Lieonardo was keenly interested in optics, the
science of vision, and, more particularly in
perspective, the science of representation. Familiar
with the Arabic and medieval scientific treatises of
Alhazen, Vitellius, Roger Bacon, and John Pecham, he was
also fully conversant with the theories of Piero della
Francesca, Brunelleschi, and Alberti. Whilst accepting
their basic premises, he felt impelled to go further by
appealing, as always, to the reality of everyday
experience. Even though he was concerned, like the
Florentine painters of the High Renaissance, with the
mathematical and geometrical basics of perspective, he
criticized the abstract nature of their theories, and
the concentration wholly on monocular perspective, with
an observer at a fixed point. Leonardo's approach was
more thorough and complex. In addition to linear or
mathematical perspective he introduced two other types
relative to assessment of the third dimension:
chromatic, or color, perspective and vanishing
perspective. The practical application of his hypotheses
is evident in many of Leonardo's paintings.
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Leonardo da Vinci, Gradations of Primary and
Secondary Shadows above and below a Sphere
Illuminated by a Window, Ashburnham Codex II,
Institut de France, Paris.
For Leonardo, geometry provided a key to the interpretation of nature.
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