Since For Piero’s Sake is dedicated to Piero della Francesca, readers may find of particular interest the attached essay (Piero and Perspective: Art and Science) that I wrote as a graduate student, dealing with Piero’s scientific treatise on, and highly creative use of, linear perspective in painting .
Piero and Perspective: Art and Science was written for a course on Italian Renaissance Painting with Professor Howard Davis at Hunter College in the late 1960s—before the advent of digital word processing. Rather than simply photocopying the original typescript, I have digitally transcribed it, to render it readily searchable. Apart from correcting obvious typos or misspellings, and some alterations of punctuation and citation style, however, I have made no changes.
Regrettably, I’ve lost the images that originally accompanied the paper. But wherever possible, I’ve linked to comparable images online.
2 Responses
This is a brilliant and expertly written paper. Was John White’s Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (1967) available when you wrote this paper?
Apologies for my slowness to respond, William. I did not see your kind message until now, owing to a website update. I’m glad to know that you found the paper of value. It was probably written in 1967 or 1968. But I didn’t know about White’s book or I surely would have consulted it.