Ragione e Intuizione nell'Illusionismo Prospettico

The goal of this research is the identifìcalion of tools available to artists between the XVth and XVllth century to achieve a convincing effect of perspective illusionism in their artworks. First of all we need to understand the psychological and physiological mechanisms that oversee the human visual perception; then we will identify the geometry tools that can reproduce and control these mechanisms in art. In particular we will study the historical evolution of three different aspects: reduction of apparent dimention, linear perspective and interaction between light, atmosphere and the represented bodies. Once we identifìed these instruments we will propose a set of experimental tests in order to evaluate the perspective illusory effect and, fìnally, we will apply this methodology to the case study of the Saint lgnazio's Gloria painted by Andrea Pozzo between in 1691 and 1694 on the vault of Saint Ignazio Church in Roma. The results of these tests showed that the Father Pozzo's artwork is characterized by a high consistency uf all the visual cues provided to the viewer. Thus we can advance the hypothesis that the whole artwork has been subjected to a careful planning by the artist.