Brunelleschi's mirror, Alberti's window, and Galileo's' perspective tube'

SAMUEL Y. EDGERTONFigure 10figures were carved protruding from the surface of stone or plaster,arranged as if in lateral procession with their forms made visiblenot by painted colors but by the contrast between their lightedand shaded sides, and the actual shadows they cast against thebackground plane. Instead of simulating a ‘window’ view of deepspace beyond the pictorial surface, the ancient carvers created anequally ‘lifelike’ illusion of forward projection. This newarchaeological fascination, especially after the 1520’s, resulted in awidely popular ‘relief-like’ style of classical painting in central Italy(Hall, 1999). Artistic mastery of this novel mode nevertheless stilldepended on knowledge of basic Albertian perspective as appliedto the related optical geometry of shadow casting, the laws of whichhad likewise been enumerated by Alberti in his 1435/6 Treatise onPainting.Finally, fast-forwarding to seventeenth-century Florence, nearlytwo hundred years after Brunelleschi’s mirror and Alberti’s windowhad impressed their profound effects upon European art and162 História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro