Piero della Francesca was one of the most important painters and, at the same time, a great mathematician of the Renaissance. Active between the first and second half of the 15th century, he is the author of the most important treatise on perspective of all time: De prospectiva pingendi. This fundamental work marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age, thus closing the protohistory period of Renaissance perspective. In fact, this treatise stands as one of the key developments of Renaissance and Western culture. A new era begins with De prospectiva pingendi: the era of a new discipline of representation in the arts and sciences. Within De prospectiva pingendi, one can find spectacular graphic and geometric operations, used for example to represent the human head. Today, such calculations are performed using a modern computer.
Rocco Sinisgalli presents the first reconstructed edition and comparative translation of De prospectiva pingendi. This was made possible because both the comparative translation, in vernacular and Latin, and the drawings of the entire work were created simultaneously, with detailed diagrams—particularly those illustrating the theorems of the Capital, the two Human Heads, and the Dome.
Rocco Sinisgalli served as Professor of Representation Sciences in the Arts and Architecture at the University of Rome La Sapienza. He is the author of over twenty books, including Leon Battista Alberti: On Painting. A New Translation and Critical Edition and Perspective in the Visual Culture of Classical Antiquity, both published by Cambridge University Press.
