at his writing desk, worrying some perspective problem, and when she would call him to come to bed, he would tell her: ‘O che dolce cosa è questa prospettiva!’ A groan of admiration, one would think, for perspective was a hard mistress for the artist. The principles of an ordered recession to create an illusion of deep space had been discovered in Florence by the architect Brunelleschi while Uccello was still a boy in the workshop of the sculptor Ghiberti. These principles were based on geometry; Brunelleschi had studied under the great Florentine mathematician Toscanelli, and had even taken a ‘brevetto’ in mathematics. To demonstrate the laws of his discovery to the curious, he painted a little peep-show panel of the Baptistery as seen from the door of the Duomo; the spectator looked through a hole into a mirror and found the vanishing point. This was the precursor of the camera obscura, which was not invented till the sixteenth century.
Florence, in those early days of the Renaissance, was full of scientific excitement. Donatello had been in Rome taking measurements of Greek statues, while Brunelleschi, his friend, measured Roman temples. The ‘art’ of making something and the ‘science’ of making something were regarded as the same thing. Laws of measurement were sought everywhere, and statistics of every kind were collected. Toscanelli, in 1460, constructed a great gnomon in the cupola of the Duomo to determine the summer solstice, the movable feasts of the Church being reckoned by the sun’s path, according to the Golden Number. The sun rays, let into Santa Maria del Fiore by this prodigious calculator, called ‘the noblest astronomical instrument in the world’, fell 277 feet, onto a dial made of marble flags in the floor of the tribune. This gnomon, with its finger of shadow, was looked on as both a thing of wonder and an object of beauty, like the dome itself, which was considered the greatest engineering feat since antiquity.
The marble gnomon and the bronze armillary sphere or astrolabe that are fixed, like ornaments, at either end of the black-and-white voluted central façade of Santa Maria Novella belong to a later period; they were ordered by Cosimo I from his court astronomer, Ignazio Danti, a Dominican friar. Lorenzo de’ Medici had a clock that told the hours of the day, the motions of the sun and the planets, the eclipses, and the signs of the zodiac. The Florentines have a twin predilection for astronomy and the science of optics. The lantern of a dome, on which so much care was expended by the Florentine Renaissance architects, was known as the ‘oculus’, or eye of the church. Legend says that eyeglasses were invented by a Florentine, Salvino degli Armati, and Florence is still a world centre of optical instruments. Armillary spheres, showing the rings of the planets, were very popular in Renaissance Florence, being valued both for beauty and usefulness. The Museum of the History of Science has a remarkable collection of them, as well as a fine collection of optical instruments. There are still three observatories in Florence, and the first solar tower in the world was built here in the nineteenth century.
In the early Renaissance, astronomical science, the observation of the heavenly bodies, linked this farsighted mountain people with the great navigators. Toscanelli, who taught Brunelleschi, also advised Columbus and the king of Portugal. For the Florentine artist in his studio, the charting of the rules of linear perspective made possible voyages of exploration in a fictive space that were not less marvellous than those voyages of discovery just being undertaken by navigators of real geography. Many of the landscapes of the quattrocento, especially Baldovinetti’s, have the character of aerial maps; the bare Tuscan hills once depicted by Giotto and his followers are now shown furrowed by husbandry. This maplike quality is what distinguishes Florentine landscape (Fra Angelico,
Florence, in those early days of the Renaissance, was full of scientific excitement. Donatello had been in Rome taking measurements of Greek statues, while Brunelleschi, his friend, measured Roman temples. The ‘art’ of making something and the ‘science’ of making something were regarded as the same thing. Laws of measurement were sought everywhere, and statistics of every kind were collected. Toscanelli, in 1460, constructed a great gnomon in the cupola of the Duomo to determine the summer solstice, the movable feasts of the Church being reckoned by the sun’s path, according to the Golden Number. The sun rays, let into Santa Maria del Fiore by this prodigious calculator, called ‘the noblest astronomical instrument in the world’, fell 277 feet, onto a dial made of marble flags in the floor of the tribune. This gnomon, with its finger of shadow, was looked on as both a thing of wonder and an object of beauty, like the dome itself, which was considered the greatest engineering feat since antiquity.
The marble gnomon and the bronze armillary sphere or astrolabe that are fixed, like ornaments, at either end of the black-and-white voluted central façade of Santa Maria Novella belong to a later period; they were ordered by Cosimo I from his court astronomer, Ignazio Danti, a Dominican friar. Lorenzo de’ Medici had a clock that told the hours of the day, the motions of the sun and the planets, the eclipses, and the signs of the zodiac. The Florentines have a twin predilection for astronomy and the science of optics. The lantern of a dome, on which so much care was expended by the Florentine Renaissance architects, was known as the ‘oculus’, or eye of the church. Legend says that eyeglasses were invented by a Florentine, Salvino degli Armati, and Florence is still a world centre of optical instruments. Armillary spheres, showing the rings of the planets, were very popular in Renaissance Florence, being valued both for beauty and usefulness. The Museum of the History of Science has a remarkable collection of them, as well as a fine collection of optical instruments. There are still three observatories in Florence, and the first solar tower in the world was built here in the nineteenth century.
In the early Renaissance, astronomical science, the observation of the heavenly bodies, linked this farsighted mountain people with the great navigators. Toscanelli, who taught Brunelleschi, also advised Columbus and the king of Portugal. For the Florentine artist in his studio, the charting of the rules of linear perspective made possible voyages of exploration in a fictive space that were not less marvellous than those voyages of discovery just being undertaken by navigators of real geography. Many of the landscapes of the quattrocento, especially Baldovinetti’s, have the character of aerial maps; the bare Tuscan hills once depicted by Giotto and his followers are now shown furrowed by husbandry. This maplike quality is what distinguishes Florentine landscape (Fra Angelico,
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