Daniele Barbaro's Perspective of 1568

Daniele Barbaro published "The Practice of Perspective" a year after his famous translation and commentary on Vitruvius. He was the first to publish a formal treatise on geometric perspective, which he began working on many years before. The book is a translation of Barbaro's manuscript treatise of Piero della Francesca, expanded with regards to basics of perspective constructions for representing three-dimensional solids on two-dimensional media. It also shows that perspective is a suitable instrument for other scientific and artistic applications, such as cartography, cosmology, stage set design, and anamorphosis.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 386 pages
Publication date: 08 September 2022
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG

After releasing his renowned translation and commentary on Vitruvius a year later, Daniele Barbaro released The Practice of Perspective, a work he had been working on for many years. Barbaro was the first to publish a formal treatise entirely dedicated to the science of geometric perspective. In an informal style, especially addressed to practicing artists and architects, Barbaro begins by drawing on and expanding the manuscript treatise of Piero della Francesca with regards to the basics of perspective constructions for representing three-dimensional solids on two-dimensional media. He then goes on to show that perspective is a particularly suitable instrument for other scientific and artistic applications, including cartography, cosmology, stage set design, and anamorphosis.

For the first time, Barbaro's The Practice of Perspective is made available to contemporary scholars in an English translation, augmented by annotations relating the printed treatise to the three unpublished manuscripts in Italian and Latin of the work now conserved in Venice's Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. A foreword by Philip Steadman sets the stage for this book. In-depth essays by authors Kim Williams and Cosimo Monteleone situate the treatise within the editorial panorama of the Cinquecento, outline the innovations that Barbaro brought to the study of perspective, and focus particularly on his creative explorations of geometric solids and the construction of clocks.

Sometimes dismissed in recent studies as a compilation of known principles, the aim of this present book is to reveal the truly innovative nature of Barbaro's experiments and results and restore him to his rightful place as an original scholar of Renaissance perspective theory.

Weight: 629g
Dimension: 235 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783030766894
Edition number: 1st ed. 2021