Joseph Mallord William Turner

Lecture Diagram 29: Perspective Method for a Cube (after Guidobaldo del Monte)

c.1810

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
I. Numbered Perspective Diagrams
Medium
Graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions
Support: 672 × 999 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D17043
Turner Bequest CXCV 73

Display caption

Guidobaldo del Monte, or ‘Ubaldus’, was an Italian gentleman who devoted his life to scientific scholarship. Diagram 29 illustrates a method from his Perspectivae Libri Sex 1600, a six-volume treatise written in Latin on the mathematics of perspectival projection.

Guidobaldo’s fundamental contribution was to show how to find the vanishing point for any given line. He also showed how to project any given shape onto a plane according to the relative positions of viewer, plane and object.

Gallery label, September 2004

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