EURO ST 10 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Erwin Panofsky, Christian Culture, Vanishing Point
Document Summary
In truth, the optical inception of geometric perspective was always just as much a neural response as any of the visial forms that led to the pictorial conventions conceived by other civilizations. Classical and christian culture did it become convergent perspective and thus the unique symbolic form of the renaissance, as erwin panofsky described it many years ago . Linear/convergent perspective might be a way all humans see the world. But linear/convergent perspective as a way of representing the world had a specific historical origin in the italian renaissance. From there, that specific historical way of representing the world has come to shape broad aspects of modern culture (=symbolic form) and thus it has become naturalized . It important to study and seek out the historically specific conditions that allowed linear perspective to become the social vision of the italian and eventually western renaissance. We"ve seen this attitude as a part of italian humanism (pico della mirandolla and machiavelli)
