English
In one of the entries of the marvelously penetrative and lucid book of notes, essays, interviews, drawings and description of projects of Bill Viola, ´Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House´. Writings 1973-1994´, the American artist reconstructs the transcendental implications of what probably happened in the Piazza del Duomo in Florence that day in 1425, when Philippo Brunelleschi, creator of the iconic and important Duomo, not yet finished by then, in the Santa Maria dei Fiore Cathedral, stood in front of the doors of this building and installed a small wooden box on a stand, looking at what has become the city´s oldest building, the famous and admirable Battisterio, not yet immortalized by the Doors of Paradise of Ghiberti, located right in front, on the other side of the piazza.
Little by little his friends started to come, as well as different groups of people and ´cognoscenti´, an important part of the cream of Florence´s artistic community of that time, who Brunelleschi had previously invited to come by the piazza to check out with one eye (the other one had to be closed) through the small orifice that there was to one side of the box.
By moving a lever a mirror came up, that put a small painting of the Battisterio right in front of them, in line and proportional to the first monocular and direct vision of the building which they´d come across before the ´operation´. Regarding the shape and geometry, both visions were hardly differentiable.
Viola compares the scene with one of a photograph pioneer who makes a demonstration of how a camera works, because on one side you can´t discard considering Brunelleschi´s gadget as some sort of rudimentary camera and, on the other, for the fortunate Florentines that lived it, the experience had to be so amazing and unbelievable like it was for the citizens of the 19th century who saw the birth of the camera.
That´s how perspective was invented, a system that was formalized, a few years later, in an important book by Leon Battista Alberti, probably one of the curious friends who put his eye in Brunelleschi´s box that morning, which changed the history of painting forever, and it sped up the development of the artificial image creation techniques.
For Viola, what was born that day with Brunelleschi´s experiment was, through the creation of the point of view, the personification of the image and its identification with a place of real space, transforming so the individual spectator in an integral part of the painting, which became, in relation with the observer, into an opaque mirror.
With this new identification between the spectator and the painting derived from the emphasis in the place from where it´s seen, decided from the agreement with the new artistic technique by the painter, time became part of the image.
Paul Oilzum
When you rent apartments in Florence if you visit Piazza del Duomo, stop for a moment to savour the paradox that the place where the images made sure of their place on Earth by giving up immortality, seems, despite the tourist myriads, to be located so marginalized from the clocks.
Translated by: aleixgwilliam
