|
PIETRO
ROCCASECCA
Leon
Battista Alberti's "modo ottimo"
The
study of European art of the 15th century traditionally attributes
the invention of perspective to Filippo Brunelleschi, a single protagonist
operating in a specific period of time and in a precise place. This
approach has not understood, or has chosen to ignore, the multiplicity
and complexity of space representation techniques adopted in the 15th
century.
For the same
reason Leon Battista Alberti's perspective method would be a practise
facilitating, for painters, the practical application of the Brunelleschi's
"costruzione legittima".
In our opinion, the grand novelty of the "modo ottimo",
as Alberti call his own method, is the ability to determine the diminution
between the lines parallel to the ground line by way of geometry, correlating
the above diminution to the distance of observation. The procedure described
in the second book (De pictura, book II, par. 33), providing
guidelines on how to draw buildings, helped determine the source of
Leon Battista Alberti in Optics by Euclid, with special regard
to the methods of measuring solely by sight, which, later on, Alberti
will describe in Ludi rerum mathematicarum. That is why the De
pictura can be considered the real commencement of the modern perspective,
although it is not the "entire" modern perspective; it is
not yet the procedure on perspective so considered by contemporary artists,
architects, set designers, mathematicians and art historians.
|