From diagram to landscape: the chapters on aerial perspective in the Treatise on Painting

Abstract

The landmark publication of Leonardo da Vinci's Traitté de la peinture and Trattato della pittura in Paris in 1651 brought attention to Leonardo's theory of aerial perspective. The early prepublication copies of the abridged version had line diagrams for four of the chapters on aerial perspective, some of which presented conceptual difficulties to the illustrators. The tendency was to enhance their ornamental character, not their didactic value. Two seventeenth-century innovators are responsible for their transformation into landscapes exemplifying the precepts of aerial perspective in practice: Gaspare Berti, hired by Cassiano dal Pozzo, transformed the line diagrams into illusionistic pictures. Charles Errard completed the transformation by envisioning landscape pictures in fictive frames combining engraving and etching to capture atmospheric effects on distant hills and buildings. A half-century later, full page illustrations in the 1716 pocket-sized edition of the Traité testify to the success and continuing importance of Errard's contribution.