Drawings and models in english perspective treatises of the xvii and xviii centuries

Abstract

What do some children’s books today have in common with English perspectives treatises of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? The answer lies in the fact that they both use alternative strategies for three-dimensional spatial rendering. These treatises, in fact, contain some mobile inserts that transform two-dimensional drawings into true 3D models, allowing the reader to immediately understand the spatial nature of a phenomenon such as the generation of perspective projections. English perspective literature arrived somewhat later in embracing the advances achieved in previous centuries in Italy and France on perspective. However, it does reveal a distinct approach in the development of graphic apparatus, essential for understanding the contents of this field of study. These approaches are useful in explaining the fundamentals of perspective but also in seeing the effects of the mutual movement of reference elements, subjects and observer. The most direct ancestor of these perspective texts can be found in books that belong to different fields as Geometry and Cryptography, using moveable elements to clarify or add new significances to the treatises they host.