July 28, 2003
Geometry & Perspective
When scanning in the images for the entry below, I noticed a couple of small geometrical illustrations in Mauriès’ book that I had previously overlooked. These were taken, I read, from a work entitled Geometria et Perspectiva, by one Lorenz Stoer (also spelt Stöer, and Stör), which was published in Augsburg, in 1567, the year before the appearance of Jamnitzer’s Perspectiva Corporum Regularium in the rival Bavarian city of Nuremburg.
Whereas Jamnitzer was a goldsmith, Stoer’s preferred medium was, apparently, wood: his figures being intended to serve as ‘perspectival examples specifically for craftsmen in wood, involving various semi-regular solids and ruins’ (Dr. Kim H. Veltman).
The juxtaposition of geometrical figures and ruinous backdrops simultaneously brings to mind Escher, and Piranesi, an anachronism further confused and compounded by the elaborately decorative forms in the foregrounds of some of these woodcuts, which, as George Hart has observed, could pass for abstract 20th-Century sculptures.
All of the above images were taken from the Freiberg site behind the second of the above links. I lifted the image below from a page at a Munich University site. Clicking on any of the present images will open larger, pop-up versions of the same.
These are outstanding. I recall you had a set of selections from Jamnitzer's work in one of your earlier posts. There, I recall wishing to recreate some of the amazing geometrical formations. These ones are beyond amazing; these are abstract cities for three-dimensional flatlanders to live in.
Marvelous find.
Posted by: Felicity on July 30, 2003 05:56 AMThere is more about Lorenz Stoer in: Il Processo di Maturazione di un Scienza dell'Arte: "La Teoria Prospettica nel Cinquecento." An excellent article by Luigi Vagnetti (Dalai Ed. Italia, 1980) pp. 427-474.
You can also visit my Website and set a commentary on it.
Congratulations for this interesting page
I ran across the Stoer works while browsing in the art library many years ago. I have used them to teach Renaissance humanities and also as images suggesting memory. Is anyone doing research on them? Thank you.
Posted by: D. L. Stegman on May 13, 2004 06:00 PMJust now is published a CD-ROM edition of a manuscript of Lorenz Stoer, held by the University Library Munich:
"Geometria et perspectiva: Corpora regulata et irregulata" (manuscript Cim. 103). It contains 454 colored paintings of geometrical corpora.
Some pages shows the publishers homepage:
www.haraldfischerverlag.de.