became a means of parochially governing representation both literally and,
more importantly, metaphorically. The assertion of a single proper point of
view shifted from the mastery of God to man, and from European man to
colonial mastery. Although perspective has not, since the early twentieth
century, provided the primary structure of naturalistic representation in
art, it has continued to structure our view of (art) history from a present,
conceived as singular, looking into the past, conceived as linear.‘Slighting’
means to destroy a fortress without opposition. By slighting the fortress of
perspectivalism, this section forges new paths to shift our gaze not to, but
from, an infinity of positions imagined by usinggirihas an alternative
metaphor for subjectivity.
The representation of space through the projection of three dimensions
onto a two-dimensional surface through the technique of perspective has
become widely lauded as the seminal artistic achievement of the Italian
Renaissance. Dominant models of its development describe it as signaling
a departure from a medieval worldview centered on God ruling over a
finite, Aristotelian cosmos in which Man was a mere microcosm toward
a man-centered worldview. This supposedly natural growth in representa-
tional verisimilitude serves as an indicator of European progress toward
paradigmatic, rational, and scientific modernity in a world increasingly
shedding religious in favor of secular premises.^3 This historiography
frames perspective as symbolic of a cohesive‘West’persisting from the
fifteenth century until the challenge of artistic modernism (particularly
Impressionism and post-Impressionism) in the late nineteenth century.
Yet emerging concurrently with modernism, this teleological narrative
constructs an ideology rather than describing a history of Western sub-
jectivity. Reframed through its transcultural and religious history, perspec-
tivalism becomes a symbol less of naturally truthful representation than
a history of the restrictions, technical and ideological, underlying such
a conflation of vision and truth.
Although often associated with Euclidean geometry, early forays into
perspective relied on surveying, not on theoretical mathematics. The
technique emerged as a pragmatic means of achieving the illusionism
sought in Renaissance painting, complementing other techniques
addressed in Il libro dell’arte by Cennino d’Andrea Cennini (1360–
c.1427). Although Leon Battista Alberti’sDe Pittura(1435) provides the
first instructions for perspectival drawing, the Florentine architect Filippo
Brunelleschi (1377–1446) is often credited with its invention. According to
(^3) Edgerton, 2009.
Perspectives on Perspective 301