Man. The suppression of the potentially revolutionary multiperspectival-
ism implicit in the roots of perspectival thought transformed perspective
from a representational technique into an ideology.
Reflecting on Alhazen’sDe aspectibus,Jean Pèlerin’sDe artificiali per-
spectiva(1505) was thefirst work to theorize perspective in relation to
subjectivity. Whereas Alberti had excluded Alhazen’s argument favoring
intromission as irrelevant to painters, Pèlerin uses it in adopting Alhazen’s
distinction between immediate and contemplative sight. In contrast to
Alhazen’s interest in multiple views, however, Pèlerin emphasizes the
need to select a single view from the multitude of possibilities. For him,
perspectival space could be empty and homogeneous, but religious belief
required it to befinite. It was bound in depth by the relationship between
the viewer and the horizon and bound in latitude by the frame.^18 His 1509
illustration of the point system provides a simple geometric graphic of the
system, illustrating how the points of convergence determining one-point
perspectival construction limit the spatial frame to what is visible from
a single point. [Figure 28] Pèlerin’s interpretations disseminated widely:
incorporated into an encyclopedia for young people entitledMargarita
philosophica novaby Grigor Reich in Freiburg in 1508, they were translated
into German asVon der Kunst Perspektiva, printed in 1509 by Jörg
Glockendon the Elder in Nuremberg.^19 As Elkins points out, Renaissance
and Baroque techniques of perspective were varied, with little historical
consciousness or metaphorical import.^20
Nonetheless, some authors affirmed this necessity to limit the potential
freedom of perspectivalism. ThePractica della perspettiva(Venice, 1569)
of Daniele Barbaro distinguished between glancing and contemplative
sight, but insisted on the static gaze as essential to perspective. While he
assented that a rotating eye would establish a more realistic depiction of
reality, he asserted that such motility would destroy perspectival integrity.
Repetition of this premise made the space established through the con-
struct of geometry appear more real than natural perception. Thinkers
from Blaise Pascal to Albert Einstein have reaffirmed the truth that per-
spectivefixes a single viewpoint for the viewer–even when experience
suggests that this may not be true.^21
For our consciousness is not only that of the eye, but of the body.
Perspectival construction establishes a distance governed by immobilized(^18) Damisch disputes Panofsky’s assertion that Brunelleschi’s model prefigures abstract space
because it always depicts closed space. Damisch, 1995 : 154.
(^19) Andersen, 2007 : 166. (^20) Elkins, 1994 : 114–115. (^21) Maynard, 1996.
306 Perspectives on Perspective