„La Pratica di Prospettiva“, written by Lorenzo Sirigatti, wasn’t exactly easy to read, as it’s written in Italian. However, it is a book which is dominated by drawings and illustrations. So I concentrated on these in order to find good keywords.
Eventhough I could search my keywords and topics in Xenotheka it was quite difficult as „la Pratica di Prospettiva“ mainly consists of drawings and it took me a while to think of the right keywords. A lot of the times the quotes included my topic and search but didn’t have anything in common with my book. In the end, after trying a lot of different keywords and combinations I got lucky with the words: perspective, aesthetics, basics and profile.
In the end I’ve found three books:
„The Treatise of Perspective: Published and Unpublished“ is a book which reflects on our knowledge on how perspective has evolved over time. Although the topic of perspective is more approached in terms of what history has taught us, it is similar to Lorenzo Sirigatti’s book which demonstrates us the basics of geometry and how it’s used in all possible ways.
„Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, Ort, Practical Aesthetics“ by Gottfried Semper (he lived during the 19th century; aprox. 300 years after „la Pratica di Prospettiva“ was written) is a book about the preconditions of style, mostly explained by looking at the buildings in Italy. And just like Lorenzo Sirigatti he goes back to the fundamentals of these buildings and looks at the original forms of objects.
„Euclid, The Thirteen Books of the Elements“: Euclid was a Greek mathematician. In „Elements“ he talked about earlier mathematician’s findings and adds his own theories. I see the connection between the two books when looking at the first part of Sirigatti’s book. There he concentrates on simple forms and the typical mathematical things you study in school, like a cube or a cylinder but you can also see the coordinate system a few times. While Euclid mainly talks about the theory behind these forms and goes further than geometry, Lorenzo Sirigatti is able to transmit the most basic things we need to know and how to understand them.