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Simile
alla sua cagione
"Talvolta noi vediamo una
nuvola prendere forma di
drago; talvolta un cirro la
forma di leone o d'orso o di
turrita cittadella o d'un aereo
picco; di forcuta montagna, di
azzurri promontori vestiti
d'alberi, che fanno cenno al
mondo giù e ci illudono gli
occhi con un gioco d'aria"
(Antonio e Cleopatra -
Shakespeare)
Le figure 1 e 2 sono una
ricostruzione schematica delle
condizioni ottico-geometriche
delle due dimostrazioni del
metodo della "... intersegazione
della piramide visiva... " che il
Brunelleschi verso il 1420 "...
mise innanzi et in atto lui
proprio, quello che dipintori oggi
dicono prospettiva...".
"...sarà adunque pittura non
altro che intersegazione della
piramide visiva, secondo data
distanza, posto il centro e
costituiti i lumi, in una certa
superficie con linee e colori
artificiose rappresentata... ".
De Pictura - L.B. Alberti -
1434
Il Biografo Antonio Manetti,
intorno al 1480, nella 'Vita di
Filippo di Ser Brunellesco" così
racconta: "... et questo caso della
prospettiva nella prima cosa in
punto di vi/to
foro
tavolo dipinto
che e' la mostrò (fig. 1) fu una
tavoletta di circha mezo braccio
quadro (c. 30 cm) dove fecie
una pittura assimilitudine del
tempio di fuori di Santo
Giovanni di Firenze ...e pare che
sia stato a ritirarlo dentro alla
porta del mezo di Santa Maria
del Flore, qualche braccia tre
(c. 2 mt)... e per quanto s'avea a
dimostrare di cielo, cioè che le
muraglie del dipinto
scampassono (si stagliassero)
nell'aria, messo d'ariento
brunito, acciò che l'aria e i cieli
naturali vi si specchiassero
drento... la quale dipintura,
"Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish,
a vapour sometime, like a bear, or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,
a forked mountain, or blue promontary
with trees upon't, that nod unto the world,
and mock our eyes with air..."
Antony and Cleopatra - Shakespeare
Figures 1 & 2 are schematic reconstructions of the optical-geometrical
conditions of the two demonstrations of the "... intersection of the visual
pyramid..." method that, towards 1420, Brunelleschi "...himself, put
forwards and experimented, and which painters today call perspective... "
"... painting, therefore, is none other
than intersection of the visual pyramid,
according to a given distance, the centre having
been established and the light determined, skilfully represented with lines
and colours on a certain surface..."
LB. Alberti - "De Pictura"
In 1480, or thereabouts, the biographer (probably Antonio Manetti)
recounts the following in his "Vita di Filippo de Ser Brunellesco ": "... and
the first manner in which he demonstrated (fig. 1) this perspective, was
by taking a small wooden tablet measuring approximately 30 sq. cms., on
which he painted a view of the Baptistry of St John in Florence, from
outside... and it would seem that he painted it while standing about two
yards inside the central door of the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Flower...
and as regards that portion of the sky to be painted, so that the walls
would stand out against it, he applied a burnished silver colour, in which
/pe echio
N
LUIGI
VERGA
tavolo dipinto
perché il dipintore bisogna che
lo presupponga un luogo solo
donde s'ha a vedere la sua
dipintura... aveva fatto un buco
nella tavoletta... el quale buco era
piccolo quanto una lenta da lo
lato della dipintura e da rovescio
si allargava piramidalmente... E
voleva che l'occhio si ponessi
da rovescio dond'egli (il buco)
era largo... e con una mano
s'accostassi l'occhio e nell'altra
tenessi uno specchio piano al
dirimpetto che vi si veniva a
specchiare dentro la pittura...
pareva che si vedessi 'l proprio
vero... "
oriento ti brunito
the air and skies of Nature were mirrored... because the artist must
presuppose that one single place exists from which his painting can be
viewed... he had made a hole in the wooden tablet... this hole being as
small as a lens on the side where the painting had been executed, and
widening out into a pyramid form at the back... And he wanted to look
through the hole from the back, where it was wider... and, with one hand,
he lifted the tablet up to his eye, while holding a mirror with a flat surface
directly in front of the painting which was reflected in it., and it seemed
that he was looking at the real Baptistry..."
".. he painted the 'Piazza della Signoria' in perspective... " (fig. 2). Here,
the Biographer suddenly interrupts his account, to ask himself "... why,
as this was also a painting in perspective, did he not, as he did for the
Baptistry of St. John seen from the Cathedral, make a hole through which
to view the subject?... " and then answers himself, saying: "This came
about because the wooden tablet would have had to have been extremely
large for the Piazza to have been painted cm it., and it would, therefore,
not have been possible, as it was with the first one on which the Baptistry
of St. John was painted, to hold it up to the eye with one hand, and hold
the mirror in the other... "He finally concludes: "... where he applied the
burnished silver colour in the painting of the Baptistry, here he cut away
the part of the wooden tablet on which the sky was depicted, then took the
painting with him to the Piazza to view it "in situ"..."
Manettis account gave rise to endless writings, which sought to
reconstruct the two optical-geometrical experiments, and establish their
significance in art but which, as one proceeded, appeared more as a
highly-complicated mass of hypotheses and analyses, all differing totally
from one another, and drawing on mediaeval treatises on perspective
which were completely stupefying, and in which one never even