Main entry:

Belting, Hans.

Title & Author:

Florence and Baghdad : Renaissance art and Arab science / Hans Belting ; translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider.

Edition:

1st English language ed.

Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011.

Description:

303 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Notes:
Originally published: Florenz und Bagdad : eine westöstliche Geschichte des Blicks. München : Verlag C.H. Beck oHG, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction : Describing a culture : Blickwechsel (shifting focus / exchanging glances) -- 1. Perspective as a question of images : paths between East and West. What is a symbolic form? ; Arab mathematics and Western art ; Geometry and decorative art : the arabesque ; the globalization of perspective ; Blickwechsel : Orhan Pamuk and perspective as a "betrayal" -- 2. The taming of the eye : criticism of seeing in Islam. Religion and the prohibition of images ; Images as a betrayal of the living creation ; The Koran as scripture and script ; Under the gaze of Allah : pictures as narrative ; Blickwechsel : Pictures with a living gaze -- 3. Alhazen's measurement of light and the Arab invention of the camera obscura. Alhazen's book of optics, the Perspectiva ; Distance from ancient visual culture ; Pathways of light and properties of objects ; Mathematics and geometry in Islamic art ; Blickwechsel : Kepler rediscovers the camera obscura -- 4. Perception and knowledge : a theory of vision becomes a theory of pictures. Scholasticism and the conflict over perception and epistemology ; Before perspective : the gaze in Giotto's painting ; Pelacani's invention of mathematical space ; Ghiberti's commentaries and Piero's mathematical art ; Blickwechsel : Alhazen or Euclid? the option for Vitruvius -- 5. Brunelleschi measures the gaze : mathematical perspective and theater. Two inventors in Florence ; Physical space : the architecture of the gaze ; "Prospects" on the stage ; Panoramas in Urbino ; Blickwechsel : The geometry of the muqarnas -- 6. The subject in the picture : perspective as a symbolic form. Stealing an emblem : the eye as representative of the gaze ; Nicholas of Cusa and the sovereignty of God's gaze ; The subject as new Narcissus ; The horizon and the view through a window ; Blickwechsel : The mashrabiyya as a symbolic form -- Conclusion : Comparing the gaze in different cultures.

Summary:

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?

Resources:
Table of contents
Table of contents

ISBN:

9780674050044 (alk. paper)
0674050045 (alk. paper)

Subject:

Literaturgruppe Perspektive
Perspective History.
Art, Renaissance Islamic influences.
Aesthetics, Comparative.
Optics Islamic countries History.
Perspective Histoire.
Esthétique comparée.
Optique Pays musulmans Histoire.
Art and Design.
Optics.
Perspective.
Renaissance
Kunst
Kulturkontakt
Islamische Kunst
Islamic countries.
Italien

Form/genre:

History.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 274396
Call No.: BIB 208129
Status: Available