth century, we observe the
emergence of a professional figure who moved
easily among the figurative arts and technical
problems. Painting, map-making, architecture,
fortifications, and the construction of machines
were skills frequently found in one person,
whose mathematical training was increasingly
assisted by schools closely linked to the artists’
workshops. In the second half of the sixteenth
century, there are at least four cases in which the
relationship between the arts and the mathemati-
cal sciences is clearly expressed through educa-
tional programs: two private schools at the Medici
court, directed by Ostilio Ricci and by Giulio
Parigi, the Florentine Accademia delle Arti del
Disegno, an art academy, and the Paduan
Accademia Delia, a military academy. Ostilio
Ricci, the master of Galileo, taught geometry
and perspective at the home of Bernardo
Buontalenti, where some of the pupils were his
young apprentices, including Ludovico Cigoli,
Don Giovanni de’ Medici, and probably Giulio
Parigi, who, in 1603, became “Mathematician to
the Pages,” a position entrusted for the first time to
an artist. Following the example of Ostilio Ricci,
Parigi opened a private school frequented by
youths from the Medici family and the Florentine
nobility. According to Filippo Baldinucci, who
called this school an “academy,” Parigi:
read Euclid, taught mechanics, perspective, civil
and military architecture and a fine new way of
drawing most admirable landscapes. This academy
was not only frequented by his own sons . . . and by
all of the Florentine nobility, but was already so
famous throughout Europe that princes and great
knights from Italy and abroad came purposely for it,
and stayed in our city, to learn there those noble
sciences and disciplines. (Baldinucci 1975, IV,
p. 141)
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
The schools of Ostilio Ricci and Giulio Parigi
represent a symptomatic evolution of the Renais-
sance artists’ workshop toward the model
represented by the Accademia del Disegno,
where the teaching of mathematics became the
necessary component that welded the figurative
arts to the geometric disciplines. The “men of
drawing, that is, architects, sculptors, painters,
etc.” were asked to broaden their technical and
scientific knowledge by studying anatomy, math-
ematics, mechanics, architecture, hydraulic engi-
neering, perspective, music, and Euclidean
geometry.
Lodovico Cigoli
Two of the most important treatises of the early
seventeenth century were addressed to the “men
of drawing”: the Prospettiva pratica by the painter
Lodovico Cardi Cigoli (1559–1613) and Lo
inganno degli occhi (The deception of the eyes)
by the mathematician Pietro Accolti. Remaining
unpublished due to the untimely death of its
author in 1613, Cigoli’s treatise is outstanding
for the clarity and completeness of the subjects
treated. Especially noteworthy are the sections on
geometric drawing (orthographic projections), on
the rules of perspective (the first and second rule,
and the method with convergence points), on
stage set design (the geometry for creating theat-
rical illusions, Fig. 25), and the final section on
instruments for drawing from life, which takes
account of the importance attributed to the
mechanical representation of nature in the Floren-
tine milieu. Not by chance, Cigoli was one of the
artists most interested in using the telescope as a
perspective tool. To him we owe some of the most
methodical perspective views of sunspots, spe-
cially done to back up the observations carried
out by his friend Galileo in 1612. And to him we
also owe the first telescopic portrait of the moon
still visible under the feet of the Virgin in the
fresco of the Cappella Paolina in Santa Maria
Maggiore (Fig. 26).
The Perspective of Shadows
Cigoli’s interest in the telescope as a perspective
tool was not an isolated case. Already in the late
sixteenth century, a “perspective tube” for
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 24 Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, Le due regole della prospettiva pratica,
Rome 1583: first and second rules of perspective
terrestrial use had interested several English math-
ematicians for its applications to topography and
landscape painting (Van Helden 1977). Kepler
had further developed the Galilean telescope for
surveying purposes, equipping it with a third lens
and a drawing table to be used in a camera
obscura; and Galileo himself realized that the
25
best way to describe and measure the new celestial
world was that of drawing what he saw through
the lenses, using the telescope as a painter would
have used a perspective instrument.
The spread of the telescope had renewed sci-
entific interest in the problems of optics and per-
spective. In the years immediately after Galileo’s
26 Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 25 Lodovico Cardi
Cigoli, Prospettiva pratica,
c. 1610, Firenze, Uffizi
Gallery, Gabinetto dei
Disegni e delle Stampe,
2660 A, fol. 64r:
perspective construction of
a building for a stage set
design

