Renaissance theories of vision

A collection of essays by leading art and architectural historians which examine treatises and works of art produced throughout Europe during the Renaissance in order to understand how artists and writers conceived of processes of vision and perception, and how those conceptions influenced the works of art. Keywords: Renaissance, vision, perception, optics, Plato (Meno, Republic, Symposium, Timaeus), Aristotle (De anima, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Physics), Plotinus (Enneads), Saint Augustine (De Civitate Dei), Ibn Sina (Avicenna, Liber canonis), Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, De Aspectibus), Ibn Sahl, Marsilio Ficino (De amore, Theologia Platonica), Nicholas of Cusa (On Conjecture, On Learned Ignorance, On the Vision of God), Leon Battista Alberti (De pictura), Gian Paolo Lomazzo (Trattato della pittura), Gregorio Comanini (Il Figino), John Davies (Nosce Teipsum, Orchestra), René Descartes (Optics), Samuel van Hoogstraten, George Berkeley (A New Theory of Vision), Florence, Rome, Venice, England, Austria, Netherlands, Fra Angelico (Annunciation, Lamentation, Lamentation Over the Dead Christ), Donatello (Chellini Madonna, Coronation of the Virgin, Crucifix, Piot Madonna), Leonardo da Vinci (Last Supper, Notebooks, Treatise on Painting, Two Views of the Skull, Uffizi Annunciation, Vitruvian Man), Filippino Lippi (Delphic Sibyl), Giovanni Bellini (Agony in the Garden, Coronation of the Virgin), Raphael (Disputa, Holy Family, Jurisprudence, Madonna di Foligno, Parnassus, School of Athens, Sistine Madonna), Parmigianino (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror), Titian (Assunta, Salome), Bronzino (Pygmalion and Galatea), Johannes Gumpp (Self Portrait), Rembrandt van Rijn (Bathsheba at Her Bath, Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem, The Jewish Bride, Lucretia, The Night Watch, Salome, Self Portrait, The Syndics, Titus, A Woman Bathing), Svetlana Alpers (The Art of Describing, Rembrandt’s Enterprise, The Vexations of Art), Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, Commentary on the Sentences), Roger Bacon, Francesco Barozzi, Celeste Brusati (Artifice and Illusion), Norman Bryson (Looking at the Overlooked, Vision and Painting), Baldessare Castiglione (Libro del cortegiano), catoptrics, dioptrics, extramission, intromission, Benvenuto Cellini (Perseus), Giovanni Chellini, Antonio Correggio (Assumption of the Virgin), Georges Didi-Huberman (Fra Angelico), Samuel Edgerton (The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry), Euclid (Elements of Geometry, Optica), Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (The Revision of Optics), Giovan Ambrogio Figino, Fra Bartolommeo, Fra Filippo Lippi (Annunciation), Piero della Francesca (De prospectiva pingendi), Galileo (Sidereus Nuncius), Galleria degli Uffizi, Galleria Doria Pamphili, Lorenzo Ghiberti (Commentaries), Domenico Ghirlandaio (Annunciation), Giles of Viterbo, Giorgione (Adoration of the Shepherds), Herbert Grabes (The Mutable Glass), Anthony Grafton (Leon Battista Alberti), Martin Heidegger (Poetry, Language, Thought), Edmund Husserl, Cristiaan Huygens, Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason), Martin Kemp (The Science of Art), Johannes Kepler, Alkindi (De Aspectibus), Murray Krieger (Ekphrasis), Diogenes Laertius (On the Lives of Philosophers), John Locke, Andrea Mantegna (Friedsam Madonna, St. Sebastion, Trivulzio Altarpiece), Giambattista Marino (La galeria), Masaccio (Tribute Money, Trinity), Museo San Marco, Narcissus, Neoplatonism, Agrippa von Nettesheim (De occulta philosophia), Erwin Panofsky, Platonic Academy, Pliny the Elder, Proclus (Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements), Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Peter Paul Rubens (Judith with the Head of Holofernes), William Shakespeare (The Rape of Lucrece, Venus and Adonis), Stanza della Segnatura, Giorgio Vasari (Vite), Vatican, Diego Velázquez (The Spinners), Johannes Vermeer (The Artist in His Studio, Girl with a Pearl Earring, View of Delft), Ernst van de Wetering (Rembrandt), Joost van den Vondel, Erasmus Witelo (Perspectivae), Heinrich Wölfflin (Principles of Art History

