September 01, 2018 Saturday
Bedtime Story
Alberti's De Pictura
So as we say last night Leon Battista
Alberti with the grid technique had provided an accurate way to capture the
reality on the canvas of an artist.
The question that next arose was how would
one go about creating an imaginary view when there was nothing to copy and yet
still maintaining the rules of linear perspective?
How would that be done?
About this Alberti elaborated in his famous
treatise of 1435 titled ‘De Pictura’.
Alberti’s treatise ‘De Pictura’ came in
three volumes:
Book I: was a simple introduction to the
young minds into the art of painting
Book II: was a study of types of paintings
that a growing teen mind should or could consider
Book III: was a collection of fine points
for advanced adult painters on ways of improving or perfecting their skills
It was in the second book that Alberti
wrote about the perspective framework.
In this subject he wrote about the horizon
line at the eye level, the center point, the multiple floor lines, the lines
from the viewer’s eye to the end of each floor line and from where he cut the
frame the horizontals.
This will result in a checkered board
perspective for the figures to stand upon at varying distances.
Over this there would be roof lines for
anything about the eye line and this entire set of lines crisscrossing each
other will give the artist the entire framework on which to conceive his
imaginary scene still keeping the linear perspective intact resulting in the
generation of life-like images.
This text that was circulated widely during
early Renaissance had pages of drawings of checker board with a display of
vanishing point, projection of circle as an eclipse, several pillars viewed
through linear perspective on grid and so on.
If possible I shall try to send you a sample
picture of the illustrations that Alberti had made in his three-volume
treatise.
All these ideas and rules of perspective of
al-Haytham, Ptolemy and Alberti were used by Brunelleschi and other architects
in the construction of the Florence Cathedral where everything converges on the
center point, which in the case of Florence Cathedral had to be the alter.
Now let us return to Brunelleschi who had
made the Florentine baptistery and its surroundings the subject of his
perspective experiment.
I had told you that he had used a drawing
board which had a horizon line, a vanishing point at the line of the sight of
the viewer (thus making it a one-point perspective) and a series of orthogonals
(also known as illusionally receding diagonals).
Then on this board with these lines he
began to draw the baptistery sitting in front of it at some distance.
So far there was nothing unique as he was
merely imitating the rules of painting as proposed by Alberti.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor
Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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