Experimentation as a form of knowledge: the paradigm of Brunelleschi’s invention

Abstract

Inquiring into the configuration of modern thought from the context of artistic creativity, in the modes and forms that gave rise to it over time —bearing in mind that sight emerged as a focus and new medium of knowledge— entails that we should find it fundamental to set up research into experimentation, as a concept and methodology for knowledge and artistic creation in the Renaissance period. The two panels by Brunelleschi, the one of St John’s Baptistery and the one of the Palazzo de Signori, are proof of his attempt to invent and discover a method for projecting architectures onto two-dimensional surfaces, whose experimental nature denotes this demonstrative quality. The value of these demonstrations lies precisely in said experimental nature, as we understand it as a revolutionary event that signalled the first steps of experimentation in scientific knowledge.