Leonardo da Vinci

Abstract

As far as this book is concerned, one of Italy’s most famous painters and great masters, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), presents a serious problem. On the one hand he was too important a thinker to be ignored, and on the other hand his ideas on perspective were so many — and often so perplexing — that a thorough presentation would require a much longer study than can be included here. Fortunately, many facets of Leonardo and perspective have already been discussed by competent historians.¹ Keeping the extensive literature and the complications in mind, I have decided to be relatively brief on Leonardo with the somewhat blunt argument that in general his thoughts on perspective only became known after the period I consider here, hence exerting very little influence on developments. In fact, had his ideas been known, he would have contributed much more to raising doubts about perspective than to creating a mathematical understanding of the subject.

In his 1924–1925 lectures, Erwin Panofsky discussed the discrepancies between the theories of vision and perspective, relating some of his examples to Leonardo’s work (Panofsky^S 1927/1991, especially 79–81, 91–93). More recent presentations of Leonardo’s theories are found in Ackerman^S 1978, 108–114; Elkins^S 1988₁; Kemp^S 1990, 44–51; Frangenberg^S 1992, 10–24. In 1986 Kim Veltman published a detailed investigation of Leonardo’s contributions to perspective, including a generous number of his illustrations (Veltman^S 1986₁). In addition, he listed the most important studies on Leonardo’s theory of perspective appearing prior to 1986 (ibid., 462–465).