first observations (1609), Kepler’s Dioptrice,
Maurolico’s Photismi, and the Opticorum libri
sex (Six books on optics) of the Jesuit François
d’Auguillon were published. The latter was a
weighty treatise on optics illustrated by Peter
Paul Rubens, which examined the science of
vision in its manifold aspects, physiological, psy-
chological, and geometric (Aguilonius 1613).
Galileo’s explanations of the results of his obser-
vations in the Sidereus nuncius were often based
on perspective, viewed as both the science of
vision and a technique of representation. It was
for this reason that Cigoli considered Galileo his
true master of perspective, turning to him even for
such a strictly academic question as the age-old
debate on the superiority of the different arts.
Galileo’s opinion on the superiority of painting
is expressed in a famous letter to Cigoli where the
scientist described painting as “the faculty that
with lightness and darkness imitates nature”
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 26 Lodovico Cardi Cigoli, Immacolata concezione,
affresco, 1612, Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore, dome of the
Cappella Paolina: the moon as seen through the telescope
(Panofsky 1956, 1978, pp. 81–102). Chiaroscuro
was the technique used to imitate relief, a dimen-
sion of nature that is perceived only thanks to the
contrast between light and shadow. Where there is
no contrast, explained Galileo, there is no visible
relief, and even a sculpture would appear as a flat
surface if not appropriately lighted. To prove this
point, Galileo proposed an experiment, which
seems to have circulated in the academic milieu
disguised as an ancient anecdote in the style of
Pliny the Elder, perhaps to make it more authori-
tative. Pietro Accolti presented it in this way,
mentioning a competition between Apelles and
Praxiteles that is not registered in any ancient
source. To demonstrate the superiority of his
own art, according to the fabricated anecdote,
Apelles is said to have transformed his rival’s
statue into a flat surface by painting the lighted
areas dark and those in shadow light, exactly as
suggested by Galileo.
Pietro Accolti
Like Galileo, Accolti (1579–1642) declared that
no painted object could ever have appeared dif-
ferent from what it was, that is, a flat surface,
without the skilled use of lights and shadows.
Among his most original contributions is, in fact,
the representation of shadows, including the spe-
cific case of shadows projected by sunlight.
27
The innovative practice of representing
shadows geometrically was introduced by Dürer
in the Underweysung der Messung, where he
demonstrated the principle of projecting shadows
with a point source of light: a lamp or a candle
(Fig. 27). Dürer’s scheme was to be proposed
again, without substantial modifications, at least
up to Aguilonius’s Opticorum libri sex (1613),
where we find it specified that “those things
lighted by lamps . . . should be expressed
scaenographicae, that is in perspective,” while
those “that are exposed to the direct rays of the
sun should be presented orthograpicae, that is, in
orthographic projection.” Accolti concentrated on
this second case, following Galileo’s argument on
the orographic nature of the moon. According to
Galileo, the clearest proof that the moon had a
mountainous surface similar to that of the earth
was the craggy profile of the terminator, the line of
separation between light and shadow. We do not
perceive the mountain peaks in the illuminated
area because there, only the lighted part could be
seen. If we imagine an irregular surface lit up by
the sun, explains Galileo, “the sun, or one who
might stand in its place, absolutely would not see
any of the shadowy parts, but only those that are
lit up; because in this case the lines of sight and of
illumination proceed along the same straight
paths.” To see the shadows, it would be necessary
for “the line of sight to rise above said surface
more than the solar ray,” that is, for the eye to look
at the object from another point of view, as hap-
pens when we see the terminator.
With similar arguments, Accolti proposed a
way of drawing the shadows cast by the solar
light comparing two different views of the same
body: a hollow cube (Fig. 28). In the first view, the
cube is seen by the eye of man and thus drawn in
perspective, with the foreshortened sides converg-
ing toward a vanishing point. In the second view,
the cube is seen by “the eye of the sun” and
consequently drawn in orthographic projection,
with the foreshortened sides parallel, that is, “not
concurring at any point in perspective.” Since the
sun is at the same time both the seeing eye and the
source of light, the second cube appears free of
shadows, or rather the shadows are concealed by
the parts of the object which produce them. In
28 Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 27 Albrecht Dürer,
Underweysung der
Messung, Nuremberg 1525,
Book IV: cast shadow of
a cube

