Hans Belting – seeing perspective in a new light
8. November 2007
The lecture opened a new series of meetings of the Kulturwissenschaftlichen Kolloquium. The series will be hosted in future by the Collaborative Research Center “Norm & Symbol” and the Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Integration”.
What is the exact relationship between Arabian mathematics and Western Renaissance art? In order to answer this question, Hans Belting suggests that we must turn towards the Arabian mathematician Ibn Al-Haitham, also known as Alhazen. In the 11th century Alhazen wrote a book that transformed ancient theories of visual perception by providing a solid mathematical basis. According to Belting, Alhazen’s success was facilitated by the fact that he lived in an Islamic society which shunned imagery. Thus Alhazen’s thinking was focused on the nature of light and its diffusion in space, rather than on the truth of the relationship of the object to its viewer.
The Book of Optics, also known as Perspectiva in its Latin translation, was a great success and rapidly became a landmark in visual theory in both the Western and Arab cultures. Roger Bacon, Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti are all known to have studied the book. Although Renaissance art’s central perspective was based on Alhazen’s mathematical theories, his work was gradually marginalized. The significant contribution of the Arabian scholars was soon forgotten in the light of the explicit references to the Ancient World made in the work.
In the aftermath of this development European and Arabian cultures continued to share the same mathematical theories, but used them in very different ways. In both cases the result was a complex relationship in the development of world views, religion, science and the arts. As Belting points out, this cultural history of perspectives enables us to understand the specifics of Orient and Occident cultures more comprehensively, while also shedding new light on the Italian Renaissance and revealing that it was less original than previously thought.
To what extent this change of view can be maintained remains to be seen. But we certainly have every reason to look forward to the publication of Hans Belting’s newest work…