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

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SAMUEL Y. EDGERTONFigure 5156 História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro
BRUNELLESCHI´S MIRROR, ALBERTI´S WINDOW, AND GALILEO´S `PERSPECTIVE TUBE´These simple drawings, dependent as they were on thedraftsmen’s knowledge of linear perspective to scale, indicategraphically what this unique Renaissance art technique bequeathedto modern technology, and even to modern science, as I shall showan amazing example of shortly. To repeat, linear perspective drawingto scale made it possible to invent, improve, and correct the mostcomplex machinery without having to waste time and moneybuilding and testing actual three-dimensional models. No rocketship to the moon could ever have been invented, let alone be built,without the humble heritage of Renaissance linear perspective.The rest of my essay will now be devoted to how that remarkableand unexpected relationship came about. Indeed, as we shall nowsee, linear perspective was first devised with no such scientificapplication in mind, but solely to help solve a very medievaltheological problem, the burgeoning feeling among manyintellectuals of the late Middle Ages that the traditional styles ofreligious painting no longer inspired the faithful sufficiently,especially during a gloomy time when the Holy Mother Churchwas suffering a number of traumatic crises like the loss of Jerusalemand the failure of the Christian Crusades, the terrible Schism ofChurch itself, and the even more terrible onset of the Black Deathin the fourteenth century. In these miserable times, many peoplethought that God had abandoned them. What was needed in orderto restore the faith, many community leaders and churchmen felt,was to make people feel that God and his saints were once moreimmanent in their daily lives,Figure 6and that people could see andtouch them just as if theywere actual life-size personsin the here and now. Evenfiguratively putting theirfingers in Jesus’ wounds –just as Saint Thomas did – ina famous Florentine statue, soillustrative of this famousBiblical proof (Figure 6), bythe sculptor, Andrea delVerrocchio (ca.1435-1488),teacher of Leonardo da Vinciand whose surname, by theway, means ‘True Eye.’Ironically, the currentlypopular early fifteenthcentury“International Style”of painting, even religiouspainting as displayed inv. 13 (suplemento), p. 151-79, outubro 2006 157
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Brunelleschi's mirror, Alberti's window, and Galileo's' perspective tube'

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