The Perspective in Renaissance Italian Painting

This book is about the new perception of pictorial space that was elaborated in the early Renaissance by Italian painters and applied later in architecture astronomy and cartography then in physic by the sixteen century with Galilee. Indeed the experience of Giotto as the earliest sole painter who applied some notion of tree dimensional space by the use of the chiaroscuro [light and shadow] was grandiose in the history of Italian painting. However Brunelleschi; the Italian architect was the first to adopt the new notion of space using vanishing point to visualize the dome of the great cathedral he was chosen to design its architectural plans. Brunelleschi of course was the man-sculptor architect; “artisan-engineer”-who gave Florence numerous architectural masterpieces above all the magnificent dome (1420-1436) over the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Flore. His work wasn’t done solely but after serious discussions with Scientific figures and famous artists of his time. This discovery of new perception of space was based on Euclidean principles: homogeneity infinity and continuity. It''s what I called Rationalization codification of Perspective that last for centuries.