De schilderkunst

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Architecture

ISBN: 9789085066286
Dutch edition
SUN architecture
Softcover, 144 pages
16 x 24 cm
September 2011
€21,22 (excl. VAT)

De schilderkunst

Leon Battista Alberti

De pictura (1435) by the humanist Leon Battista Alberti is the first modern theoretical treatise on painting. The revised Dutch translation of this text and the first Dutch translation of Alberti’s De statua are now issued together in a single volume.

De pictura
In his De pictura, Alberti set the art of painting on a scientific footing. It is a treatise in which he draws up the rules of painting. These rules are based on mathematics and optics, but are also drawn from nature. The work includes an account of linear perspective. However, he also points out that not everything can be understood by a mathematical analysis and discusses the factors that enable a painter to excite and move the viewer. Alberti was one of the first in the Renaissance to formulate not only why painting is an interesting object of inquiry, but also why it exerts such a strong emotional fascination.

De statua
De pictura is flanked in this edition by De statua, Alberti’s treatise on the art of sculpture, in which he provides the sculptor with ways to achieve the goal of sculpture: similitudo (resemblance).

This book has been made possible through funding by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.

Please note: This publication is only available in Dutch.