Alberti on Perspective: Calling His Bluff
Journal Title: Online Journal of Art and Design - Year 2015, Vol 3, Issue 2
Abstract
There are lacunae in the paragraphs of De Pictura in which Leon Battista Alberti describes his method of perspective construction. Although this has been a matter of considerable discussion among Alberti scholars in recent decades, none has deconstructed the text enough to state unequivocally that the theory is both defective and circular – which it is: • Alberti does not provide sufficient information to enable the construction to be drawn with any degree of mathematical precision, in spite of his basing its validity on mathematical proof; • when the construction is drawn (which can only be achieved after making certain assumptions), it does not produce an array of continuous and contiguous foreshortened squares, as Alberti maintains it does; • the ‘distance point’ of the viewer is irrelevant; and • the construction is less practically useful and less technically advanced than the method or methods used by Alberti’s great artist contemporaries - Ghiberti, Masaccio, Mantegna, Donatello and Piero della Francesca - rather than the reverse. This paper maintains that Alberti does not deserve his reputation as the originator of perspective theory and that the Western academic community stands condemned for allowing this situation to occur and to continue.
Authors and Affiliations
Donald Richardson| donaldar@ozemail.com.au
Keywords
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