The spirit of perspective or fundamental treatise on practical perspective for artists) by Andrés Rossi (Madrid, 1781-Sevilla, 1849)

Abstract

In Spain, after an explosion of translations into Spanish of treatises on perspective, whose purpose was the teaching of Geometr y in Academies, during the eighteenth centur y, the number of such publications dwindles to nothing during the first half of the nineteenth century, due to the rejection and abandonment by artists of Enlightenment Era academic models and methods, and to the introduction of Romantic thought, alongside the discovery of photography. In Spain, the initiative of Andrés Rossi (Madrid, 1781-Seville, 1849), who began to write el Espíritu de la Perspectiva ó Tratado elemental de Perspectiva práctica para los Artistas (the spirit of perspective or fundamental treatise on practical perspectiv e for ar tists) in 1820, in S eville, constitutes an extraordinary case. This unpublished manuscript remains in the safe keeping of the historical library of the Museo Romántico (Romantic Museum) of Madrid. Its content includes only the texts of the «Cuaderno Primero» (first notebook), in which the author sings the praises of perspective art, which he considers to constitute the foundation of painting, whose fixed and immutable principles raise it to the level of the physical sciences and mathematics.