The Cutting Surface: On Perspective as a Section, Its Relationship to Writing, and Its Role in Understanding Space

This article analyses the notion of perspective as a cutting surface as argued by Leon Battista Alberti in his 'De pictura'. It establishes the conditions under which this notion has emerged in the fifteenth century. Alberti's theory of perspective has since been appropriated and disseminated by many including Leonardo and Albrecht Dürer and has grew in prominence, consequently becoming understood as an inevitable, natural phenomenon and a common sense. The author questions this chain of events by pointing out that perspective has been an artificial construct from the beginning. Furthermore she analyses perspective's relationship to the notion of the flat surface of the page in order to shed light on Alberti's way of thinking as a scholar that is in sharp contrast to Brunelleschi, the architect / builder, whose conception of perspective was differently conceived and grasped.