Renaissance Theories of Vision

How are processes of vision, perception, and sensation conceived in the Renaissance? How are those conceptions made manifest in the arts? The essays in this volume address these and similar questions to establish important theoretical and philosophical bases for artistic production in the Renaissance and beyond. The essays also attend to the views of historically significant writers from the ancient classical period to the eighteenth century, including Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, St Augustine, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Ibn Sahl, Marsilio Ficino, Nicholas of Cusa, Leon Battista Alberti, Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Gregorio Comanini, John Davies, Rene Descartes, Samuel van Hoogstraten, and George Berkeley. Contributors carefully scrutinize and illustrate the effect of changing and evolving ideas of intellectual and physical vision on artistic practice in Florence, Rome, Venice, England, Austria, and the Netherlands. The artists whose work and practices are discussed include Fra Angelico, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Giovanni Bellini, Raphael, Parmigianino, Titian, Bronzino, Johannes Gumpp and Rembrandt van Rijn. Taken together, the essays provide the reader with a fresh perspective on the intellectual confluence between art, science, philosophy, and literature across Renaissance Europe.

Chapter 1 Introduction, John S.Hendrix, Charles H.Carman; Chapter 2 Classical optics and the perspectivae traditions leading to the Renaissance, NaderEl-Bizri; Chapter 3 Meanings of perspective in the Renaissance, Charles H.Carman; Chapter 4 Criminal vision in early modern Florence, AllieTerry; Chapter 5 Donatello’s Chellini Madonna, light, and vision, Amy R.Bloch; Chapter 6 Perception as a function of desire in the Renaissance, John S.Hendrix; Chapter 7 Leonardo da Vinci’s theory of vision and creativity, Liana De GirolamiCheney; Chapter 8 At the boundaries of sight, ChristianKleinbub; Chapter 9 Gesture and perspective in Raphael’s School of Athens, NicholasTemple; Chapter 10, ThijsWeststeijn; Chapter 11 “All in him selfe as in a glass he sees”, FayeTudor; Chapter 12 “Nearest the tangible earth”, Alice CrawfordBerghof;