CONIC ART PROJECT WITH EQUATIONS MANUAL
Walter Strauss, who translated Dürer’s work into English, gave the volume a pithy and convenient moniker: the Painter’s Manual.ĭürer begins his extraordinary manual with apologetic words, an inversion of the famous warning of Plato’s Academy: Let no one untrained in geometry enter here: The most sagacious of men, Euclid, has assembled the foundation of geometry.
Its title, Underweysung der Messung, might be translated as A Manual of Measurement. It has the honor of being the first serious mathematics book written in the German language. He fretted about money and forgeries of his work, yet to others he appeared to be a simple man, ready to help fellow artists.Ĭoncern for young artists motivated Dürer to write an ambitious handbook for all disciplines of artists. He was outwardly modest but inwardly vain. Although steadfastly religious, he sought answers in mathematics. It was not just curiosity but also need that motivated Dürer and his fellow Renaissance artists to initiate scientifc investigations.ĭürer’s nature can seem contradictory. Efforts to draw or paint directly from nature required an understanding of physiology and optics that were not found in the ancient writings of Galen or Aristotle. But for artists such as da Vinci and Dürer, there was little science to embrace.
We praise Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance figures for embracing art and science as a unity.