What do you think?
Rate this book
Florence et Bagdad: Une histoire du regard entre orient et occident
Né dans la Florence de la Renaissance, le regard occidental a suscité un genre d'images absolument neuf, dont Hans Belting montre ici le caractère inédit, en le comparant au regard du monde islamique tel qu'il s'exprime dans son art et son rapport aux images. Il expose comment, à l'époque moderne, l'image occidentale dominante s'est constituée à travers un échange intensif avec la science et la culture arabes.
Le regard perspectif, une des inventions majeures de la Renaissance, est à l'origine d'une rupture sans précédent dans l'histoire de l'art occidental. Le regard qu'exprime l'art islamique est tout différent ; il n'est pas lié à un spectateur et à la place qu'il occupe dans le monde, mais il vise à se rapprocher du non-représentable en soi. Hans Belting ne se contente pas d'expliquer l'attitude critique de l'islam envers les images par l'interdit religieux, mais il fait intervenir les spécificités esthétiques, sociales et scientifiques de cette culture.
Il parvient à proposer une interprétation neuve et fascinante de leurs arts respectifs en déplaçant continuellement son regard entre les mondes occidental et islamique. Sa comparaison magistrale place sous un jour nouveau, et surprenant, les parentés et les différences entre les modes de pensée occidental et oriental. Une iconographie remarquable illustre ces propos.
Le regard perspectif, une des inventions majeures de la Renaissance, est à l'origine d'une rupture sans précédent dans l'histoire de l'art occidental. Le regard qu'exprime l'art islamique est tout différent ; il n'est pas lié à un spectateur et à la place qu'il occupe dans le monde, mais il vise à se rapprocher du non-représentable en soi. Hans Belting ne se contente pas d'expliquer l'attitude critique de l'islam envers les images par l'interdit religieux, mais il fait intervenir les spécificités esthétiques, sociales et scientifiques de cette culture.
Il parvient à proposer une interprétation neuve et fascinante de leurs arts respectifs en déplaçant continuellement son regard entre les mondes occidental et islamique. Sa comparaison magistrale place sous un jour nouveau, et surprenant, les parentés et les différences entre les modes de pensée occidental et oriental. Une iconographie remarquable illustre ces propos.
380 pages, Broché
First published January 1, 2008
24 people are currently reading
624 people want to read
About the author
Hans Belting
78 books39 followersHans Belting is a German art historian and theorist of medieval and Renaissance art, as well as contemporary art and image theory.
He was born in Andernach, Germany, and studied at the universities of Mainz and Rome, and took his doctorate in art history at the University of Mainz. Subsequently he has held a fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University), Washington, D.C.
He was born in Andernach, Germany, and studied at the universities of Mainz and Rome, and took his doctorate in art history at the University of Mainz. Subsequently he has held a fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University), Washington, D.C.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 16, 2014
I don't know very much at all about art or art history (or optics for that matter), but from a layman's perspective I thought that this was a really fascinating book and it changed the way that thought about art in a couple of ways.
Belting's main focus is the the place of linear perspective in western art and it's indebtedness to Arab science, particularly the 10th/11th century scientist Ibn al-Haithan (known in Europe as Alhazen). Perspective, originally a scientific theory, was translated into art in 15th century Italy. But the work is more ambitious than this as well, and it explores the theological, epistemological, and even colonial implications of the fact that the West adopted linear perspective in art while Arabic and Islamic countries largely did not.
There are a lot of fascinating insights swirling around these ideas, but I was most fascinated by one of the most simple ones: the idea that linear perspective is not necessarily a natural development in the history of art. In hindsight this is kind of embarrassing to me, and illustrates the degree to which I come at things (consciously or not) from a western perspective. I've never been of the opinion that art utilizing perspective was "better" art - I like medieval art too much for that - but I did always think of linear perspective as something that always existed and was waiting around to be "discovered."
Because of this, Belting managed to blow my mind within twenty pages:
This was crazy to me, but it does make sense. Belting discusses how the concept of linear perspective is predicated on the idea that a piece of art was designed assuming a viewer would be standing in a very particular spot. That's not an inherent idea. Islamic art and visual theory, Belting observes, "treated vision as a process whose end result was always uncertain, since it depended on the atmosphere and many other conditions. For this reason they necessarily found suspect any pictures that stabilized perception an reified it as an artifact." This can be seen in Islamic art like muqarnas, which placed two-dimensional designs on a three-dimensional surfaces and put a high importance on light. There was no central perspective: unlike western art, there is no single place in which the viewer is assumed to be standing.
The presence or absence of linear perspective, therefore, quickly gets loaded with lots of weightier philosophical assumptions about the relationship between an individual and the physical world. For example, in Arabic visual theory, eyes are receptive, generating mental images from external stimuli. In the West, eyes are seeking, an ‘active gaze’ attempting to piece the world together. There are a lot of ideas floating around about subjectivity and objectivity, certainty and relativism.
