Leonardo Compared With Piero

16 Pages 3949 Words

atics. Leonardo regarded the precise measure of mathematics as having ‘supreme certainty.’ Leonardo said ‘Let no man who is not a mathematician read the Elements of my work.’ Leonardo believed that if a painter was not adept in mathematics they would not understand or appreciate his work. This is clearly a reference to Alberti’s advice that the painter should be skilled in mathematics and geometry. Leonardo believed that painting was a science. The science to which Leonardo refers is the science of perspective. Perspective is, as put by Leonardo himself, ‘nothing else than a thorough knowledge of the function of the eye.’ Painting, since classical times, had been considered a manual craft. Leonardo, like other painters and theorists of his time, was concerned with proving that painting is a mental activity and a science. Perspective is a mathematical process that recreates the human visual experience from one point of view. Leonardo considered perspective to be ‘the bridle and rudder of painting.’ Leonardo meant that perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to the ship. Leonardo believed that if painters did not study the science of painting, namely perspective, they could be compared to a crew of sailors sailing out to sea without a rudder or compass and therefore having no hope of arriving at their desired port. Leonardo believed that there was no certainty of where they would end up. Leonardo instructed in his notebooks that you must ‘make yourself first of all a master of perspective.’ Leonardo believed it to be paramount for a painter to have a thorough knowledge of perspective and that without it nothing could be done well in any kind of painting, hence why he described perspective as the ‘guide and gateway’ of painting .

‘For painting does not, as a matter of fact, extend beyond the surface; and it is by its surface that the body of any vi...