Architecture as cosmology: Lincoln Cathedral and English gothic architecture

An examination and explanation of the unprecedented and influential architecture of Lincoln Cathedral. Considers precedents at Durham and Canterbury, interpretations of the architecture by historians, and the influence of the architecture throughout the development of English Gothic architecture. Focuses in particular on the writings of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln 1235-53. The geometries of the architecture can be seen in relation to the geometries of Grosseteste's cosmologies. Keywords: architecture, cosmology, Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln Academy, English Gothic Architecture, Robert Grosseteste (Commentary on the Physics, Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, Computus Correctorius, Computus Minor, De Artibus Liberalibus, De Calore Solis, De Colore, De Generatione Sonorum, De Generatione Stellarum, De Impressionibus Elementorum, De Iride, De Libero Arbitrio, De Lineis, De Luce, De Motu Corporali at Luce, De Motu Supercaelestium, De Natura Locorum, De Sphaera, Ecclesia Sancta, Epistolae, Hexaemeron), medieval, University of Lincoln, Early English, Decorated, Curvilinear, Perpendicular, Catholic, Durham Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, Anselm of Canterbury, Gervase of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, Becket’s Crown, Trinity Chapel, Scholasticism, William of Sens, William the Englishman, Geoffrey de Noyers, Saint Hugh of Avalon, Saint Hugh’s Choir, Bishop’s Eye, Dean’s Eye, Nikolaus Pevsner (Buildings of England, Cathedrals of England, Leaves of Southwell, An Outline of European Architecture), Paul Frankl (Gothic Architecture), Oxford University, Franciscan School, Plato (Republic, Timaeus), Aristotle (De anima, De Caelo, Metaphysics, Physics, Posterior Analytics), Plotinus (Enneads), Wells Cathedral, Ely Cathedral, Hereford Cathedral, Lichfield Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral, Beverley Minster, Chester Cathedral, York Minster, Worcester Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Southwell Minster, Gloucester Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Elias of Dereham, Nicholas of Ely, Reginald Ely, St. Mary Redcliffe, Norwich Cathedral, Bristol Cathedral, Exeter Cathedral, Tewkesbury Abbey, Ottery St. Mary, lierne, tierceron, William Joy, Thomas Witney, John Ramsey, William Ramsey, Alan of Walsingham, William Hurley, Thomas of Cambridge, Thomas of Canterbury, fan vault, pendant vault, Henry Yevele, Robert Hulle, William Orchard, Oxford Divinity School, Oxford Christ Church, Windsor Castle (St. George’s Chapel), Cambridge King’s College Chapel, Peterborough Cathedral, Bath Abbey, William Vertue, Robert Vertue, Adam Vertue, William the Conqueror, Remigius, St. Mary Undercroft, St. Stephen’s Chapel, Abbot Suger, Abbey Church of St. Denis, Leon Battista Alberti (De re aedificatoria), Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Aphrodisias (De anima), Alexander the Mason, Abu Nasr Alfarabi (De intellectu), Alhazen (Opticae), Alkindi (De aspectibus), Amiens Cathedral, Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica), Saint Augustine (De Civitate Dei, De Musica, De Trinitate), Averroes (Long Commentary on the De anima), Avicebron (Fons Vitae), Avicenna (De anima, De Caelo, Liber Naturalis, Metaphysica), Roger Bacon, Bartholomew the Englishman, Benedictine, Boethius (Arithmetic, De Consolatione Philosophiae), Byzantine, Cambridge University, Alistair Cameron Crombie, Nicolas Cusanus (De circuli quadratura, De coniecturis, De docta ignorantia), Duns Scotus, Euclid (Catoptrics, Elements of Geometry), Marsilio Ficino (De amore), Franciscan, John Harvey (English Medieval Architects, The Medieval Architect, The Perpendicular Style), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics), Henry of Avranches (Metrical Life of Saint Hugh), Hugh of Wells, Humanism, Robert Hulle, James of Venice, Robert Janyns, Henry Janyns, Liber de Causis, London, Michael of Canterbury, Neoplatonism, Folke Nordström, Norman, Norman Conquest, Notre Dame, Noyon Cathedral, Old St. Paul’s, Erwin Panofsky (Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism), Paris, Matthew Paris, John Peckham (Perspectiva Communis), Plantagenet, Proclus (Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements, Elements of Theology), Pseudo-Dionysius (Celestial Hierarchy, Divine Names, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Mystical Theology), Pythagoras, Reims Cathedral, Renaissance, Thomas Rickman (Attempt to Discriminate the Style of Architecture in England), Robert of Beverley, Romanesque, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (The Philosophy of Art), Sir George Gilbert Scott, Gottfried Semper (The Four Elements of Architecture, Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts), Edmund Sharpe (Seven Periods of English Architecture), Sir Robert Smirke, William Smyth, Richard William Southern, John Sponlee, George Edmund Street, Themistius (Paraphrase of the De anima), Theology of Aristotle, Edmund Venables, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (Entretiens sur l’architecture), Vitruvius (De architectura), John Wastell, John Welbourne, Westminster Palace, William of Wykeham, Erasmus Witelo (Perspectiva), Christopher Wren, William Wynfor

Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s Experiments with Musical Instruments

A section of Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s Magia naturalis (1589) celebrates the powers of musical instruments. Most of these powers are rooted in neo-Platonist natural magic: Della Porta explains that the materials of instruments retain their original properties, shaping the body and soul of the listener through their mutual sympathy or antipathy. In a series of three demonstrations presented at the end of this section on music, however, Della Porta uses musical instruments in a different fashion: like telescopes and other scientific instruments of the early modern era, his lyra—likely a lira da braccio, which held pride of place in Italian academies of the sixteenth century—becomes a vehicle for open-ended discovery and the creation of new knowledge