The actual historical process by which Alhazen's ideas get translated into art theory is rather complicated, but in broad strokes: scholastic debates over sight and epistemology - particularly between Roger Bacon and William of Ockham - slowly led to a growing consensus that people saw things as they appeared (rather than necessarily as they were), and this in turn led to the accounting for a particular viewer by artists around the time of Giotto. Roughly, you could say that pre-Giotto painters painted things; post-Giotto painters painted things as people saw them. As this becomes more popular, Biagio Pelacani creates the idea of mathematical space that would then lead to Brunelleschi's development of perspective.
It's a fascinating book and I feel like I haven't done it justice here. There are all kind of wonderful insights - like the idea that in western art, windows are objects through which the eye sees while in Arabic art, a windows are where the light is let in - in nearly every section of the work. I'm not really qualified to comment on the validity of all of it, but I would recommend it for anyone even remotely interested in any of these topics.
Belting's main focus is the the place of linear perspective in western art and it's indebtedness to Arab science, particularly the 10th/11th century scientist Ibn al-Haithan (known in Europe as Alhazen). Perspective, originally a scientific theory, was translated into art in 15th century Italy. But the work is more ambitious than this as well, and it explores the theological, epistemological, and even colonial implications of the fact that the West adopted linear perspective in art while Arabic and Islamic countries largely did not.
There are a lot of fascinating insights swirling around these ideas, but I was most fascinated by one of the most simple ones: the idea that linear perspective is not necessarily a natural development in the history of art. In hindsight this is kind of embarrassing to me, and illustrates the degree to which I come at things (consciously or not) from a western perspective. I've never been of the opinion that art utilizing perspective was "better" art - I like medieval art too much for that - but I did always think of linear perspective as something that always existed and was waiting around to be "discovered."
Because of this, Belting managed to blow my mind within twenty pages:
"Whereas the natural world is characterized by an unpredictable flow of visual phenomena on which no logical schema can be imposed, perspective depicts the world as only the imagination can see it. It constructs the world for the symbolic gaze. Seen in this light, perspective is more an invention than a discovery."
This was crazy to me, but it does make sense. Belting discusses how the concept of linear perspective is predicated on the idea that a piece of art was designed assuming a viewer would be standing in a very particular spot. That's not an inherent idea. Islamic art and visual theory, Belting observes, "treated vision as a process whose end result was always uncertain, since it depended on the atmosphere and many other conditions. For this reason they necessarily found suspect any pictures that stabilized perception an reified it as an artifact." This can be seen in Islamic art like muqarnas, which placed two-dimensional designs on a three-dimensional surfaces and put a high importance on light. There was no central perspective: unlike western art, there is no single place in which the viewer is assumed to be standing.
The presence or absence of linear perspective, therefore, quickly gets loaded with lots of weightier philosophical assumptions about the relationship between an individual and the physical world. For example, in Arabic visual theory, eyes are receptive, generating mental images from external stimuli. In the West, eyes are seeking, an ‘active gaze’ attempting to piece the world together. There are a lot of ideas floating around about subjectivity and objectivity, certainty and relativism.
The actual historical process by which Alhazen's ideas get translated into art theory is rather complicated, but in broad strokes: scholastic debates over sight and epistemology - particularly between Roger Bacon and William of Ockham - slowly led to a growing consensus that people saw things as they appeared (rather than necessarily as they were), and this in turn led to the accounting for a particular viewer by artists around the time of Giotto. Roughly, you could say that pre-Giotto painters painted things; post-Giotto painters painted things as people saw them. As this becomes more popular, Biagio Pelacani creates the idea of mathematical space that would then lead to Brunelleschi's development of perspective.
It's a fascinating book and I feel like I haven't done it justice here. There are all kind of wonderful insights - like the idea that in western art, windows are objects through which the eye sees while in Arabic art, a windows are where the light is let in - in nearly every section of the work. I'm not really qualified to comment on the validity of all of it, but I would recommend it for anyone even remotely interested in any of these topics.
December 6, 2012
A nice example of comparative history taking two familiar topic areas - the history of optics during the Arab 11th century, and the invention of perspective in Renaissance Italy two to three centuries later - and bringing them together in a way that puts both subjects in a new 'perspective.' The crux of the comparison is the image, or picture, and why it emerged as the focus of Italian art in the 14th century, but not in the Muslim world.
Already this language does not do justice to Belting's project, however, which is less to pursue an art-historical analysis à la Weber of why the Muslim world failed to produce this conspicuous feature of modernity, than to demonstrate the concrete influence of Arab optical research on Renaissance mathematics and painting, and to set beside that the little-known (in the West) elaboration of a Muslim geometric art that rejected representational images.
