Daniele Barbaro and Mathematical Instruments

Abstract

Part IX of La practica della perspectiva was planned as an attentive examination of the instruments for perspective drawing, a topic which comprised the theoretical-practical framework as well as Barbaro’s personal interest in mathematical instruments and, more generally, in mechanical inventions. This contribution examines the instruments presented in Part IX of La pratica della prospettiva: Barbaro’s own ‘universal clock’, Albrecht Dürer’s perspective machine, Baldassarre Lanci’s distanziometro, the camera obscura, Vimercato’s device for reproducing drawings, the graduated semicircle used by cartographers, and Jacopo Castriotto’s instrument for measuring the angle of scarped fortress walls. The tie between the arts and technical-scientific knowledge, already sanctioned by the celebrated commentary on Vitruvius, was renovated in the treatise on perspective thanks precisely to the attention Barbaro devoted to instruments for drawing and measuring the visible world.