• DOI:10.1007/S40329-015-0090-4
• Corpus ID: 193533200

Luca Pacioli and perspective (part I)

@article{Montebelli2015LucaPA,
  title={Luca Pacioli and perspective (part I)},
  author={Vico Montebelli},
  journal={Lettera Matematica},
  year={2015},
  volume={3},
  pages={135-141}
}

• Vico Montebelli
• Published 6 August 2015
• Art
• Lettera Matematica

Pacioli is one of the most influential mathematicians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This paper deals with his conception of mathematics and the role played by proportione, deemed crucial for its applications in the world of the arts. In his eyes perspective is the ultimate expression of proportione and constitutes in all respects a mathematical discipline that is worthy of being included in the traditional disciplines of Quadrivium. Pacioli lived in a time in which perspective as a painting technique flourished: he knew the artists who made use of it, chief among them Piero della Francesca. Pacioli translated into vernacular Piero’s Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus, and passed himself off as its author. This is probably the first full-blown case of plagiarism in the history of mathematics. The paper considers how Pacioli behaved in the field of perspective, where Piero excelled as a painter who laid the mathematical basis of the new discipline.