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In Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies, Lyle Massey argues that we can only learn how and why certain kinds of spatial representation prevailed over others by carefully considering how Renaissance artists and theorists interpreted perspective. Combining detailed historical studies with broad theoretical and philosophical investigations, this book challenges basic assumptions about the way early modern artists and theorists represented their relationship to the visible world and how they understood these representations. By analyzing technical feats such as anamorphosis (the perspectival distortion of an object to make it viewable only from a certain angle), drawing machines, and printed diagrams, each chapter highlights the moments when perspective theorists failed to unite a singular, ideal viewpoint with the artists or viewers viewpoint or were unsuccessful at conjoining fictive and lived space.
About the author
Lyle Massey is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University in Montreal. She is the editor of
The Treatise on Perspective: Published and Unpublished, Studies in the History of Art Series, vol. 59 (2003).
Summary
Massey argues that we can only learn how and why certain kinds of spatial representation prevailed by carefully considering how Renaissance artists and theorists interpreted perspective. This discussion shows that the painter’s geometry did not always conform to the rational Cartesian formula, nor did it unfold according to scientific development.
