Perspective as Practice. Renaissance Cultures of Optics

Hardback, 512 pages, Size:178 x 254 mm, Illustrations:143 b/w, 46 col., 2 maps b/w, Language: English. ISBN 9782503581071. Summary This book is about the development of optics and perspective between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The point of departure of this book is the recognition of the polysemy of perspective, that is, the plurality of meanings of perspective. To bring forward the polysemy of perspective, this book explores the history of perspectiva in terms of practices, a conglomerate of material, social, literary and reproductive practices, through which knowledge claims in perspective were produced, promoted, legitimated and circulated in and through a variety of sites and institutions. The ways optical knowledge was used by different groups in different places (such as the university classroom, the anatomist's dissection table, the goldsmith's workshop, and the astronomer's observatory) defined the meanings of Renaissance perspective. As this period was characterized by widespread 'optical literacy', perspective was defined in different ways in different places and sites by various groups of practitioners. Most interestingly, sites such as the theatre, the instrument maker's workshop and the courtly garden were home to practices of perspective which have remained on the margin, or even completely invisible, in the historiographies of optics and perspective. The book also brings out the differences between codifications of perspectiva and practice. There were a variety of non-Albertian constructions to create the illusion of space, and other types of optical knowledge were as important to artists as the geometry of perspective. TABLE OF CONTENTS Sven Dupr , Introduction I. Sites of Perspective Marvin Trachtenberg, Perspective and Artistic Form: Optical Theory and Visual Culture from Giotto to Alberti Marjolijn Bol, The Emerald and the Eye: On Sight and Light in the Artisan's Workshop and the Scholar's Study Samuel Gessner, The Perspective of the Instrument Maker: The Planispheric Projection with Gemma Frisius and the Arsenius Workshop at Louvain Tawrin Baker, Dissection, Instruction, and Debate: Visual Theory at the Anatomy Theatre in the Sixteenth Century Jaime Cuenca, The Princely Point of View: Perspectival Scenery and Aristocratic Leisure in Early Modern Courts Juliet Odgers, The Optical Construction of John Evelyn's 'Dyall Garden' at Sayes Court II. Writing on Perspective Elaheh Kheirandish, Optics and Perspective in and beyond the Islamic Middle Ages: A Study of Transmission through Multidisciplinary Sources in Arabic and Persian A. Mark Smith, The Roots and Routes of Optical Lore in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance Dominique Raynaud, A Hitherto Unknown Treatise on Shadows Referred to by Leonardo da Vinci Sven Dupr , How-To Optics Jose Calvo Lopez, Teaching, Creating, and Using Perspective in Sixteenth-Century Spain: The Architectural Notebook of Hernan Ruiz II III. Drawing, Constructing, Painting Filippo Camerota, Masaccio's Elements of Painting: Geometrical Practice in the Trinity Fresco Pietro Roccasecca, Divided into Similar Parts: Representation of Distance and Magnitude in Leon Battista Alberti's De pictura J.V. Field, The Use of Perspective in the Art of Piero della Francesca Paul Hills, The Venetian Optics of Light and Geometry of Proportion Georges Farhat, Constructed Optics and Topographic Perspective at the Grand Canal of Versailles 0 g.…