"Hubert Damisch's Analysis of Brunelleschi's Perspectival System: New Insights into the Birth of Perspective"
Download
Read an extract
Themes
Perspective, Filippo Brunelleschi, Hubert Damisch, art history, Renaissance, painting, geometric perspective, Leon Battista Alberti, Giorgio Vasari, Martin Kemp, Girard Desargues
Reader
Abstract
Contents
Extract
of 4
Abstract
Unlock the secrets of Renaissance art with Hubert Damisch's in-depth analysis of Filippo Brunelleschi's pioneering perspectival system. Discover how Damisch's examination of Brunelleschi's painting reveals new insights into the birth of perspective, challenging existing theories and shedding light on the role of the subject in art. By exploring the intersection of art and geometry, Damisch's work in "The Origin of Perspective" (1993) offers a fresh understanding of the evolution of painting and the innovative techniques that transformed the art world. Dive into the detailed analysis of Brunelleschi's masterpiece and uncover the significance of the 'point of distance' and 'vanishing point' in the context of Renaissance art and beyond.
Contents
The Damisch theory
The author's conclusions
A new insight into the history of perspective and painting
The Damisch theory
The author's conclusions
A new insight into the history of perspective and painting
Get this table of contents for free after login.
Extract
[...] We see in fact in several paragraphs of this chapter that Damisch constantly compares the representation of Brunelleschi to what can be seen by being on the square of the Baptistery of Florence. On the other hand, Hubert Damisch also relies on the original text describing the system put in place by Brunelleschi in this representation, written by Antonio Manetti around 1475 or 1480 (the exact date remains unknown). Manetti was a mathematician and an architect from Florence, and also the biographer of Brunelleschi. [...]
[...] To conclude, we have seen that this chapter of The Origin of Perspective This has allowed us to analyze several elements: first, the perspectival system set up by Filippo Brunelleschi during the Renaissance, thanks to the new elements clarified or brought to light by Hubert Damisch, but also the method adopted by this art historian to arrive at these hypotheses or conclusions. In the absence of visual traces of this system developed by Brunelleschi, the different analyses made by successive historians and theorists are particularly important since they directly determine our way of understanding it. In this context, Damisch's approach is very important since it is based on a genuine re-reading of the original text of Manetti, confronting this re-reading with the analyses that have been made subsequently. [...]
[...] To study this question, Damisch returns to the source, that is to say to the text of Manetti. According to the hypothesis of Robert Klein, the point of distance is located on the edge of Brunelleschi's painting; Damisch recalls a contrary hypothesis, that of Desargues who places this point rather outside the painting, beyond its limits. At the end of this particular demonstration on the angle of view and the location of the point of distance, Hubert Damisch arrives at a relatively open conclusion: perhaps Brunelleschi wanted to deliberately create these two options in order to leave the viewer free to choose at their convenience. [...]
[...] In this work published in 1987, Hubert Damisch traces the birth of the system of constructing tableaux known as 'geometric' perspective, as we qualify it today. He defines it as a certain way of representing reality and conceiving the position of the subject in and facing the tableau, developed and adopted by Renaissance painters in Italy. The chapter we are studying here analyzes what is considered the starting point of this system: the construction adopted by the Italian architect and artist Filippo Brunelleschi in several of his paintings, using a completely innovative device. [...]
[...] From this affirmation, Damisch continues by formulating two hypotheses concerning what the Brunelleschi panel showed of the baptistery and the square that surrounded it. Of these two hypotheses, one (including the two facades on either side of the central baptistery) corresponds to a perspective with a more scenic value and a very widespread schema in the art of the Trecento and Quattrocento, the other is concentrated on the baptistery itself, leaving very little space to the other buildings on the square. [...]
