Perspective: Realism or Illusion?

Abstract

Pavel Florensky’s interpretation of the the Christian icon, according to the Second Council of Nicaea (787), which stated the equivalence between word and image, with the consequence that Icon had not to be considered merely and illustration of the Holy Scripture, but a means of revelation, indicates the distance that separates the Orthodox traditional Icon-painting from western-naturalistic art, born at the time of the Florentine Renaissance. Moving from a thematic of apparently mere artistic interest, the Russian philosopher analyzes the deep spiritual meaning of the Icon questioning the philosophical and metaphysical status of the image, called to respond to the cruxial responsibility of being a threshold between visible and invisible, thruth and illusion, according to a philosophical tradition which has its roots in Plato’s Republic. Placing the Icon and the Image in general at the threshold between these opposites, Florensky invites us to recognize in the Image a symbolical potentiality in which the spiritual destiny of ourself and our civilization is decided. Florensky’s hermeneutical analysis identifi es in the invention of the linear perspective the turning point of the definitive detachment of the spiritual history of the Westen Christianity from the Russian Orthodoxy. After considering various theories and interpretations of the perspective, inclusive contemporary writings to the invention of this technique, we conclude with Florensky and his contemporary E. Panofsky, that linear perspective is not “realistic” representation, but a symbolic form, expressing the anthropocentrism and Wille zur Macht of the age of the technique.