SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Microcap & Penny Stocks : HITSGALORE.COM (HITT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Puck who wrote (4358)10/6/1999 9:58:00 PM
From: Level Head  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 7056
 
Puck,

Your experience is not uncommon. In an area more along my interests, it is standard-issue in textbooks that Columbus was arguing to convince others that the world was round, and that this was a "revolutionary" (pardon the pun) idea of his. In fact, the people he was arguing with had a better number for the circumference than he did. Columbus was wrong, they were right -- and the earth was enough larger than his silly notion that an entire set of continents lay in the way of his west route to the Indies.

Level Head



To: Puck who wrote (4358)10/7/1999 1:14:00 AM
From: Janice Shell  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 7056
 
I think it's fair to say that linear perspective as a theory was indeed developed in Florence--by Alberti, Brunelleschi, and their friends--in the 1420s. It was discussed endlessly, and over the course of the century tons of treatises on the subject were produced (most of which, thankfully, have been lost). So as far as that goes, your art history course was right. What isn't right is to assume that the use of "correct" perspective was universally seen as an "advance". It wasn't, not even in Italy. The basics are easy for anyone to grasp; once explained, all but the most incompetent artists should have been capable of mastering it. Yet as early as the late 1430s some chose deliberately to distort their paintings' fictive space, for a variety of reasons. This was done to even more dramatic effect in the following centuries. But that's another story.

The ancient Romans, and presumably the Greeks, did indeed know how to use perspective. Painting in the Late Empire underwent stylistic changes that involved, among other things, the rejection of "correct" perspective. If anyone in the classical world ever wrote about perspective theory, his work has been lost; so, by default, the Quattrocento Florentines get the credit.

As for Milan in late July....well, you didn't choose a very good moment. NO ONE who is ANYONE is here after the 15th. This year was especially bad. They decided to rip up the entire city for road repairs. It was impossible to get anywhere at all, so most people just left. If you come at any other time of year, you'll find a very busy city.