Theoretical approach to practical perspective in the early 17th Century

During the years in which perspective laid the theoretical foundations of its scientific definition, it appeared in various forms in the applied arts. The perspective construction sites of architectural perspectives, theatrical scenography, and large anamorphoses spread all over Europe, attracting the attention of mathematicians and artists, who enriched written treatises with contributions of a theoretical and experimental nature. These perspective laboratories, where projective principles acquire physical form reproduced by ropes, shafts, and lamps, become privileged venues for experimenting theories and validating results. Speculative interest in operational practice is thus found in the works of various mathematicians, intent on legitimizing projective procedures used in current practice and optimizing constructions. “Like a stream from its source” the practice thus originate from an evolving projective theory that saw, in the operativity of constructions, the expression of its demonstrative thought.