Dürer’s Window: The Renaissance Problem of Seeing the Word Through Perspective-Colored Glasses

Authors

Laura Hatch, Brigham Young University
Dr. Matt Ancell, Brigham Young University

Keywords

Dürer, perspective-colored glass, Renaissance art, Heideggarian phenomenology

College

Humanities

Department

Comparative Arts and Letters

Abstract

I organized this research project in order to better understand the philosophical implications of linear perspective in Western Renaissance art. Artists and theorists have long understood linear perspective as a specific artistic technique, but my research was an exploration of what linear perspective represents in terms of how human beings construct and represent knowledge. By performing a phenomenological reading of German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent Woman (1525),1 it was my initial hope to show how this ubiquitous image could be read as a recognition of and exposure of linear perspective’s failure to capture and truly represent something as reality.

Recommended Citation

Hatch, Laura and Ancell, Dr. Matt (2014) "Dürer’s Window: The Renaissance Problem of Seeing the Word Through Perspective-Colored Glasses," Journal of Undergraduate Research: Vol. 2014: Iss. 1, Article 568.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jur/vol2014/iss1/568