Investigating illusion: Panofsky and others on perspective

In 1927, the eminent art historian Erwin Panofsky published an article about linear perspective, the history of its use in paintings, the principles underlying constructions and whether perspective could be regarded as a ‘symbolic form’, that is, as a subject in itself. Today his article, which is still widely read among historians of art, seems inadequate in several ways, notably in its treatment of what would now be regarded as the relevant mathematics and optics, and some matters of history of art; moreover, to today’s readers the article also raises questions not only about how the treatment of history of the sciences has developed in the last century but also about what we would now consider an acceptable approach to writing on perspective, a subject that does not wholly belong to either history of science or to history of art.