Perspective in the Visual Culture of Classical Antiquity

Perspective in the Visual Culture of Classical Antiquity
Author: Rocco Sinisgalli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2012-09-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1139561162

Linear perspective is a science that represents objects in space upon a plane, projecting them from a point of view. This concept was known in classical antiquity. In this book, Rocco Sinisgalli investigates theories of linear perspective in the classical era. Departing from the received understanding of perspective in the ancient world, he argues that ancient theories of perspective were primarily based on the study of objects in mirrors, rather than the study of optics and the workings of the human eye. In support of this argument, Sinisgalli analyzes, and offers new insights into, some of the key classical texts on this topic, including Euclid's De speculis, Lucretius' De rerum natura, Vitruvius' De architectura and Ptolemy's De opticis. Key concepts throughout the book are clarified and enhanced by detailed illustrations.

The Art of Building in the Classical World

The Art of Building in the Classical World
Author: John R. Senseney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2011-03-14
Genre: Art
ISBN: 113949726X

This book examines the application of drawing in the design process of classical architecture, exploring how the tools and techniques of drawing developed for architecture subsequently shaped theories of vision and representations of the universe in science and philosophy. Building on recent scholarship that examines and reconstructs the design process of classical architecture, John R. Senseney focuses on technical drawing in the building trade as a model for the expression of visual order, showing that the techniques of ancient Greek drawing actively determined concepts about the world. He argues that the uniquely Greek innovations of graphic construction determined principles that shaped the massing, special qualities and refinements of buildings and the manner in which order itself was envisioned.

Visual Culture and Mathematics in the Early Modern Period

Visual Culture and Mathematics in the Early Modern Period
Author: Ingrid Alexander-Skipnes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2017-01-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1317192052

During the early modern period there was a natural correspondence between how artists might benefit from the knowledge of mathematics and how mathematicians might explore, through advances in the study of visual culture, new areas of enquiry that would uncover the mysteries of the visible world. This volume makes its contribution by offering new interdisciplinary approaches that not only investigate perspective but also examine how mathematics enriched aesthetic theory and the human mind. The contributors explore the portrayal of mathematical activity and mathematicians as well as their ideas and instruments, how artists displayed their mathematical skills and the choices visual artists made between geometry and arithmetic, as well as Euclid’s impact on drawing, artistic practice and theory. These chapters cover a broad geographical area that includes Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, France and England. The artists, philosophers and mathematicians whose work is discussed include Leon Battista Alberti, Nicholas Cusanus, Marsilio Ficino, Francesco di Giorgio, Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Verrocchio, as well as Michelangelo, Galileo, Piero della Francesca, Girard Desargues, William Hogarth, Albrecht Dürer, Luca Pacioli and Raphael.

The Frame in Classical Art

The Frame in Classical Art
Author: Verity Platt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 737
Release: 2017-04-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1316943275

The frames of classical art are often seen as marginal to the images that they surround. Traditional art history has tended to view framing devices as supplementary 'ornaments'. Likewise, classical archaeologists have often treated them as tools for taxonomic analysis. This book not only argues for the integral role of framing within Graeco-Roman art, but also explores the relationship between the frames of classical antiquity and those of more modern art and aesthetics. Contributors combine close formal analysis with more theoretical approaches: chapters examine framing devices across multiple media (including vase and fresco painting, relief and free-standing sculpture, mosaics, manuscripts and inscriptions), structuring analysis around the themes of 'framing pictorial space', 'framing bodies', 'framing the sacred' and 'framing texts'. The result is a new cultural history of framing - one that probes the sophisticated and playful ways in which frames could support, delimit, shape and even interrogate the images contained within.

