Papers: On the Rationalization of Sight with an Examination of Three Renaissance Texts on Perspective

In this eighth volume of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's series, Papers, William Mills Ivins Jr. asserts that the rationalization of sight—the development of symbols and grammar for visual representation—was the most significant advancement made during the Renaissance. This slim but informative volume especially highlights the use of Euclidean Geometry in the works of Renaissance artists Leon Battista Alberti and Albrecht Dürer as evidence of the increased interest in developing a rational and systemic method for translating sensory input onto the flat surface of the picture plane.