La prospettiva e Panofsky - Panofsky and Perspective

About eighty years ago a famous art historian by the name of Erwin Panofsky wrote a paper entitled Perspective as symbolic form. In my opinion, all he wanted to say is that so-called ‘legitimate perspective’ (in other words perspective based on the rules of geometry) is not the only perspective worthy of that adjective, legitimate, i. e. worthy of representing space as we see it, since this perception is influenced not only by optics, but, above all, by the observer’s intellect. Many other forms of spatial representation are legitimate in art and, possibly, some are even more expressive. Nevertheless, people interpreted Panofsky’s ideas much more radically, i.e., legitimate perspective is unable to represent space as we see it, on the contrary, it inappropriately deforms space and should therefore be discarded in favor of other methods such as curvilinear perspective or axonometric projection. As a result, for many years legitimate perspective was maligned, accused of luring architects towards a rigid and mandatory axial concept of space. I propose to remedy what today I believe is a prejudicial standpoint. I shall not, however, discuss the historical and artistic aspects, but only those pertinent to the field of science and its evolution.