Renaissance theories of vision

Abstract

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.

Contents

Introduction / John S. Hendrix and Charles H. Carman -- Classical optics and the perspectivae traditions leading to the Renaissance / Nader El-Bizri -- Meanings of perspective in the Renaissance : tensions and resolution / Charles Carman -- Criminal vision in early modern Florence : Fra Angelico's altarpiece for "Il Tempio" and the Magdalenian gaze / Allie Terry -- Donatello's Chellini Madonna, light, and vision / Amy R. Bloch -- Perception as a function of desire in the Renaissance / John Hendrix -- Leonardo da Vinci's theory of vision and creativity : the Uffizi Annunciation / Liana De Girolami Cheney -- At the boundaries of sight : the Italian Renaissance cloud putto / Christian Kleinbub -- Gesture and perspective in Raphael's School of Athens / Nicholas Temple -- Seeing and the transfer of spirits in early modern art theory / Thijs Weststeijn -- "All in him selfe as in a glass he sees" : mirrors and vision in the Renaissance / Faye Tudor -- "Nearest the tangible earth" : Rembrandt, Samuel van Hoogstraten, George Berkeley, and the optics of touch / Alice Crawford Berghof.