order to see the shadows, the eye would have to be
shifted to another position, as in the cube drawn in
perspective, where the shadows are produced by
simply transferring from the orthographic cube
the points where that which lies in front is super-
imposed on that which lies behind. For this
reason, the orthographic drawing is called
“ombrifero” or generator of shadows. Although
Accolti’s objective was to describe an alternative
way of representing shadows in perspective, the
drawing called “ombrifero” contained all of the
elements which, with Girard Desargues, were to
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy 29

Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 28 Pietro Accolti, Lo inganno de gl’occhi, Florence 1625, pp. 140–1

lead to the definition of the ideal point in projec- bodies rather than on their apparent image.
tive geometry. The cube appears to us as if we Leonardo employed it superbly to represent
were looking at it from the position of the sun, that machines and mechanical elements; Dürer and
is, from a viewpoint at infinite distance. Jean Cousin showed how it could be used to
draw the foreshortening of a human figure; and
Juan de Rojas Sarmiento used the method to draw
Perspective “à la cavalière”: The Military
a new kind of astrolabe where the points of the
Practice of Drawing
sphere were transferred on to the plane according
Accolti’s “shadowy” drawing is what we now call
to what Aguilonius was to call “orthographic
“axonometry,” a representation in “parallel” per-
projection.”
spective known at that time as “soldiers’ perspec-
The need to have a drawing that was both
tive” since it was commonly used in the military
“pictorial” and measurable had favored the dis-
field. This kind of perspective without
semination of a practical, rapid system of “per-
foreshortening, widespread since antiquity, had
spective” through which the geometric
been the perspective of mathematicians through-
characteristics of the object represented could be
out the Middle Ages. In treatises on practical
retained unaltered. Girolamo Maggi, who in 1564
geometry, as in the earlier land-surveying trea-
published the treatise Della fortificatione delle
tises, geometric solids were represented in pre-
città (On the fortification of cities) explicitly men-
cisely this manner, according to a practice that
tions the use of this type of representation as
was to remain in vogue throughout the Renais-
specific to military architecture: “Let no one
sance, even among the greatest theoreticians of
think to see in these drawings of mine either
linear perspective. Piero della Francesca, for
methods or rules for perspective, firstly because,
instance, utilized it in both his abacus book and
not being a soldier’s technique, I would not know
his booklet on the five regular bodies, in order to
how to do it, and then because, due to the
lay emphasis on the geometric characteristics of
30
foreshortening, too much of the plan would be
lost. These drawings serve instead expressly to
show the plans, and this is called soldierly per-
spective” (Fig. 29). The drawing proposed by
Maggi is what is now called “military
axonometry,” retaining a term which indicates its
origin or at least its predominant usage in fortified
architecture. Bonaiuto Lorini calls it “the most
common perspective,” Bartolomeo Romano
“spherical perspective,” and Giovanni Battista
Bellucci “perspective that serves for practical
uses,” and again in the nineteenth century, the
first codifier of this method, William Farish, was
to call it “isometric perspective.” Among French
soldiers and mathematicians, it took the name
“perspective à la cavalière,” where “à la cavalière”
meant “informal,” “casual,” “rapid,” “without the
