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The Geometry of an Art, The History

of the Mathematical Theory of
Perspective from Alberti to Monge.
Sources and Studies in the History of
Mathematics and Physical Sciences
a
Christa Binder
a
Institute for Analysis and Scientific Computing , University of
Technology , Vienna , Austria
Published online: 21 Feb 2012.

To cite this article: Christa Binder (2012) The Geometry of an Art, The History of the Mathematical
Theory of Perspective from Alberti to Monge. Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and
Physical Sciences, Annals of Science, 69:2, 291-294, DOI: 10.1080/00033790902730636

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00033790902730636

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 Book Reviews 291

symbol could be more efficacious than its actual utility as a new tool of
representation. Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift discuss developments in time-keeping
and its effects upon quotidian life.
The final section is on political revolutions, or at least revolutions of a political
kind. Robert Mayhew examines the changing ideas about geography at Oxford in the
early seventeenth century and demonstrates the influence the new geography had
upon the discourse found in pamphlets during the English Civil War. Michael
Hefferman looks at geography as performed by Edme Mentelle during the French
Revolution. David Livingstone makes a strong contribution in mapping the moral
geography of the early American republic. Jefferson’s geography of natural wealth
was a carefully constructed riposte to the degeneracy described by the Comte de
Buffon. In this, Livingstone discerns a ‘geograpical apologetic’ for the rightness of
the American Revolution. Nicholaas Rupke ends the section with a look at the
reception of the publication of correspondence between Alexander von Humboldt
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and Varnhagen von Ense. This is a classic study in the geography of reading that has
obvious political overtones.
Peter Burke provides a brief afterword which summarises the key heuristics
arising from the essays. We are reminded that concepts of centre and periphery,
national styles, ‘rupture’ talk and revolutions are all useful. Indeed, it can be said that
this volume is useful precisely because it provides a series of case studies that show us
how historical geography may be done and how geographical thinking may be
applied to revolutions of all sorts, even those within Geography.

LAWRENCE DRITSAS, Science Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh, Chisholm House,

High School Yards, Edinburgh EH1 1LZ, UK. Email: [email protected]

Mathematics and Logic

KIRSTI ANDERSEN, The Geometry of an Art, The History of the Mathematical Theory
of Perspective from Alberti to Monge. Sources and Studies in the History of
Mathematics and Physical Sciences. New York: Springer, 2007. xxxvii
812 pp.
t165.80. ISBN-10 0-387-25961-9.

Who would have believed that the history of perspective is such a vast field? In this
volume the author describes works on perspective from its beginning in Italy in 1435
up to 1800. Altogether around 250 publications by more than 200 authors are studied
in detail. The book is generously illustrated with more than 600 figures including
more than 40 paintings (which are, unfortunately, only reproduced in black and
white), illustrations taken from the primary sources and additional modern drawings
to aid understanding of the constructions. In many cases the illustrations are
described in detail, the original text is explained and compared with modern
notation. Thus, it is possible to study both the development of ideas of perspective in
general as well as specific authors and their work.
Here I list the contents and give a brief summary of each chapter. This shows the
full range of topics covered by the book. The author starts with some very useful
 292 Book Reviews

notes to the reader, introducing the basic concepts of perspective, the notation used
and the mathematical techniques, as well as describing the order of the text and the
criteria for the choice of the constructions and the biographies presented.
Chapter I: ‘The Birth of Perspective’. In 1435, in De picture, Leon Battista Alberti
was the first to present a perspective construction. In the Renaissance, the study of
geometrical perspective was mainly stimulated by the intention to reproduce an
instantaneous view, and the search for mathematical rules describing this. Filippo
Brunelleschi was the first to paint genuine perspective compositions.
Chapter II: ‘Alberti and Piero della Francesca’. Alberti’s work is studied in detail
and compared with Piero della Francesca’s De prospectiva pingendi and his other
books (including also anamorphoses). Despite his comprehensive explanations and
careful instructions on how to carry out several methods of perspective construction,
Piero’s work did not seem receive the appreciation we now consider it deserved. It
was too difficult for practitioners and too boring for mathematicians.
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Chapter III: ‘Leonardo da Vinci’. Leonardo’s ideas on perspective were so

