From Vitruvius to the Science Of Drawing Daniele Barbaro’s Concept of “Scaenographia”

Daniele Barbaro’s treatise on perspective is one of the most authoritative technical-scientific sources of the sixteenth century. Although largely based on the unpublished work of Piero della Francesca, the treatise had the precise and original purpose of filling a gap in the Vitruvian text about the contents of the so-called ‘scaenographia’, a discipline based on optical geometry of which Vitruvius provided only meagre and sibylline words. The subdivision of the treatise, examined here into the individual parts that constitute it, follows a clearly Vitruvian structure, with the first three parts dedicated to ichnographia (perspective drawing of plans), orthographaia (perspective drawing of solid bodies) and scaenographia (perspective drawing of the buildings and their ornaments), and with two other parts specifically dedicated to the measurements of the human body and to the drawing of the planisphere, themes treated by Vitruvius respectively in the third and ninth books of De architectura. In this sense, La pratica della perspettiva, published in 1568, should be considered as an integral text of the most authoritative commentary on Vitruvius’ I Dieci libri dell’architettura, published in 1556 and 1567.

The Intersection of Visual Science and Art in Renaissance Italy

In the time of the Renaissance, a major aspect of vision science was understanding how spatial information projected to the viewpoint of the observer, that is, visual perspective, which is one of the primary cues to depth perception. Perspective representation was thus an early form of virtual reality. Although accurate perspective representation was developed earlier in the 15th century, the first analytic perspective scheme was developed by Piero della Francesca, whose chef d’oeuvre is in the Church of San Francesco, Arezzo, in which the present lecture took place. The focus of the lecture was to evaluate some of the contributions of Piero della Francesca and his 15th-century contemporaries to the visual science, art and symbolism of his era, and its significance for the perception of depth structure from two-dimensional images.

Pier Paolo Pasolini e as linguagens do real

O nexo estabelecido por Pier Paolo Pasolini entre realidade e linguagem constitui uma tensão que distende as suas obras em distintos meios de expressão. Diante dos vínculos particulares que ele estabelece entre a linguagem pictórica e a poética, nos quais a recepção do aparato crítico de Roberto Longhi se mostra estratégica, propõe-se considerá-los por meio do gesto exemplarmente cristalizado nos versos de Gli affreschi di Piero ad Arezzo, primeira parte do poema La ricchezza (1955-1957), coligido em La religione del mio tempo (1961). Nesses versos, para os quais se apresenta tradução neste artigo, o impacto produzido pela pintura renascentista de Piero della Francesca permite observar o vitalismo estético que fundamenta a práxis poética pasoliniana, assim como a crítica do presente que articula tal prática. Nesse sentido, verifica-se que também a perspectiva de Pasolini acerca das artes visuais se revela uma penetrante tradução histórica e crítica da própria realidade como forma de linguagem.

The Vanishing Point

Filippo Brunelleschi was a pivotal figure in the Renaissance. He designed and constructed the dome of the cathedral in Florence whose size has only been surpassed using modern building materials. Even more influential was his invention of single-point perspective as a technique for producing geometrically realistic paintings. His methods were disseminated by Alberti and developed by painters such as Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca. Chapter 12 provides a simple explanation of how a perspective grid is constructed and discusses examples of its use, including Raphael’s School of Athens.

Space, Vision, and Faith

Linear perspective served as a useful tool in the pursuit of verisimilitude in early modern art. But the technique’s enduring appeal among visual artists from this period did not stem from its ability to transcribe the world’s appearance alone. Rather, as this Reflection highlights, it was the perspectival image’s capacity to build a direct, one-to-one rapport with a viewer that most excited art practitioners. Painters like Piero della Francesca and Giovanni Bellini took full advantage of linear perspective’s potential for simulating vision. The spaces they constructed in altarpieces and other devotional imagery often showed supernatural realms that clearly defy human optical function. This essay presents several examples of early modern works that evoke spiritual vision through linear perspective constructions.

Due quæstiones vitruviane riconosciute: la base attica e il capitello composito nel terzo libro del De prospectiva pingendi di Piero della Francesca e un plagio conclamato di Luca Pacioli = Two Recognized Vitruvian Problems: The Attic Base and the Composite Capital in the Third Book of De Prospectiva Pingendi by Piero della Francesca and an Evident Plagiarism by Luca Pacioli

Il saggio prende in considerazione due problemi vitruviano-pierfrancescani rimasti sino a oggi senza spiegazione e neppure riconosciuti come tali dai moderni esegeti del De prospectiva pingendi: la lunghezza del plinto della base attica (Libro III, propositio sexta) e la dimensione della concavità dell’abaco del capitello composito (Libro III, propositio septima).In ambedue i casi i dati numerici danno conto dell’obbligata impossibilità di Piero nell’offrire soluzioni ai passi guasti dei codici vitruviani, tutti con numerosi errori. La condizione di Piero è la stessa di Leon Battista Alberti: nessuno dei due è un filologo. Lo studio rende ragione anche delle oscillazioni dimensionali proposte da Alberti per il lato del plinto.Il saggio è occasione per «smascherare» un plagio di Luca Pacioli proprio in relazione ai due temi principali dell’intervento.AbstractThe essay takes into consideration two problems related to Vitruvius and Piero della Francesca that have remained unexplained up to now and are not even recognized as such by the modern exegetes of De prospectiva pingendi: the length of the plinth of the Attic base (Book III, propositio sexta) and the size of the concavity of the abacus of the composite capital (Book III, propositio septima). In both cases the numerical data reveal Piero’s impossibility to offer solutions to faulty passages of the Vitruvian codes, all with numerous errors. Piero’s condition is the same as Leon Battista Alberti: neither is a philologist. The study also explains the dimensional oscillations proposed by Alberti for the plinth side.The essay is an opportunity to «unmask» a plagiarism by Luca Pacioli precisely in relation to the two main themes examined here.