Giotto and Renaissance Perspective

Abstract

A careful geometric examination of the blind arcades (coretti) depicted in Giotto’s fresco on the choir wall in the Arena Chapel in Padua shows that they were designed and painted according to the rules of what I term “progressive costruzione legittima” and thus represent simulations of visual images. Because no images of this type have come down from Classical Antiquity and because the literary references remain silent in this respect, the coretti must be considered, according to today’s knowledge, the oldest monuments manifesting the application of the costruzione legittima. This means the history of the central (linear) perspective must be rewritten. In any case it was not a Renaissance invention. I expressly agree with the researchers who see Giotto’s painting in conjunction with the findings of the Scholastic “optics specialists” (such as Grosseteste, Witelo, Bacon), who all stood with their feet firmly planted on the ground of Euclid’s rigidly geometrically conceived visual theory and its Arab commentators.