DOI Heft:
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DOI Artikel:Komunikaty
DOI Artikel:Heuer, Christopher P.: Three "Danzig" drawings: notes on the limits of influence
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.35031#0327
THREE 'DANZtG' DRAWINGS: NOTES ON THE LtMITS OF INFLUENCE
319
6. Co/PeDo/r o/"JmwtAg^
o/łgr Pć7/7.s* Pfe<fc777 ć777 ć/e EiT.S' 777 a 7 777?-ce/7/wy
f 77?T77?g W77A 7fe C7*C.S'7 o/Pg/?67Y Vć777 AT/777/7 O/?
Ali three Danzig drawings adhere very closely to Vredeman's engravings, raising the
question for what purpose, if anything, they were intended. The HrcA/fgc/M/p image was
probably a study sheet. Schickhardt, and engineers like him, filled dozens of pages with
book illustrations he thought would be useful in his practice, selecting particular
engravings devoted to various themes, used as a means to study problems or discuss them
with others. The Danzig drawing after Vredeman appears in a folio titled 'How One May
Build in Water and Construct Tocks'. In this respect, the transcription of Vredeman's
engraving would be entered in a corpus of designs.
In many ways the innovation of Vredeman's tract of 1604-5 was to present
perspective - previously a function of workshop geometiy or mechanicał devices - as a
matrix for pattern. Short on text, Vredeman's tract was driven by images, as claimed, 'so
as not to overwhelm readers with a surfeit of reading matter'. Indeed, unlike many earlier
books on perspective, such as the tracts of Giacomo Barozzi Vignola (1583) or Ignatio
Danti, Vredeman's Perypec/we included only scant instructions with his engravings. On
the one hand, this altered approach conceptualised perspective as a series of rhetorical
flourishes, rather than lessons. On the other hand, it madę his book a full-flown
compendium of engraved pictures which appealed to co//<?c/o7w as much as artists.
By 1600, books on art - and speciflcally those on perspective and proportion - began to
find a market among non-specialists. As early as the 16th centuiy, Baldassare Castiglione
had urged gentlemen to leam something about art for social purposes; in a 1624 handbook
the English humanist Henry Peacham speciflcally urged them to gain some knowledge of
perspective - for speciflc use in surveying their land.^ John Evelyn, the wealthy English
traveller and diarist, even mentioned Vredeman's perspective prints by name to curious
readers seeking to understand the art; as did another <377r<3/<?Mr in 1636, a theologian from
Einkhuizen named Corelisz Biens.'^ The deluxe drawing-books, aimed at an increasingly
^ Henry PEACHAM, AAe Ccwpe/e Ce7?7/e777 077. A/ze 7/^l/7 of o///* 77/77^, 07?<J AAe or/ of ATmg /T A077T077, ed. Virgil B.
Heltze!, New York: Ithaca 1962, p. 127.
See: Comelis PIĘTRZ. B1ENS, De 7eecłeT?-CoT?.s7e, Amsterdam 1636: 'Om [perspective] wel te verstaen, zijn ver-
scheyden boecke in 't lichte gekomen, onder anderen de wercken van Hans Yredeman Yriese, de Cock ende andere'.
319
6. Co/PeDo/r o/"JmwtAg^
o/łgr Pć7/7.s* Pfe<fc777 ć777 ć/e EiT.S' 777 a 7 777?-ce/7/wy
f 77?T77?g W77A 7fe C7*C.S'7 o/Pg/?67Y Vć777 AT/777/7 O/?
Ali three Danzig drawings adhere very closely to Vredeman's engravings, raising the
question for what purpose, if anything, they were intended. The HrcA/fgc/M/p image was
probably a study sheet. Schickhardt, and engineers like him, filled dozens of pages with
book illustrations he thought would be useful in his practice, selecting particular
engravings devoted to various themes, used as a means to study problems or discuss them
with others. The Danzig drawing after Vredeman appears in a folio titled 'How One May
Build in Water and Construct Tocks'. In this respect, the transcription of Vredeman's
engraving would be entered in a corpus of designs.
In many ways the innovation of Vredeman's tract of 1604-5 was to present
perspective - previously a function of workshop geometiy or mechanicał devices - as a
matrix for pattern. Short on text, Vredeman's tract was driven by images, as claimed, 'so
as not to overwhelm readers with a surfeit of reading matter'. Indeed, unlike many earlier
books on perspective, such as the tracts of Giacomo Barozzi Vignola (1583) or Ignatio
Danti, Vredeman's Perypec/we included only scant instructions with his engravings. On
the one hand, this altered approach conceptualised perspective as a series of rhetorical
flourishes, rather than lessons. On the other hand, it madę his book a full-flown
compendium of engraved pictures which appealed to co//<?c/o7w as much as artists.
By 1600, books on art - and speciflcally those on perspective and proportion - began to
find a market among non-specialists. As early as the 16th centuiy, Baldassare Castiglione
had urged gentlemen to leam something about art for social purposes; in a 1624 handbook
the English humanist Henry Peacham speciflcally urged them to gain some knowledge of
perspective - for speciflc use in surveying their land.^ John Evelyn, the wealthy English
traveller and diarist, even mentioned Vredeman's perspective prints by name to curious
readers seeking to understand the art; as did another <377r<3/<?Mr in 1636, a theologian from
Einkhuizen named Corelisz Biens.'^ The deluxe drawing-books, aimed at an increasingly
^ Henry PEACHAM, AAe Ccwpe/e Ce7?7/e777 077. A/ze 7/^l/7 of o///* 77/77^, 07?<J AAe or/ of ATmg /T A077T077, ed. Virgil B.
Heltze!, New York: Ithaca 1962, p. 127.
See: Comelis PIĘTRZ. B1ENS, De 7eecłeT?-CoT?.s7e, Amsterdam 1636: 'Om [perspective] wel te verstaen, zijn ver-
scheyden boecke in 't lichte gekomen, onder anderen de wercken van Hans Yredeman Yriese, de Cock ende andere'.