The Book of Perspective of António Rodrigues's Architectural Treatise from 1576

• Main Author: João Pedro Xavier
• Publication Date: 2008
• Format: Book
• Language: eng
• Source: Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
• Download full: https://hdl.handle.net/10216/61895
• topic: Arquitectura, Artes; Architecture, Arts

The aim of this paper is to discuss the Book of Perspective, found in the extended manuscript Tratado de Arquitectura (BN, Codex 3675), dated 1576, which has been attributed to António Rodrigues (c. 1520-1590). Considering the historical context of this work, its relevance was mainly the introduction of an innovative perspective rule, which was designed to solve the questions raised by the propagation of inaccuracies and insufficiencies of previous methods, particularly evident in Serlio's Secondo Libro, Di Prospettiva. However, the author's scientific limitations prevented him from fully understanding the enormous potential of his geometrically accurate construction. He employed traditional distance measuring techniques, commonly used in his sea-faring country, related to the basic principle of similar triangles, shapes that Alberti could assemble as a pirramide visiva, promoting its intersegazione with a surface/finestra, and thus obtaining a section that represents the exact perspective of the object. Decoding and verifying the validity of this peculiar perspective rule led us to the center of the debate surrounding the origins of the perspectiva artificialis, which is still a matter of intense dispute in spite of new contributions, reinforcing the theory that considers practical geometry the mathematical basis of this representational system. This work demonstrates a striking fidelity to central perspective, a likely evidence of the Italian school Rodrigues belonged to. This is particularly obvious in some of his perspective representations of architectonic objects, especially one centrally planned composition named edeficio quadrado (squared building) with ad quadratum and ad circulum geometry, traditionally discussed in contemporary perspective and architectural treatises. Architectonically speaking, we are dealing with one of the most perfect realizations of an anthropocentric vision of the world, the very core of the spatial research undertaken in the Renaissance that, by the time this Tratado was written, was already being questioned by the counter-reform movement. Indeed, the inventory and analysis of architectural structures built following this typological unit, consecrated in the representation of this edeficio quadrado in the Book of Perspective, composes one of the most important pages written in the history of modern architecture, where Rodrigues inscribed his name with the construction of Onze Mil Virgens Chapel , built some time before 1565 in Alcácer do Sal.