The book assigned to me is „Lo inganno de gl’occhi“ by Pietro Accolti and picks out as a central theme the deception of our visual perspective, when observing a building or our surroundings. In this article I will focus on some Keywords, which are mentioned in this book. Shading is also a very important part in our Book, but when searching it with Alice, a lot of not so relevant results were presented, which made me move on with other „Brains“.
The first topic I searched with Alice was „Perspective Geometry“ and what I came across is the „Photographic Architecture in the Twentieth Century“ by Claire Zimmerman, who also made the approach to how perspective defines the way we perceive Objects. Capturing these objects through drawing or photos gives us that distortion in perspective but also gives us a good imagination of how the object may look like, without having the right proportions.
Another look at Alice’s selection led me to Mallgrave who states in his Book „Architectural Theory“ that „There are books on the principles of geometry and perspective, the orders, churches, and domestic design, all of which make it far reaching in scope“ which perfectly aligns with the description of „Lo inganno de gl’occhi“. It’s a book about perspective but moreover it’s how to learn to understand and use perspective correctly. In the context given by Alice, the „third book on Roman antiquities {…} underscores the central dilemma facing Renaissance architects“ which is „the fact that Renaissance architects were now aware that the proportional rules given by Vitruvius were not reflected in existing Roman ruins“ which makes „Lo inganno de gl’occhi“ a very good base for understanding and learn Perspective.
The next Keyword I searched for is „perspective deception“ since this is the main topic of the book. I found the book „Le due regole della prospettiva pratica“ by Jacomo Vignola, which also was published more or less in the same time period as „Lo ingano de gl’occhi“ and talks about the rules we have to use when dealing with perspective. This book has at first glance a lot of similarities with „Lo inganno de gl’occhi“ but after a deeper dive, Pietro Accolti’s book does approach Perspective deception in more ways like the impact of lighting and shading.
21_918_479