Twee ogen die door een raam naar een voorwerp kijken 1679

Sebastien Leclerc I made this print, Twee ogen die door een raam naar een voorwerp kijken, sometime between 1637 and 1714. It uses line and text to express the geometric theory of visual perspective. In seventeenth-century Europe, linear perspective was more than just a technique. It was a paradigm, a way of understanding the world as ordered, rational, and knowable. This idea was intimately bound up with the rise of scientific thinking. Leclerc was French, and his career reflects the institutional history of art at that time. The Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, founded in 1648, promoted the idea that art should be based on reason and observation, very different from medieval views. Leclerc was a professor of geometry, which was essential to understand perspective. Here, he presents us with a diagram of vision itself. Two eyes view an object, and lines map out the visual pathway in precise geometric terms. For Leclerc and his contemporaries, this was not just about painting pictures, it was about understanding our place in the universe. To truly understand this image, we can consult period texts on optics and geometry. We can explore the history of the Royal Academy, and the scientific revolution to appreciate the ways of thinking about the relationship between humans and the world.