La perspectiva, entre neoclasicismo y romanticismo

In the early years of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando the need to find certain universal rules in accordance with a class aesthetic and logical positivism, among which was included geometrical Perspective, was not discussed. Rather than for aesthetic reasons, Perspective was valued from the point or view of a Rational aesthetic: the aesthetic of the rull. The definition of Perspective as a mathematical discipline reinforced those convictions in which the theoretical principies of scientists were valued more highly than the formal categories of artists, and this symbolized the triumph of neo-classicism over the baroque. A triumph, therefore, of universal theory over practical applications; in effect, of precepts over concrete cases. With the romantic movement, a new art developed in the context of an era which was marked by the schism between science and art, a separation between universal Reason and the dimension of feeling. Individual experience confronted with nature finds an essential channel in landscape painting through which artists may once again relate Perspective to their own technique. Meanwhile, the advent of photography, the final stage in the experiments carried out with the camera oscura constituted the move from a science of representation (Perspective) to a technology of representation (photography). Likewise, the preference of romantic artists for the use of colour rather than of line meant the decline of and increasing contempt for linear Perspective.