Laura Hatch, Brigham Young University
Humanities, Classics, Comparative Literature
Art historians and artists have long treated linear perspective solely as an artistic technique. As defined by the Italian Renaissance, linear perspective is a tool to recreate reality on a canvas. But linear perspective carries philosophical implications, as well. Albrecht Dürer, a German Renaissance artist, seems to have understood perspective’s limitations in truth-making. In reading this image with a knowledge of Heideggerian phenom- enology, I propose that while on the surface this woodcut may seem to be nothing more than an illustration of proper technique, Dürer is actually exposing linear perspective’s failure to capture and truly represent an image as reality.