Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Corporealizing the Infinite

2 Descartes’s Point of View

3 Straightening Out Anamorphosis

4 The Body and Its Devices

Conclusion: Perspective Split in Two

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Lyle Massey is Assistant Professor of Art History at Northwestern University. She is the editor of The Treatise on Perspectives Published and Unpublished, Studies in the History of Art Series, vol. 59 (2003).

Reviews

“This is a strong, well-articulated argument for the place of embodiment and bodily experience in Renaissance perspective. Lyle Massey is a very unusual scholar, well informed about phenomenological, Lacanian, and structuralist readings of perspective, but just as conversant with the history of geometry and its connections to Enlightenment philosophy. This book is a tonic, just what the field needs to restore some balance and help heal the rift between post-structuralist, psychoanalytic readings and technical, geometric interpretations.”—James Elkins,The Art Institute of Chicago

“Lyle Massey has done what very few art historians have attempted, which is to develop an expertise that encompasses the history of science, philosophy, and art, in keeping with the organization of knowledge during the early modern and Enlightenment era, while also demonstrating considerable expertise in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory.”—Claire Farago Renaissance Quarterly