Leon Battista Alberti's Perspective Instruction

That central perspective was introduced into the practice of art by Brunelleschi and Masaccio and first described as a pictorial technique by Leon Battista Alberti in De Pictura(1435) is a commonplace that is part of the core of the master narrative of the revolution of the image in the Renaissance. But did the constructive instruction that Alberti describes actually correspond to applied practice? In art historical research, isolated voices of doubt have been raised.

The lecture takes up these doubts and, starting from the pre-history of central perspective in the Trecento, poses the question of the construction techniques that were actually used in the workshops. It will be shown that, in addition to the Albertian one, there was a second elementary procedure with older roots, that however did not receive much attention in the Renaissance treatises, and only in the Due Regole della Prospettiva Pratica by Vignola/Danti in 1583 is finally acknowledged in its importance.

The history of these two procedures can be read not only as a history of the difference between theory and practice, but also as a history of the art historical topos of the „invention of perspective“.