Dr. Kim H. Veltman

Appendix 1-Ancient Literature Concerning (Pseudo-) Perspective

Plato (427-347 B.C.)

Egypt....Painters and practitioners of other arts of design were forbidden to innovate on these models or entertain any but the traditional standards, and the prohibition still persists, both for these arts and for music in all its branches.

Also, they will appear both like and unlike. As with scene paintings, to the distant spectator all will appear as one thing, and seem to have the same character and so to be alike, but if you approach nearer, they seem amny and different and this semblance of difference will make them seem different in character and unlike one another. Thus these masses must appear both like and unlike themselves and each other.

Protagoras 312 D

But if we asked what sort of wisdom painters understand, we should reply, wisdom concerned with the making of likenesses.

But tell me now this about the painter. Do you think tht what he tries to imitate is in each case that thing itself in nature or the works of the craftsmen?

The works of the craftsmen, he said.

Is it the reality of them or the appearance. Define that further point.

What do you mean? he said.

This. Does a couch differ form itself according as you view it from the side or the front or in any other way? Or does it differ not at all in fact though it appears different, and so of other things?

That is the way of it, he said. It appears other but differs not at all.

Consider then this very point. To which is painting directed in every case, to the imitation of reality as it is or of appearance as it appears? Is it the imitation of a phantasm or of the truth?

Of a phantasm he said.

Then the mimetic art is far removed from truth and this, it seems, is the reason why it can produce everything, because it touches or lays hold of only a small part of the object and that a phantom, as, for example a painter, we say, will paint us a cobbler, a carpenter, and other craftsmen, though he himself has no expertness in any of these arts, but nevertheless if he were a good painter, by exhibiting at a distance his picture of a carpenter he would deceive children and foolish men, and make them believe it to be a real carpenter.

Variant translation:

Does painting aim at producing any actual object as it is, or the appearance of it as it looks? In other words, is the representation of truth or of a semblance?

Of a semblance.

And the same things appear bent and straight to those who view them in water and out, or concave and convex, owing to similar errors of vision about colours, and there is obviously every confusion of this sort in our souls. And so scene painting in its exploitation of this weakness of our nature falls nothing short of witchcraft, and so do jugglery and many other contrivances.

True

Stranger: The perfect example of this consists in creating a copy that conforms to the proportions of the original in all three dimensions and giving moreover the proper colour to every part.

Theaethetus: Is it not that what what all imitators try to do?

Stranger: Not those sculptors whose works are of colossal size. If they were to reproduce the true proportions of a well made figure , as you know, the upper parts would look too small, and the lower too large, because we see the one at a distance, the other close at hand.... So artists, leaving the truth to take care of iself, do in fact put into the images they make, not the real proportions, but those that will appear beautiful....

What are we to call the kind which only appears to be a likeness of a well-made figure because it is not seen from a satisfactory point of view, but to a spectator with eyes that could fully take in so large an object would not be even like the original it professes to resemble? Since it seems to be a likeness, but is not really so, may we not call it a semblance?

Theaitetos 208E

Socrates: Really, Theaetetus, now I come to look at this statement at close quarters, it is like a scene painting. I cannot make it out at all, though, so long as I kept at a distance, there seemed to be some sense in it.

Aristotle (384-322)

De memoria et reminiscentia

ed. G. R.T. Ross, Cambridge, 1906, p. 114

Euclid (c. 300 B.C.)

Optics

Aulus Gellius (2nd c. B.C.)

Attic nights, tr. J. Rolfe, London, 1928, pp. 186-189.

Noctes Atticae, recognovit P. K. Marshall, Oxford, 1968.

A part of geometry which relates to the sight is called optike or "optics", another part, relating to the ears, is known as kanonike, or "harmony", which musicians make use of as the foundation of their art. these are concerned respectively with the spaces and the intervals between lines and with the theory of musical numbers.

Optics effect many surprising things, such as the appearance in one mirror of several images of the same thing; also that a mirror placed in a certain position shows no image, but when moved to another spot gives reflections; also that if you look straight into a mirror, your reflection is such that your head appears below and your feet uppermost. This science also gives the reasons for optical illusions, such as the magnifying of objects seen in the water, and the small size of those that are remote from the eye.

Geminus (c. 70 B.C.)

Diodorus Siculus (1st c. B.C.)

Egyptians .... with them the symmetrical proportions of the statues are not fixed in accordance to the artists eye, as is done among the Greeks, but as soon as they lay out the stones after apportioning them, are ready to work on to the largest; for, dividing the structure of the entire body into twenty four parts and one-fourth in addition, they express in this way the complete figure in its symmmetrical proportions.

Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

Academica, II.20

How much painters see in shade and protrusions that we do not see.

Lucretius (c. 95-55 B.C.)

