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punto di vi/to
vortice dolio
piramide vi/iva
piano di riporlo
destra con la propria sinistra.
Come venne dipinta allora la
prima tavoletta?
Il Biografo, come abbiamo visto,
si chiede perché il Brunelleschi
non fece la seconda tavola con il
buco, da vedere da dietro
riflessa in uno specchio. Ora, se
lo scopo di ambedue le
dimostrazioni era quello di
provare che le pitture costruire
col metodo della intersegazione
della piramide visiva (fig. 14)
fanno vedere come 'l vero
sembrerebbe logico chiedersi
invece perché non fece la prima
tavoletta come la seconda. La
seconda tavola venne infatti
certamente dipinta con il
internazione
velo
metodo dell'intersegazione e
andava comparata in luogo
"... e Sassi comparazione in
prima alle cose molto
notissime... "
L.B. Alberti - De Pictura
tanto che quella parte della
tavola che corrispondeva al cielo
il Brunelleschi la asportò con la
sega in modo che il profilo della
tavola coincidesse col profilo dei
tetti quando ovviamente veniva
guardata con un occhio solo dal
punto coincidente con il vertice
della piramide visiva (fig. 2).
Il Brunelleschi avrebbe potuto
costruire la tavoletta del
Battistero in modo simile,
one, I repeat no one, asks themselves: if the mirror reserves right and left,
then why doesn't it invert top bottom, why don't we see our heads in place
of our feet?
Let's imagine that we are standing in the place indicated by Marietti: "...
inside the central door... " of the Cathedral, and are looking at the
Baptistry outside. If we say that the side of the Baptistry corresponding to
our right is the right-hand side, and vice versa, we will find that our right
corresponds to the left-hand side, and vice versa, when we look at the
Baptistry reflected in a mirror. So, like the art historian, we will find
ourselves commenting: "Well, look at that, the mirror reverses right and
left."
In reality, right and left are reversed simply because our right and left
are reversed, due to our rotating about our vertical axis, which is
necessary when we pass from a direct view of the Baptistry to viewing its
reflected image.
Therefore, it's not the mirror that reverses right and left — something that
mirrors never have been able to do, even in times more magical than
ours — but the system of reference, i.e. we ourselves.
The Baptistry does not, in the end, appear upside down, as when we turn
to look at it in the mirror, we only rotate about our vertical axis and not
our horizontal axis as well: in other words, we don't stand on our heads!
Obviously, the same observation is valid for Brunellschi viewing the
painting of the Baptistry: in order to look at the painting directly, he
would have to have changed places with the mirror (fig. 1 ), rotating
about his vertical axis, and thus reversing right and left. How, then was
the first painting executed? The Biographer, as we have already noted,
asks himself why Brunelleschi didn't carve a hole in the second wooden
tablet on which he painted the view of "Piazza della Signoria", in order to
Fig. 3
tavola dipinta
seppure più piccola, per
confrontarla con il vero
costringendo sempre l'occhio in
un punto fisso e mettendo la
tavoletta al posto dello specchio
(fig. 1).
Invece concepì un dispositivo
sperimentale (fig. 1) che per la
sua stranezza fa sorgere il
sospetto che lo scopo immediato
non fosse quello di dimostrare la
validità illusiva del metodo della
intersegazione della piramide
visiva e che pertanto la pittura
non fu eseguita secondo quel
metodo.
Il metodo descritto da L.B.
Alberti nel "De Pictura", da Piero
della Francesca nel "De
be able to look through and see it reflected in a mirror? Now, if the
purpose of both demonstrations was to prove that the intersection of the
visual pyramid (fig. 1.4) method applied to paintings made them appear
like the real, it would instead seem logical to ask oneself: why didn't he
paint the first picture in the same manner as the second?
The intersection method was most certainly applied to the second
painting, which was compared "in situ"...
"... and he made a comparison first with things that were most famous..."
LB. Alberti - "De Pictura"
... and Brunelleschi also sawed around the outline of the buildings and
cut the sky out the painting, so that the outline of the rooftops depicted
there uxmld coincide with that of the real rooftops when they were
observed with one eye, from the point which coincided with the apex of
the visual pyramid (fig. 2).
Brunelleschi could have executed the painting of the Baptistry in a
similar way, even though it was smaller, and compared it with the real
image by focussing his eye on a fixed point, and holding the wooden
tablet in place of the mirror (fig. 1 )
Instead, he devised a method (fig. 1 ) that because of its very strangeness
makes one suspect that its aim was possibly not to demonstrate the
validity of the illusion created with the intersection of the visual
pyramid; and, therefore, the painting was not executed using this
method.
The method described by LB. Alberti in "De Pictura", by Piero della
Francesca in "De Prospectiva pingendi" and the further clarifications
supplied by many other Renaissance authors (fig. 4-5) comprise various