many*and sometimes so perplexing*that they have not been studied in detail, even
in this comprehensive book. Most of his ideas became known only much later. He
had various concepts and distinguished categories of perspective view, but he also
had doubts, and recognized problems (for example, how to draw a column)*
problems which, consequently, he tried to avoid in his paintings.
Chapter IV: ‘Italy and the Cinquecento’. In this period, perspective was
very popular among painters, architects, goldsmiths, stage designers and other
practitioners, and the understanding of the rules grew deeper. It was less popular
among mathematicians, with only a few exceptions such as Luca Pacioli. The main
work was La pratica della perspettiva (1568), an encyclopaedic summary of all related
knowledge, by Daniele Barolo who stated he intended to share his love for the
wonderful things he had read about. The largest section in his book concerns regular
and semiregular polyhedra which were considered both divine and magical and
became favourite decorative objects in Renaissance art.
Chapter V: ‘North of the Alps before 1600’. In the sixteenth century, knowledge
about perspective constructions reached France, some of the German states and the
Netherlands, treated mostly by painters (for instance, Albrecht Dűrer, who went to
Italy to study the secret art of perspective and later wrote some relevant books) or
goldsmiths (like Wenzel Jamnitzer who invented an instrument to draw his wonderful
pictures in Perspectiva corporum regularium [1568]). Reedman de Vries initiated a
particular Dutch style of architectural painting. But on the whole the northern
publications did not contribute to the development of the understanding of the
geometry behind the constructions.
Chapter VI: ‘The Birth of the Mathematical Theory of Perspective, Guidobaldo
and Stevin’. Guidobaldo Marchese del Monte published his results on perspective in
Perspectivae libri sex (1600), a turning point in the history of the mathematical theory
of perspective. He was the first who realized the importance of the perspective images
of sets of parallel lines and created the concept of a general vanishing point. But his
brilliant ideas drowned in what now seem a sea of irrelevant propositions and various
constructions. One of the careful readers of his book was Simon Stevin whose
contributions to perspective appeared in Van de deursichtighe (1605). It is the work of
a mathematician, written mostly for mathematicians, not for painters. For Stevin
perspective was a purely geometrical discipline whose foundations he described in
definitions and postulates (in the Greek tradition). However, his concise mathema-
 Book Reviews 293

tical treatment was not valued at the time. It only had a small impact in France
although he had some followers in the Netherlands.
Chapter VII: ‘The Dutch Development after Stevin’. Dutch painting flourished
during the seventeenth century, but Dutch painters wrote next to nothing about
perspective. They left the subject to mathematicians and engineers. One of the most
read works on perspective was Samuel Marolois’s La perspective contenant la theorie
et la practique d’icelle (1614). Marolois used many illustrations and invented an
instrument for constructions. He also wrote about shadows and about the inverse
problem. Willem Jacob ’sGravesande, professor of mathematics and astronomy,
wrote his Essai de perspective (1611) for those wishing to applying perspective. But
his deep mathematical understanding conflicted with his efforts to reach readers
lacking mathematical background. In mid-seventeenth century perspective boxes
emerged as a curiosity in a circle that included the painter Samuel van Hoogstraten.
Chapter VIII: ‘Italy after Guidobaldi’. Italy lost her leading position in the
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history of perspective owing to a drastic decline in public interest in the mathematical