hindrance of the geometric rules”: a simpler per-
spective conceived for the specific use of the
military men (Ozanam 1691).
A “War” Between Artists and Mathematicians:
The French Perspectivists
Although applied mainly to the problems of artists
and thus consisting of practical procedures, per-
spective was by tradition a mathematical science.
Christopher Clavius had included it in the curric-
ulum of Jesuit schools, and its applications had
been studied by some of the Society of Jesus’s
illustrious mathematicians, such as Christoph
Scheiner, inventor of the pantograph; Mario
Bettini and Christoph Grienberger, inventors of
new perspective instruments inspired by the pan-
tograph; Athanasius Kircher and Gaspard Schott,
visionary creators of magic optical tricks; and
Jean Dubreuil, one of the leading figures in the
heated debate that accompanied the development
of projective geometry in France.
The bitter academic quarrel had been unwit-
tingly triggered by Dubreuil himself. In his La
Perspective pratique (1642, pp. 117–19), a text
widely disseminated and not only in Jesuit
schools, he had presented, with some variants,
the perspective method developed a few years
before by the architect and mathematician Girard
Desargues, who, between 1636 and 1640,
published three important contributions on per-
spective (1636), on conic sections (1639), and
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
on stereotomy (1640), proposing a radical renewal
of the methods used for geometric representation.
The treatise on conic sections contained the theo-
retical principles for a new geometry destined to
become the common foundation of the arts based
on the concepts of projection and section. The
definitions essential to the development of this
science of drawing included those required for a
perfect codification of the geometry of solar
shadows and the geometry of axonometry, that
is, the point at infinity, called “objective,” (but)
conceived as the meeting place of parallel lines,
and the straight line at infinity, called “axes”
(essieux), seen as the meeting place of parallel
planes. For perspective drawing, Desargues pro-
posed the use of proportional scales, which made
it possible to operate always and in any case
within the painting surface (Fig. 30). His method
tended to eliminate any complication derived
from the use of “convergence points,” including
the particular case of the distance point, often
situated outside of the painting, and so increasing
the probability of error. The proportional scales
should be “for the artist a tool similar to the
proportional compass,” the Galilean instrument
that Desargues and other French mathematicians
of his time transformed into a “compas optique ou
de perspective” (Alleaume 1629; Vaulezard 1631;
Migon 1643).
Desargues reacted vehemently to Dubreuil’s
treatise, affixing handbills in the streets of Paris
publicly accusing the Jesuit father of plagiarism
and proclaiming him guilty of “unbelievable
errors” and “enormous mistakes and falsehoods.”
According to Desargues, Dubreuil had failed to
grasp the fine points of his manière universelle
and had trivialized it. Dubreuil had replied to these
accusations with a scornful pamphlet, Advis char-
itables (Charitable advice), and a new booklet on
perspective, Diverses methodes universelles et
nouvelles (Various new and universal methods),
in which he attributed the authorship of
Desargues’s manière to the mathematician
Jacques Aleaume. In the meantime, the contro-
versy had produced several texts on perspective
by the most eminent members of the Académie
Royale, fiercely attacking one another: on the one
hand, Abraham Bosse, a strenuous defender of
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy 31

Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 29 Girolamo Maggi and Iacomo Castriotto, Della fortificatione delle
città ... libri III, Venice 1583, fol. 68v

Desargues, and, on the other, Jacques Curabelle, Apart from personal malice and academic
Jacques Le Bicheur, and Grégoire Huret, who rivalry, the debate centered on the age-old ques-
spared their opponents no insult nor personal tion of the relationship between the principles of
offense. geometry and the practice of art. Desargues and
32 Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy

Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 30 Girard Desargues,
Exemple d’une manière
universelle ... touchant la
pratique de la perspective,
Paris 1636

Bosse advocated total geometric control in archi-
tectural drawing as well as in painting; but to their
opponents, the use of proportional scales seemed
a futile complication. Dubreuil also regarded the
use of geometric rules as fundamental, since with-
out them the painter could hope “only to paint for
the ignorant”; but their application was functional
to artistic practice and did not call for the rigor of a
mathematical demonstration.
Anamorphosis and the Triumph of Illusion
Entirely extraneous to the academic disputes over
the work of Desargues, but certainly well
informed and sensitive to his innovations, was
the Minim Friar Jean François Niceron, who
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
codified the rules of the so-called curious perspec-
tive or anamorphosis. Anamorphosis was the new
frontier of studies in perspective. Introduced in the
late fifteenth century by Piero della Francesca as a
case of the projection of shadows (De prospectiva
pingendi, III, X–XII), the technique had evolved
over the course of the sixteenth century without
any clear codification of its geometric rules.
Niceron first investigated all possible declina-
tions, expressing in geometric terms some philo-
sophical questions on visual appearance already
discussed in the Dioptrique of René Descartes.
Behind the spectacular nature of the “anamorphic
magic” lay a rigorous scientific concept that
investigated the most complex themes of geomet-
ric optics and taught methods for deforming and
regenerating images viewed either directly or
using mirrors and lenses. The Perspective
curieuse was published in Paris in 1638 and,
quite extended, in Latin, in 1646 under the title
Thaumaturgus opticus. This second, posthu-
mously published, edition contained major tech-
nical and theoretical innovations, including two
appendices devoted to Lodovico Cigoli’s use of a
perspective instrument and to the projection of
shadows (Niceron 1646, II, pp. 191–218).
Niceron was also the author of the two spec-
tacular pictorial applications of this perspective
technique. In his Parisian monastery in Place
Royale and in the Roman monastery of Trinità
dei Monti, he made extraordinary anamorphic
compositions of great size. Those in the Roman
monastery, accomplished in collaboration with his
brother friar Emmanuel Maignan in 1642, are the
only ones to have survived (Fig. 31): dreamlike
images that transmute under the incredulous eye
of the observer into a swirl of sinuous lines float-
ing in an imaginary space, now shapeless, now
perfectly recognizable. These stupefying illusions
served as inspiration to the most virtuoso of the
quadraturists, the Jesuit Andrea Pozzo, who
imposed the same illusory mechanism on archi-
tectural space. Like the anamorphoses, his painted
architecture was based on the adoption of a single
viewing point, rejecting the multiplicity of points
favored by the quadraturists of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
33
The illusory power of his fictive architecture
was so strong that it forcefully conditioned the
perception of space, leading neoclassical critics
to censor his paintings as if they were actually
buildings. On the technical level, the supreme
skill of the Jesuit painter was undeniable. On
both the theoretical and the practical level, the
meticulous exactitude of Andrea Pozzo was
impeccable. The didactic structure of his treatise,
Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum
(Perspective for painters and architects, 1693),
leading the reader to tackle a problem only after
having thoroughly understood the one before it, is
perfectly confirmed by the methodical conduction
of his worksite, recognizable today by some
meaningful signs. On the ceiling of the Jesuit
church of Sant’Ignazio, in Rome (Fig. 32), for
instance, the traces of the construction grid cut
into the plaster reveal the utmost degree of preci-
sion in transferring the measurements of the
sketch to the great dimensions of the pictorial
surface. On the construction site, as in the treatise,
each step is accurately measured, and in this abso-
lute precision lies the secret of the amazing illu-
sionistic effects achieved by Pozzo.
With a rigor matching his technical skill, Pozzo
sets out the two basic rules of practical perspec-
tive, “distance point” and “intersection,”
explaining how to evade the pitfalls of geometric
drawing on highly foreshortened planes (Fig. 33).
With the same inflexible rigor, Pozzo rejects any
mitigation of perspectival deformation, such as
the use of several vanishing points preferred by
the great quadraturists of Emilia and the Veneto,
firmly imposing his faith in the single vanishing
point that will provide maximum illusion and
assigning an important added value to marginal
deformations. Pozzo devoted the concluding
appendix of his treatise, entitled Risposta
sull’obiezione fatta circa il punto di vista nelle
prospettive (An answer to the objection made
about the point of sight in perspective), to this
crucial subject, which he set out in three simple
and categorical arguments: first, “the greatest
masters” have always used a single viewpoint;
second, “since perspective is but a counterfeiting
of the truth,” the painter is not obliged to show it
correctly from all points of view, but from only
34 Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy

Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 31 Emmanuel Maignan, Anamorphic image of St. Francis of Paola,
mural painting, 1644, Rome, Trinità dei Monti

Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy, Fig. 32 Reconstruction of the grid traced on the plaster of the ceiling in the
church of St. Ignatius, Rome
Perspective in Renaissance Philosophy
Perspective in
Renaissance Philosophy,
Fig. 33 Andrea Pozzo,
Perspectiva pictorum et
architectorum, Rome 1693,
Pl. 92: perspective
construction of a fake
cupola on a flat ceiling
one; third, if a work is made to be seen from
several viewpoints, none of them will the illusion
be truly convincing. The glorious fresco over the
nave in Sant’Ignazio is cited as proof of these
statements, and the marble disk in that church
that unmistakably marks the position of the obser-
vation point has the unarguable tone of a geomet-
ric theorem, whose demonstration is renewed
again each time to the astonished eyes of the
observer. That marble disk is perhaps the most
eloquent and emblematic image of the central
nature of the gaze in the conception of pictorial
and architectural space proper to the modern age.
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