8vo. xviii + 206 pp, list of 33 illustrations, acknowledgments, chronological outline of the history of linear perspective, 9 chapters, notes, glossary, index. 6.5" x 9.5" tan cloth boards in pale orange DJ.

Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Edgerton, Samuel Y.

Psychology & Counseling

Icon.

Examines the influence of Renaissance art on the development of a humane criminal justice system in Florence

Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution During the Florentine Renaissance

Arts & Photography

Cornell Univ Pr

Winner of the 1992 Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize from the American Historical Association 
 "Edgerton's interdisciplinary study is a bold attempt to show how the perception of the world, as slowly refined by the Renaissance artists, provided the impetus behind the scientific revolution. . . . An ambitious and largely persuasive book." --Nature 
"Edgerton's book is learned and richly illustrated with paintings and drawings from the Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance, and contemporaneous Chinese dynasties. . . . [His] argument is intricate and flawless." --American Historical Review

The Heritage of Giotto's Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution

History & Criticism

The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope: How Renaissance Linear Perspective Changed Our Vision of the Universe

In The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope, Samuel Y. Edgerton brings fresh insight to a subject of perennial interest to the history of art and science in the West: the birth of linear perspective. Edgerton retells the fascinating story of how perspective emerged in early fifteenth-century Florence, growing out of an artistic and religious context in which devout Christians longed for divine presence in their daily lives. And yet, ironically, its discovery would have a profound effect not only on the history of art but on the history of science and technology, ultimately undermining the very medieval Christian cosmic view that gave rise to it in the first place. 
Among Edgerton's cast of characters is Filippo Brunelleschi, who first demonstrated how a familiar object could be painted in a picture exactly as it appeared in a mirror reflection. Brunelleschi communicated the principles of this new perspective to his artist friends Donatello, Masaccio, Masolino, and Fra Angelico. But it was the humanist scholar Leon Battista Alberti who codified Brunelleschi's perspective rules into a simple formula that even mathematically disadvantaged artists could understand. By looking through a window the geometric beauties of this world were revealed without the theological implications of a mirror reflection. Alberti's treatise, "On Painting," spread the new concept throughout Italy and transalpine Europe, even influencing later scientists including Galileo Galilei. In fact, it was Galileo's telescope, called at the time a "perspective tube," that revealed the earth to be not a mirror reflection of the heavens, as Brunelleschi had advocated, but just the other way around.
Building on the knowledge he has accumulated over his distinguished career, Edgerton has written the definitive, up-to-date work on linear perspective, showing how this simple artistic tool did indeed change our present vision of the universe.

Cornell University Press

The Heritage of Giotto's Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of Scientific Revolution

Mexico's churches and conventos display a unique blend of European and native styles. Missionary Mendicant friars arrived in New Spain shortly after Cortes's conquest of the Aztec empire in 1521 and immediately related their own European architectural and visual arts styles to the tastes and expectations of native Indians. Right from the beginning the friars conceived of conventos as a special architectural theater in which to carry out their proselytizing. Over four hundred conventos were established in Mexico between 1526 and 1600, and more still in New Mexico in the century following, all built and decorated by native Indian artisans who became masters of European techniques and styles even as they added their own influence. The author argues that these magnificent sixteenth and seventeenth-century structures are as much part of the artistic patrimony of American Indians as their pre-Conquest temples, pyramids, and kivas. Mexican Indians, in fact, adapted European motifs to their own pictorial traditions and thus made a unique contribution to the worldwide spread of the Italian Renaissance.
The author brings a wealth of knowledge of medieval and Renaissance European history, philosophy, theology, art, and architecture to bear on colonial Mexico at the same time as he focuses on indigenous contributions to the colonial enterprise. This ground-breaking study enriches our understanding of the colonial process and the reciprocal relationship between European friars and native artisans.

Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico

Religious

University of New Mexico Press

Die Entdeckung der Perspektive.

Fink (Wilhelm)

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