Letters

The depiction of two- and three-dimensional letters was a major theme of early perspective books and treatises.

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Perspective Treatises

The contents of the early perspective treatises in the 16th century developed a repertoire of themes that dovetailed with at least four traditional disciplines: optics, surveying (particularly in terms of instruments), geometry (two main methods, polyhedra, letters, human forms) and architecture (e.g. scenography, columns, ruins, idealised buildings, interiors and quadrature).

A number of these themes evolved into independent topics, while others remained minor themes in the perspective treatises for the next centuries. One of these were these was three dimensional letters depicted using perspective methods.

Pacioli’s book on Divine Proportion (1509) contained images of letters of the alphabet and regular solids. This analogy between letters and solids became a leit-motif of Renaissance treatises. The Renaissance study of letters and regular solids was their equivalent of studying atoms. It was a key to the structure of the universe. 

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Letters in Perspective

Letters of the alphabet were yet another irregular geometrical form, which became a theme in treatises on perspective. Some early authors notably, Pacioli (1509), Dürer (1525), Tory (1529), and Serlio (1545) dealt with both perspective and calligraphy without discussing possible links between them. Lencker, by contrast, devoted an entire book to the subject, Perspective of letters (1567, 1695) which, as he explained in his title involved a clear instruction how one can render perspectivally in a plane all the letters of the entire alphabet, in antique or Roman letters in many a kind and position. 

In the seventeenth century Halt (1625) continued this theme. De Bry (fig. 39.1) produced more ornamental variants combining letters and human forms. Haesel (fig. 39.3) combined letters and regular solids in a striking title page. But these were exceptions. By 1700, letters were no longer a significant theme in treatises on perspective. 

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