Perspective Users - I

Hendrik Hondius the Elder after Hans Vredeman de Vries
Perspective - Architectural Elements
1605
engraving (book illustration)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Hendrik Hondius the Elder after Hans Vredeman de Vries
Perspective - Tuscan Order - Pillars and Arches
1605
engraving (book illustration)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Lorenz Stör
Perspective - Geometric Solids and Architectural Elements
1567
woodcut (book illustration)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Lorenz Stör
Perspective - Geometric Solids and Architectural Elements
1567
woodcut (book illustration)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Jost Amman after Wenzel Jamnitzer
Perspective - Faceted Cones
1568
etching (book illustration)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Jost Amman after Wenzel Jamnitzer
Perspective - Subdivided Spheres
1568
etching (book illustration)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Nicoletto da Modena
St John the Baptist among Ruins
(heralding Christ's destruction of the pagan world)
ca. 1500-1505
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Jean-François Gilibert
Ingres visiting the new Academy of Design at Montauban
(gallery of classical casts)
1826
oil on canvas
Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban

Anonymous Italian Artist after Donato Bramante
Architectural Capriccio as Perspective Study
ca. 1490
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Luigi Rossini
The Roman Pantheon - View of Portico
1820
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Antoon Goubau
Artists studying Roman Antiquities
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Bernardo Bellotto
Venetian Capriccio with Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Miracoli
ca. 1740
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum Hannover

Leo von Klenze
Camposanto in Pisa
1858
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Alf Lundeby
View of Piazza di Spagna
from the Terrace of the Scandinavian Association, Rome
1938
oil on canvas
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Georg Lichtensteger
Widow mourning at Tomb
ca. 1780
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Girolamo Saraceni
View of Villa Farnesina, Rome
1647
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Chorus of Furies [To Apollo]: On your account, Zeus sets a higher value on the death of a father.  Yet he himself imprisoned his old father, Cronus.  Isn't your statement in contradiction with that?  [To the judges] I call you to witness that you have heard these words.

Apollo:  You utterly loathsome beasts, hated by the gods!  Fetters he can undo; there is a cure for that affliction, and many a device for getting him released.  But when once a man has died, and the dust has sucked up his blood, there is no rising again.  For that my Father has not created any healing charm, whereas he disposes all other things, turning them this way and that, without any laborious effort, by the sheer power of his will. 

Chorus:  Well then, look how you're pleading for this man to help him establish a defence!  Having spilt on the ground his mother's blood, which is the same as his own, is he then going to enter into the inheritance of his father in Argos?  What altars will he use – public ones, that is?  What phratry* will admit him to its lustral waters?  

Apollo:  I will tell you that too – and mark how rightly I argue.  The so-called "mother" is not a parent of the child, only the nurse of the newly-begotten embryo.  The parent is he who mounts; the female keeps the offspring safe, like a stranger on behalf of a stranger, for those in whose case this is not prevented by god.**  I shall give you powerful proof of this statement.  A father can procreate without a mother: a witness to this is here close by us [indicating Athena], the daughter of Olympian Zeus, who was not even nurtured in the darkness of a womb, but is such an offspring as no female divinity could ever bring forth.  

– Aeschylus, from Eumenides (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*A phratry was a group of families forming a religious guild. Although phratry membership was not, at least in Athens, a formal prerequisite for citizenship, the normal expectation was that every citizen would belong to a phratry.

**This theory of reproduction is ascribed by Aristotle to Anaxagoras; we do not know whether Aeschylus himself believed it, or whether his audience would have found it convincing.