a microcosm of the universe.
In ancient times, knowledge was acquired directly through perception. In the West, the earth was seen as the center of all things, with the sun and the stars, the planets and the moon circling around it in fixed orbits. The common scheme was envisaged as spherical, and thought to have been set in motion by a primary force.
Over time, the number of heavenly bodies became a subject of debate, and in the Middle Ages it was concluded that the earth was flat. In general, the ancient earth-centered cosmogony endured until the Renaissance. The earth itself was pictured as three continents surrounding a landlocked sea, the Mediterranean. Naturally, Jerusalem was its geographical center.
Around 1400, a copy of Ptolemy’s long forgotten Geographica was brought back to Venice from Constantinople. It caused quite a sensation, because it included unknown regions such as the Canary Islands, Ceylon and the Indian Ocean. It even suggested the existence of a territory situated in the Far East. Although Ptolemy’s maps later proved to be far from accurate, they spurred interest in cartography and instrument-making.
As such, in Columbus’s search for Asia (1492) the earth’s circumference was vastly underestimated; had it been accurately calculated (as the Ancient Greeks had done), Columbus’s voyage would not have been financed!
World map, Abraham Ortelius, sixteenth century
A new science was born: geography. The Flemish cartographer Gerhard Mercator published maps based on his projection system adapted from Antiquity. This method solved the problem of representing a sphere on a flat plane (like an unrolled cylinder). The meridians of longitude are equally spaced lines uniting at the poles, and the latitudes are perpendicular to the meridians. This map suggests that all continents were once united, a theory that was to be confirmed in the twentieth century.
British Library, London; Map C.2.d.7.1–2
The astrolabe (known since Antiquity), the needle compass invented by the Chinese, and Renaissance navigational charts were the tools that redesigned the world. These scientific objects, which we consider to be works of art, stimulated advances in ship design. Large, three-masted ships that were easier to maneuver in high winds, replaced the medieval cogs. Precious shipments could be therefore transported more safely.
More changes were at hand, however, as material and spiritual concerns tended to coincide. Jerusalem was taken by the Muslims and the Christian world found itself without a center. This disorienting experience cast doubts on many beliefs and marked the beginning of modern Western history.
Plan of slave ship
With advances in ship construction, all the oceans would prove to be connected and no reasonable person could doubt that the earth was anything but round. Yet, science and humanitarian progress were not synonymous … since over 10 million people were deported as slaves from Africa to the Americas.
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Astrolabe, Gualterius Arsenius, 1567
Until the Renaissance, navigation largely remained coastal. The sea astrolabe would give a rough estimate of latitude based on the position of the stars. The magnetic compass would especially help mariners to determine their locations. New instruments for measuring time and distance were developed in emerging disciplines. Navigation, cartography, architecture and engineering demanded apprentices grounded in the principles of perspective.
Musée des Arts et Métiers–CNAM, Paris
Scientific architecture
The age of exploration was literally expanding horizons with each new expedition. Westerners established great confidence in their capacity to change the course of events and developed a new attitude towards knowledge. The center of the world progressively moved from the Mediterranean region to northwestern of Europe.
Meanwhile, science contributed to an architectural milestone of the same period: the dome of Florence Cathedral, symbol of the “New Athens.” It was the work of Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), the developer of one-point perspective, an architect and painter who started his career as a sculptor. He had lost an earlier competition for the cathedral baptistry doors to the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378–1455), and went to Rome to study ancient monuments.
Rome at the time looked like a vast open-air museum whose antique objects were beginning to be appreciated for their aesthetic value (as well as for the commercial value of marble!). Brunelleschi may well have discovered the technique of perspective drawing while trying to accurately record the appearance of antique architecture.
Brunelleschi’s experiment, Philippe Comar
Renaissance architecture began with Brunelleschi, whose development of one-point perspective, for architectural purposes, revolutionized art. Linear perspective assumes that parallel lines, receding from our eyes, converge at a point on the horizon, and that the diminution in size of objects is directly proportional to their distance from us. To demonstrate his method, he set up a mirror facing a building, then painted the reverse mirror image on a flat wooden panel. He made a hole in the center of the painting. When viewers looked through the hole, the real building could be seen and compared with its image painted in perspective.
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