The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World

The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World
Author: Paul Keyser
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1200
Release: 2018-06-26
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0190878835

With a focus on science in the ancient societies of Greece and Rome, including glimpses into Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World offers an in depth synthesis of science and medicine circa 650 BCE to 650 CE. The Handbook comprises five sections, each with a specific focus on ancient science and medicine. The second section covers the early Greek era, up through Plato and the mid-fourth century bce. The third section covers the long Hellenistic era, from Aristotle through the end of the Roman Republic, acknowledging that the political shift does not mark a sharp intellectual break. The fourth section covers the Roman era from the late Republic through the transition to Late Antiquity. The final section covers the era of Late Antiquity, including the early Byzantine centuries. The Handbook provides through each of its approximately four dozen essays, a synthesis and synopsis of the concepts and models of the various ancient natural sciences, covering the early Greek era through the fall of the Roman Republic, including essays that explore topics such as music theory, ancient philosophers, astrology, and alchemy. The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World guides the reader to further exploration of the concepts and models of the ancient sciences, how they evolved and changed over time, and how they relate to one another and to their antecedents. There are a total of four dozen or so topical essays in the five sections, each of which takes as its focus the primary texts, explaining what is now known as well as indicating what future generations of scholars may come to know. Contributors suggest the ranges of scholarly disagreements and have been free to advocate their own positions. Readers are led into further literature (both primary and secondary) through the comprehensive and extensive bibliographies provided with each chapter.

Aesthetic Experiences and Classical Antiquity

Aesthetic Experiences and Classical Antiquity
Author: Jonas Grethlein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2017-11-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108136079

In this bold book, Jonas Grethlein proposes a new dialogue between the fields of Classics and aesthetics. Ancient material, he argues, has the capacity to challenge and re-orientate current debates. Comparisons with modern art and literature help to balance the historicism of classical scholarship with transcultural theoretical critique. Grethlein discusses ancient narratives and pictures in order to explore the nature of aesthetic experience. While our responses to both narratives and pictures are vicarious, the 'as-if' on which they are premised is specifically shaped by the form of the representation. Form emerges as a key to how narratives and pictures constitute an important means of engaging with experience. Combining theoretical reflections with close readings, this book will appeal to art historians as well as to textual scholars.

Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity

Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity
Author: Simon Goldhill
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2011-07-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400840074

How did the Victorians engage with the ancient world? Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity is a brilliant exploration of how the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome influenced Victorian culture. Through Victorian art, opera, and novels, Simon Goldhill examines how sexuality and desire, the politics of culture, and the role of religion in society were considered and debated through the Victorian obsession with antiquity. Looking at Victorian art, Goldhill demonstrates how desire and sexuality, particularly anxieties about male desire, were represented and communicated through classical imagery. Probing into operas of the period, Goldhill addresses ideas of citizenship, nationalism, and cultural politics. And through fiction--specifically nineteenth-century novels about the Roman Empire--he discusses religion and the fierce battles over the church as Christianity began to lose dominance over the progressive stance of Victorian science and investigation. Rediscovering some great forgotten works and reframing some more familiar ones, the book offers extraordinary insights into how the Victorian sense of antiquity and our sense of the Victorians came into being. With a wide range of examples and stories, Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity demonstrates how interest in the classical past shaped nineteenth-century self-expression, giving antiquity a unique place in Victorian culture.

Aesthetic Experiences and Classical Antiquity

Aesthetic Experiences and Classical Antiquity
Author: Jonas Grethlein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2017-11-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 110719265X

This book investigates the nature of aesthetic experience with the help of ancient material, exploring our responses to both narratives and images.

Mirrors and Mirroring from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

Mirrors and Mirroring from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period
Author: Maria Gerolemou
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2020-01-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 135010129X

This volume examines mirrors and mirroring through a series of multidisciplinary essays, especially focusing on the intersection between technological and cultural dynamics of mirrors. The international scholars brought together here explore critical questions around the mirror as artefact and the phenomenon of mirroring. Beside the common visual registration of an action or inaction, in a two dimensional and reversed form, various types of mirrors often possess special abilities which can produce a distorted picture of reality, serving in this way illusion and falsehood. Part I looks at a selection of theory from ancient writers, demonstrating the concern to explore these same questions in antiquity. Part II considers the role reflections can play in forming ideas of gender and identity. Beyond the everyday, we see in Part III how oracular mirrors and magical mirrors reveal the invisible divine – prosthetics that allow us to look where the eye cannot reach. Finally, Part IV considers mirrors' roles in displaying the visible and invisible in antiquity and since.