LEONARDO’S INFINITE IMAGES

Leonardo da Vinci:

“every opaque body fills the surrounding air with infinite images, by which infinite pyramids diffused in the air present this body all in all and in every part.”  A II, 6v.

He was describing his theory for how we see an object  What he was saying is that light is reflected from opaque objects in pyramidal shaped light rays, or pyramidal cones, if you will.  He imagined that around each opaque object was an infinite number of images, each slightly different.  And these images were projected by cones of light.

What I find amazing about his passage above is his use of the words opaque and images.  His theory was that opaque three dimensional forms throw off two dimensional images.

In a sense, this thought exercise puts us at the center of the conflicts and limitations of the Renaissance and Representational Spacetime.  For here we have a model for the representational painter:  getting the object “right” on the canvas requires that some point on the sphere around the object is first selected.  Then, an “accurate” representation can then be generated by copying that two dimensional image.  There, in a nutshell, is how representation works.  You select one floating image from the infinite possibilities, and then spend a great deal of time “getting it right.”

Of course, as his facile mind continue to ply universe, his theories on how we see were adapted and modified.  Yet this infinite image concept remains compelling.  In a way, infinite images at the end of a light cone is how we truly see.
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The drawing above tries to knowledge exactly what Leonardo was visualizing.  He uses the word “images”, which to me means representational depictions.  So the elements distributed around the sphere are depicted representationally.  Each element is depicted as if this were your view from a point on the sphere.  So if you are below the gable box, for example, then the image depicts the bottom of the form.  I know that I got some of my images wrong:  it is an interesting mental exercise to representationally depict images of a form in a spherical arrangement:  you have to imagine looking at the form from a point and then adjusting for foreshortening, etc.

This all makes me wonder what Leonardo would have done with the concept of transparency.

1. Da Vinci, Leonardo. The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Ed, Edward MacCurdy. Konecky & Konecky, Old Saybrook, CT.