On the nature of things

From: tr. William Ellery Leonard, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1957, p. 151: Bk. IV 215-819.

A portico,

Albeit it stands well propped from end to end

On equal columns, parallel and big,

Contracts by stages in a narrow cone,

When from one end the long, long whole is seen,-

Until conjoining ceiling with the floor,

And the whole right side with the left, it draws

Together to a cone’s nigh-viewless point.

Vitruvius (1st c. A.D.)

De architectura libri decem

Agatharcus Anaxagoras Democritus

Pliny (23-79)

Natural History, XXXV, 2.

Polyclitus... made a statue which sculptors cal the canon referring to it as to a standard from which they can learn th first rules of their art. He is the only man who is held to have embodied the principles of his art in a single work....Varro says that they [his statues] are square and almost exactly after the same type.

Myron... more productive than Polycleitos and a more diligent observer of symmetry. Still he too only cared for the physical form and did not express the sensations of the mind..

Lysippus...His chief contributions to the art of scultpure are said to consist in his vivid rendering of the hair, in making the heads smaller than older artists had done and the bodies slimmer and with less flesh, thus increasing the apparent height of his figure. there is no Latin word for the canon of symmetry which he was so so careful to preserve, bringing innovations which had never been thought of before into the square canon of the older artists and he often said that the difference between himself and them was that they represented man as they were and he as they appeared to be. his chief characteristic is extreme delicacy of execution even in the smallest details.

XXXV. 92

Apelles....He also painted Alexander the Great holding a thunderbolt, in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, for a fee of twenty talents in gold. The fingers have the appearance of projecting from the surface and the thunderbolt seems to stand out from the picture- readers must remember that these effects were produced by four colours.

Quintilian (35-96)

Institutio Oratoria, II, XVII, 21 (Loeb Classical Library, vol. I, p. 335).

When a painter, by his artistic makes us believe that certain objects project from the picture, while others are withdrawn into the background, he knows perfectly well that they are all in the same plane.

Hero of Alexandria (fl. 62 A.D.)

Geodesy is a science which divides and connects the sizes and figures in sensible bodies.Right angled corridors of columns that come to the eye from a distance appear foreshortened toward the back.and four sided towers, seen from a distance, appear round and leaning towards the observer, and the same cassettes appear uneven depending on position and spread.

Of optics one could also name a number of parts according to various materials. However, the important ones are the following three. One, which is named with the same name as the whole, is optics, another is catoptrics and a third is scenography. In general one calls catoptrics the science of reflection from polished surfaces. it does not only deal with one mirror alone but sometimes with aseveral, and also with colours that show themselves in the air as a result of dampness, as are those of the rainbow. Another part deals with the appearances in rays of sunlight with respect to refraction and both the illuminations themselves and the shadows, for example, what type of line it is that bounds the shadow of any figure, further the so-called science of burning mirrors....

What is scenography?

The scenographic part of optics studies how one should paint images of buildings, since things do not appear as they are, one considers, not how to draw the existing relations but rather to represent them in the manner that they will appear. And the goal of the architect is to make a work harmonic with respect to appearance and insomuch as possible to find antidotes to the illusions of the eye, since he does not aim at true equality and harmony, but as they appear to the eye. Hence he constructs cylindrical columns, which according to the eye shrinks in the middle and would therefore appear broken, and accordingly builds them thicker there. Similarly, he sometimes draws the circle not as a circle, but as an ellipse, the square as stretched out and a number of large columns in various sizes in accordance with their number and their size.This is the same calculation which leads the constructor of a colossal work to adopt the apparent ratio of his production and is not carried out in vain in accordance with its true proportions, since works which are carried out on a large scale do not appear as they are.

Metrica

Ptolemy (c. 100-170)

L’Optique de Claude Ptolémée, Louvain, 195

Almagest

(cited in Roman de la Rose cf. Gombrich 1960, 192

We find that kings and pictures look

Alike, for Ptolemy made note

Of this when Almagest he wrote

Saying: who would a picture see

right well, should at some dstance be

For all the faults we see anear

Will at a distance disappear

And things which from afar we deem

Most fair but rudely handled seem

When closely viewed.

Longinus (c. 213- )

The Sublime, XVII,2

(Loeb Cassical Library, p.186)

Though the colour of shadow and of light lie in the same plane, side by side, yet the light immediately leaps to the eye and appears not only to protrude, but actually to be much neaerer.

Philostratus, Flavius (3rd c. A.D.)

Imagines

The clever artifice of the painter is delightful, encompassing the walls with armed men, he depicts them so that some are seen in full figure, others with the legs hidden, others form the waist up, then only the busts of some, heads only, helmets only and finally just some spear points. This my boy is perspective; since the problem is to deceive the eyes as they travel back along the receding plane of the picture.

finnigan@idirect.com

Last Update: August 3, 1998