Abstract
The essay deals with the perspectival and artistic work of Minim Father Jean François Niceron (1613-1646), whose life was expressed in a very short period of time - just 33 years - but full of political and cultural events, reflected in works offered today to the eyes of the contemporary observer as extraordinary charades, in perfect balance between mathematical rigor and taste for the wonderful and amazing. Author of two treaties (the second of which published posthumously) which have become milestones in studies of Seventeenth-century perspective - La perspective curieuse (Paris 1638) and the Thaumaturgus opticus (Paris 1646) -, Niceron early developed from his expressive world which he translated in acutely deceptive works: catoptric anamorphoses, refractive games and murals in accelerated perspective (the only one survived, depicting St. John the Evangelist writing the Apocalypse in Patmos, it is now visible at the Convent of SS. Trinita dei Monti, Rome), to name a few types.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONThe portrait shows a young monk with an the emaciated face, outlined by a barely visible beard wearing a tunic with cap typical of the Minim religious Order, and holding in his hand the planche of his latest treatise, to which he was still working just before his death, September 22 1646
Author of two treaties which have become milestones in studies of Seventeenth-century perspective - La perspective curieuse (Paris 1638) and the Thaumaturgus opticus (Paris 1646), Niceron early developed from his expressive world which he translated in acutely deceptive works: catoptric anamorphoses, refractive games and murals in accelerated perspective
We have reached the last years of father JeanFrançois when he, back in Paris, focused on his cenobitic commitments: ordered by his Superiors to complete his theological studies, he saw more and more limited, by the conventual and doctrinal responsabilities, the opportunity to continue, as he probably would have liked, his optical-perspectival experiments, the value of which was still very present in international scientific and religious communities, as evidenced by, among other things, the fact that the envoy of the famous Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando II, Giovanni Francesco Rucellai, during his stay in Paris, visited Place Royale’s monastery (June 24 1643) and saw "some curiosities in perspective" by father Niceron, exposed in the monastery library
Summary
The portrait shows a young monk with an the emaciated face, outlined by a barely visible beard wearing a tunic with cap typical of the Minim religious Order, and holding in his hand the planche of his latest treatise, to which he was still working just before his death, September 22 1646. The engraving executed by Michel Lasne (1595-1667) appears as a space-time paradox, especially sinc1e the subject of the portrait will not have the actual time to see his last work published; he holds – in the image - this work in his hands, but it will only be published posthumously If his body is pointing at the book, his face and especially his eyes are pointing elsewhere, beyond the limits of the illustrated page, toward a light source which is reflected in his terse pupils, oriented outside the religious and scientific circles – located in Rome and Paris - in which the young minimum monk lived for most of his short life. Already looking at his only official effigy, as I wrote, raises some observations that somehow summarize the karst and oblique track of Father Niceron’s short life It falls into the stylistic trend of first half of the Seventeenth century’s scholars typical portraits, which anticipate the subject’s iconographic memorialisation before his/her death, the image outlined by the Lasne, in his seemingly dry and ascetic physiognomic approach, offers some optical-perspectival inconsistencies. The illustration selected by Niceron is the number 13 depicting the Propositio Trigesima (30) dedicated to the perspectival representation of a "starry spherically solid with square based pyramids." 2 This subject’s choice was probably linked to the new theme that it symbolized, suggesting, graphically, the expansion of the Latin edition respect the French one [2]
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