Brunelleschis Dome by Ross King Read Free Book Online

impression of relative position, size, or distance as the actual objects do when viewed from a particular point. Filippo is generally regarded as its inventor, the one who discovered (or rediscovered) its mathematical laws. For example, he worked out the principle of the vanishing point, which was known to the Greeks and Romans but, like so much other knowledge, had long since been lost. Greek vase paintings and marble reliefs show an understanding of perspective, as do some of the scene paintings for Greek tragedies staged in Athens, including those of Aeschylus. The Roman scientist Pliny the Elder claimed that this method of representation (which he calls imagines obliquae ,“slanting images”) had been invented by a painter of the sixth century B.C. named Kimon of Kleonai. The Romans made use of perspective in their wall paintings, and some of its principles were described by the architect Vitruvius. Furthermore, it seems inconceivable that buildings such as the Pantheon or the Colosseum could have been built without their architects executing perspective drawings of some sort.
    After the decline of the Roman Empire, however, the technique of perspective drawing was lost or abandoned. Plato had condemned perspective as a deceit, and the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus ( A.D. 205-270) praised the flattened art of the ancient Egyptians for showing figures in their “true” proportions. This prejudice against the “dishonesty” of perspective was adopted in Christian art, with the result that naturalistic space was renounced throughout the Middle Ages. Only in the first decades of the fourteenth century did the ancient methods of perspective reappear when Giotto began using chiaroscuro — a treatment of light and shade — to create realistic three-dimensional effects.
    Filippo might have seen examples of ancient perspective painting during his travels through Italy. But he probably worked out the principles of perspective from quite different sources. The procedures for executing his own painting — plotting lines of sight on a plane surface — he could have learned from the surveying techniques he employed while measuring the ruins of Rome. 1 Perspective drawing is, after all, similar to surveying in that both involve determining the relative positions of three-dimensional objects for the purpose of protracting them on paper or canvas. The practice of measuring and surveying was highly developed by Filippo’s time: his great leap appears to have been an application of its principles and techniques to the art of painting.
    Filippo’s experiment consisted of an almost magical optical trick, a trompe l’oeil painting that, in its clever confusion of life and art, prefigured much later experiments with optical devices such as cameras obscura, panoramas, dioramas, and catoptric art. This painting — one of the most famous in the history of art — has long since been lost to the world. Last known to have been in the possession of Lorenzo the Magnificent, it vanished after the occupation of Florence by Charles VIII of France in 1494, when many works of Florentine art were looted. It was clearly described, however, by Antonio Manetti, who claimed to have held it in his hands and attempted the experiment himself.
    For the subject of his perspective painting Filippo chose one of Florence’s most familiar sights: the Baptistery of San Giovanni. Positioning himself a short distance inside the middle portal of Santa Maria del Fiore, some 115 feet from the Baptistery, he painted onto a small panel, in perfect perspective, using a geometrically constructed picture plane, everything that was visible through the “frame” of the cathedral’s doorway: the Baptistery and its surrounding streets, including the wafer makers in the Casa della Misericordia and the corner of the sheep market. In place of a painted sky he substituted a piece of burnished silver, a mirror that would reflect the clouds, birds, and changing sunlight