Florence & Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science

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Florence & Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science

by Hans Belting, Deborah Lucas Schneider (Translator)

3.38 of 5 stars 3.38 · rating details · 8 ratings · 5 reviews

The use of perspective in Renaissance painting caused a revolution in the history of seeing, allowing artists to depict the world from a spectator's point of view. But the theory of perspective that changed the course of Western art originated elsewhere--it was formulated in Baghdad by the eleventh-century mathematician Ibn al Haithan, known in the West as Alhazen. Using t...more

Hardcover, 312 pages

Published August 31st 2011 by Belknap Press (first published January 1st 2010)

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Dec 05, 2012 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

A nice example of comparative history taking two familiar topic areas - the history of optics during the Arab 11th century, and the invention of perspective in Renaissance Italy two to three centuries later - and bringing them together in a way that puts both subjects in a new 'perspective.' The crux of the comparison is the image, or picture, and why it emerged as the focus of Italian art in the 14th century, but not in the Muslim world.

Already this language does not do justice to Belting's pr...more A nice example of comparative history taking two familiar topic areas - the history of optics during the Arab 11th century, and the invention of perspective in Renaissance Italy two to three centuries later - and bringing them together in a way that puts both subjects in a new 'perspective.' The crux of the comparison is the image, or picture, and why it emerged as the focus of Italian art in the 14th century, but not in the Muslim world.

Already this language does not do justice to Belting's project, however, which is less to pursue an art-historical analysis à la Weber of why the Muslim world failed to produce this conspicuous feature of modernity, than to demonstrate the concrete influence of Arab optical research on Renaissance mathematics and painting, and to set beside that the little-known (in the West) elaboration of a Muslim geometric art that rejected representational images.

Where the Renaissance used perspective to give us portraits of people, likenesses that appear to gaze out at the viewer, Muslim art and architecture remained faithful to the iconoclasm of Islam and used the study of light and optics to develop an amazingly sophisticated non-representational art. The muquarnas carvings of ceilings in the Alhambra and elsewhere, the complex arabesques and geometric patterns that decorated mosques and volumes of the Koran, all derived from Arab-Muslim development of classical Greek mathematics, in particular Euclid.

Though the subject matter is fascinating, the book itself suffers from several flaws. Above all, Belting's preoccupation with certain jargon concerning 'the gaze' can be plodding and difficult to understand. This is tied to a failure to substantially present the mathematics underlying the Arab and Renaissance developments. There are plenty of lovely illustrations of muqarnas, and the 'blueprints' that craftsmen worked from, but the reader is never fully apprised of how this unique form of decoration is laid out and fabricated. Likewise with perspective: "the gaze" stands in for what would more helpfully be a concrete presentation of how perspective was thought to work. Much of the latter portion of the book is concerned to legitimate this category of 'the gaze' by using it to treat later works of the Renaissance, perhaps most interestingly in the case of Baroque theater.

The book's strength is without a doubt its exposition of the Arabic scientist Alhazen and his optical researches, and how these were assimilated and altered by Western artists and natural philosophers, or developed in Islamic lands with such spectacular results. As long as Belting keeps these twin, comparative foci in view, the reader is swept along. Unavoidably in such an approach, Belting often speaks of Islamic "culture" and Western "culture" in a way that always seems dated and perhaps even somewhat German (kultur and kulturkreis of course being well-worn concepts of German origin).

None of this should discourage a reader, however; the illustrations alone and the treatment of Alhazen and his impact are well worth the time.(less)

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Jul 24, 2011 Mira rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Belting verknüpft Kunstgeschichte mit einer Theorie des Sehens. Er erklärt, dass im Westen und Osten der Welt anders gesehen wird. Während sich der Westen rasch auf "Bilder" konzentrierte, arbeitete die Kunst des Orients mit Geometrie und Schrift. Er beschreibt wie Alhazen seine neuen optischen Erkenntnisse entwickelte, ohne die der Westen die Theorie der Perspektive nicht hätte erfinden können. Ein interessantes und lesenswertes Buch!

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Aug 06, 2012 Rick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: completed

Thought provoking long after last page turned. Insight into (normally invisible) norms of depicting.

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Nov 28, 2012 Mills College Library added it

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701.8209 B4532 2011

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Oct 14, 2012 carelessdestiny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: art-stories

A bit long winded and, at times, repetitive but some very detailed and intriguing research on Islamic mathematics and Western painting tradition.

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