Frontispiece of the book Francisci Aguilonii Opticorum libri sex. Antverpiae ex officina Plantiniana by François de Aguilón (Antwerp 1613)
Artist(s) / maker(s)
Theodoor Galle (engravers (printmakers)),
Peter Paul Rubens (after)
,
Jan II Moretus (publisher)
Date
ca. 1613Period
17 centuryCollection
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent
De Aguilón's treatise on optics is a synthesis of the works of Euclid, Roger Bacon, Kepler, Arab scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), and others. It contains the first discussion of the stereographic process (which Aguilon named), one of the earliest presentations of the red-yellow-blue colour system, an original theory of binocular vision and the first published description of Aguilon's Horopter (Norman)…
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De Aguilón's treatise on optics is a synthesis of the works of Euclid, Roger Bacon, Kepler, Arab scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), and others. It contains the first discussion of the stereographic process (which Aguilon named), one of the earliest presentations of the red-yellow-blue colour system, an original theory of binocular vision and the first published description of Aguilon's Horopter (Norman). It is also the first published book with a title-page designed by Rubens, and is considered 'a landmark of baroque book illustration' (Becker); Rubens's title-page combines allegory, myth and architecture in a symbolic representation of optics not only as the queen of mathematical sciences, but also as a form of spiritual knowledge (see Bertram, Elevating Optics: The Title Page by Peter Paul Rubens of Franciscus Aguilonius’s Opticorum Libri Sex (1613) in its Historical Context, Explorations in Renaissance Culture (online), volume 42, number 2, 2016).
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