ABSTRACT
There is perhaps no invention more closely associated with the Renaissancethan that of linear or pictorial perspective. Voicing the most advanced ideasof his time, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) said that perspective is “the signpost and gateway” without which nothing “can be done well in the matter of painting.”1 For Leonardo, rather than merely mirroring the seen world, perspectival pictures that are based on optical principles convey a fundamental understanding of nature. In the 500 years since Leonardo’s death, this geometric technique has become indelibly associated with notions of epistemological progress and representational realism. Essentially the application of medieval optical geometry to painting, sculpture, and architecture, perspective has been credited with inaugurating a new way of seeing the world, creating a rational framework on which scientific empiricism would come to depend, and erecting an analytic scaffolding for representation itself.
