Fully illustrated, this story brings together the histories of arts and mathematics and shows how infinity at last acquired a precise mathematical meaning.

In this lavishly illustrated study, Belting deals with the double history of perspective, as a visual theory based on geometrical abstraction (in the Middle East) and as pictorial theory (in Europe). Florence and Baghdad addresses a provocative question that reaches beyond the realm of aesthetics and mathematics: What happens when Muslims and Christians look upon each other and find their way of viewing the world transformed as a result?

Edgerton shows how linear perspective emerged in early fifteenth-century Florence out of an artistic and religious context in which devout Christians longed for divine presence in their daily lives and ultimately undermined medieval Christian cosmology.

Michael Kubovy, an experimental psychologist, recounts the lively history of the invention of perspective in the fifteenth century, and shows how, as soon as the invention spread, it was used to achieve subtle and fascinating aesthetic effects. A clear presentation of the fundamental concepts of perspective and the reasons for its effectiveness, drawing on the latest laboratory research on how people perceive, leads into the development of a new theory to explain why Renaissance artists such as Leonardo and Mantegna used perspective in unorthodox ways which have puzzled art scholars. This theory illuminates the author's broader consideration of the evolution of art: the book proposes a resolution of the debate between those who believe that the invention/discovery of perspective is a stage in the steady progress of art and those who believe that perspective is merely a conventional and arbitrary system for the representation of space.

Renaissance Invention and the Haunted Infancy examines how and why a vast range of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century European images of Christ's infancy allude either to his death or to the devil, and sometimes to both. Written as an essay on interpretation, the book addresses the bottomless ingenuity with which artists worked to embody two central yet ultimately elusive ideas: the sacrifice for which the Incarnation was necessary and evil poised to thwart the scheme of salvation. Because both are nominally nonexistent or suppressed in the moment pictured--a death not yet present for the Infant and a menace resisted by his coming--they convey absence or imminence in ways rarely attempted in earlier art. Although both kinds of allusion became pervasive in painting, prints, and sculpture and are widely familiar to modern observers, neither has ever been systematically addressed in art historical scholarship. With this gap as a core question, the study seeks answers among unmapped distances between Renaissance and modern approaches to meaning in religious images. Framed by an opening chapter that examines changing conceptions of subject matter and a concluding one that seeks to account for Renaissance fascination with these themes, the heart of the study is given to close scrutiny of an unusual variety of images (by such central figures as Bosch, Botticelli, Bruegel, Campin, Donatello, Gossaert, Michelangelo, and van der Weyden, among many others) and the means by which they engineer representation to guide singular kinds of thought. New perspectives emerge not only on certain core dynamics of meaning, but also on elementally related aims of a host of major works from the period.

Works in the Museum's collection that embody the Renaissance interest in classical learning, fame, and beautiful objects are illustrated and discussed in this resource and will help educators introduce the richness and diversity of Renaissance art to their students. Primary source texts explore the great cities and powerful personalities of the age. By studying gesture and narrative, students can work as Renaissance artists did when they created paintings and drawings. Learning about perspective, students explore the era's interest in science and mathematics. Through projects based on poetic forms of the time, students write about their responses to art. The activities and lesson plans are designed for a variety of classroom needs and can be adapted to a specific curriculum as well as used for independent study. The resource also includes a bibliography and glossary.