The Perspective Plan in the Sixteenth Century: The Invention of a Representational Language

Abstract

The perspective plan as a language for representing a town has a place among the inventions that mark a changing vision of the world and a new system of representing it between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. This image, combining measurement and painting, the two strongest passions of the time, was immediately accepted as “true” since it reflected contemporary politics and cultural aspirations: the rise of central governments, the rediscovery of the heritage of the Greek world, and the will to dominate the earth and thereby achieve the viewpoint of the gods.