aspects of the subject. The tradition was kept alive by architects and stage designers.
Andrea Pozzo created many architectural designs and perpective paintings for the
Jesuit order. His Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (1693) appeared in many
editions and translations (even in Chinese).
Chapter IX: ‘France and the Southern Netherlands after 1600’. At 88 pages this
chapter is the second longest in the book. It deals with more than forty titles. In the
seventeenth century, interest in perspective had shifted from Italy to France where it
was dominated by mathematicians and mathematical practitioners. The most
important and influential of these included Girard Desargues who published La
perspective (1636) and Brouillon project (1639), the latter often*but not by
Andersen*considered to be the first work on projective geometry. Another
important figure was Jean Dubreuil whose La perspective pratique (1642) was
usually referred to as ‘the Jesuit’s perspective’ because it had appeared anonymously.
The work was very popular among all who wanted only an immediate guide to the
practice of perspective without the intricacies of the theory. A large part of this
chapter deals with the controversy between these two men and their followers. The
minim priest François Niceron dedicated a whole book to the construction of
anamorphoses. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the interest in perspective
declined.
Chapter X: ‘Britain’. Interest in perspective in Britain started rather late. The
main publications were in the eighteenth century. Without doubt, the central figure
was Brook Taylor, better known for his contributions to analysis. But his Linear
Perspective (1715) is a much more original work. His interest in classical geometry
combined with his painting activities led him to study perspective. Like so many
others he was not content with the existing presentations, so he wrote his own and
built a theory that was far more general, comprehensive and systematic than
anything seen before. Although intended for painters, architects and other practi-
tioners, it was too difficult for them and was better understood by mathematicians.
To rectify this he wrote a new version of his book, New Principles (1719), but it had
little success. Later many authors tried to explain Taylor’s work and it became
popular, for example John Hamilton, John Joshua Kirby and many others whose
work is presented in this, the longest, chapter.
Chapter XI: ‘The German-Speaking Areas after 1600’. In the early seventeenth
century, the German literature was dominated by descriptions on perspective
 294 Book Reviews

instruments, for example by Johann Faulhaber (Newe geometrische und perspec-

tivische Inventiones [1610]), and anamorphoses. Towards the end of the seventeenth
century perspective became a standard element in German textbooks on mathe-
matics, but was mostly treated without proofs. In the eighteenth century Johann
Heinrich Lambert’s ideas (see the next chapter) were taken over.
Chapter XII: ‘Lambert’. Johann Heinrich Lambert’s work concluded the process
of understanding the geometry behind perspective by creating perspectival geometry.
In his books Anlage zur Perspektive (1752) and Die freye Perspektive (1759) he
developed general principles containing forerunners of projective as well as of
descriptive geometry. He also applied his theory to classical geometry by investigat-
ing ruler geometry. His remarkable contributions went largely unnoticed, mostly
because he intended them for painters. They were only discovered much later by
mathematicians.
Chapter XIII: ‘Monge Closing the Circle’. The emergence of descriptive geometry
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with Gaspard Monge concludes the development in the eighteenth century. This
discipline shares some basic ideas with perspective which now becomes part of
descriptive and projective geometry.
Chapter XIV: ‘Summing Up’. The general concluding remarks provide a short
overview. Four appendices are devoted to topics which were neglected in the main
part but which round off the story: Appendix One, ‘On ancient roots of perspective’;
Appendix Two, ‘The Appearance of a rectangle à la Leonardo da Vinci’ Appendix
Three, ‘’sGravesande taking recourse to the infinitesimal calculus to draw a column
base in perspective’; and Appendix Four, ‘The perspective sources listed countrywise
in chronological order’ (very useful!). The first bibliography lists*on more than 20
pages*all the pre-nineteenth-century publications on perspective, i.e. all the books
treated in this monograph. (Imagine researching all these dates/dots!) The second
bibliography (also more than 20 pages) contains supplementary (secondary)
literature. Finally, an extensive index (containing also dates) and illustration credits
helps readers find the information they seek.
This monograph is the result of a scientific life devoted to the history of
perspective. Kirsti Andersen has been studying the subject for more than thirty years;
she collected everything, and carefully studied each construction (even the more
obscure ones). In this work she compares and explains them in a form the reader can
follow, often putting original illustrations side by side with her own drawings, but
never losing the whole picture. In spite of the abundance of material it is easy to find
specific results, or remarks on some special topic or author. This book certainly will
be the definitive reference work on perspective, a classic in its field, for many years to
come, but it is not a book to be read like a novel. Of course, you could skip the
constructions and just read the biographies and the summaries, but then you would
miss the main points, the comparisons between different authors, the development in
various countries, the dependencies and differences, and the reception of the singular
works, as well as the communication between the theoreticians and the practitioners,
the appreciation and usefulness and the interplay between perspective and other
geometrical disciplines.

CHRISTA BINDER, Institute for Analysis and Scientific Computing,

University of Technology, Vienna, Austria. Email: [email protected]