Where the Renaissance used perspective to give us portraits of people, likenesses that appear to gaze out at the viewer, Muslim art and architecture remained faithful to the iconoclasm of Islam and used the study of light and optics to develop an amazingly sophisticated non-representational art. The muquarnas carvings of ceilings in the Alhambra and elsewhere, the complex arabesques and geometric patterns that decorated mosques and volumes of the Koran, all derived from Arab-Muslim development of classical Greek mathematics, in particular Euclid.
Though the subject matter is fascinating, the book itself suffers from several flaws. Above all, Belting's preoccupation with certain jargon concerning 'the gaze' can be plodding and difficult to understand. This is tied to a failure to substantially present the mathematics underlying the Arab and Renaissance developments. There are plenty of lovely illustrations of muqarnas, and the 'blueprints' that craftsmen worked from, but the reader is never fully apprised of how this unique form of decoration is laid out and fabricated. Likewise with perspective: "the gaze" stands in for what would more helpfully be a concrete presentation of how perspective was thought to work. Much of the latter portion of the book is concerned to legitimate this category of 'the gaze' by using it to treat later works of the Renaissance, perhaps most interestingly in the case of Baroque theater.
The book's strength is without a doubt its exposition of the Arabic scientist Alhazen and his optical researches, and how these were assimilated and altered by Western artists and natural philosophers, or developed in Islamic lands with such spectacular results. As long as Belting keeps these twin, comparative foci in view, the reader is swept along. Unavoidably in such an approach, Belting often speaks of Islamic "culture" and Western "culture" in a way that always seems dated and perhaps even somewhat German (kultur and kulturkreis of course being well-worn concepts of German origin).
None of this should discourage a reader, however; the illustrations alone and the treatment of Alhazen and his impact are well worth the time.
Already this language does not do justice to Belting's project, however, which is less to pursue an art-historical analysis à la Weber of why the Muslim world failed to produce this conspicuous feature of modernity, than to demonstrate the concrete influence of Arab optical research on Renaissance mathematics and painting, and to set beside that the little-known (in the West) elaboration of a Muslim geometric art that rejected representational images.
Where the Renaissance used perspective to give us portraits of people, likenesses that appear to gaze out at the viewer, Muslim art and architecture remained faithful to the iconoclasm of Islam and used the study of light and optics to develop an amazingly sophisticated non-representational art. The muquarnas carvings of ceilings in the Alhambra and elsewhere, the complex arabesques and geometric patterns that decorated mosques and volumes of the Koran, all derived from Arab-Muslim development of classical Greek mathematics, in particular Euclid.
Though the subject matter is fascinating, the book itself suffers from several flaws. Above all, Belting's preoccupation with certain jargon concerning 'the gaze' can be plodding and difficult to understand. This is tied to a failure to substantially present the mathematics underlying the Arab and Renaissance developments. There are plenty of lovely illustrations of muqarnas, and the 'blueprints' that craftsmen worked from, but the reader is never fully apprised of how this unique form of decoration is laid out and fabricated. Likewise with perspective: "the gaze" stands in for what would more helpfully be a concrete presentation of how perspective was thought to work. Much of the latter portion of the book is concerned to legitimate this category of 'the gaze' by using it to treat later works of the Renaissance, perhaps most interestingly in the case of Baroque theater.
The book's strength is without a doubt its exposition of the Arabic scientist Alhazen and his optical researches, and how these were assimilated and altered by Western artists and natural philosophers, or developed in Islamic lands with such spectacular results. As long as Belting keeps these twin, comparative foci in view, the reader is swept along. Unavoidably in such an approach, Belting often speaks of Islamic "culture" and Western "culture" in a way that always seems dated and perhaps even somewhat German (kultur and kulturkreis of course being well-worn concepts of German origin).
None of this should discourage a reader, however; the illustrations alone and the treatment of Alhazen and his impact are well worth the time.
April 9, 2020
Hans Belting’in bakışın tarihine odaklandığı kitabının matematik ve geometriye dayalı Arap görme/optik teorisi ile Rönesansla gelişen Batı resim sanatındaki perspektif anlayışın mukayeseli bir karşılaştırması olduğunu söylemek mümkün. Belting’e göre; 15.yy’da Floransa’da icat edilen resimde perspektif kullanımının kökeni 11.yy’da yaşayan Bağdatlı matematikçi İbn’ül Heysem’in optik teorisine dayanmaktadır. Belting kitabında Arap dünyasında doğan bu optik/ görme teorisinin yüzyıllar içinde geçirdiği dönüşümü ve nihayetinde Rönesans resim sanatında bulduğu karşılığı tarihsel olarak örneklerle gözler önüne seriyor. Bunu yaparken aynı zamanda Doğu ile Batı’nın bakışa, özne-nesneye ve sanata yönelik farklı yorumlamalarını karşılaştırırken temelde iki kültürün birbirinden farklı dünya görüşlerini yansıtmaya çalışıyor. Oldukça teorik bir dile sahip olan kitap temel sanat tarihi, perspektif vs. gibi konulara hakim olmayan okuyucuyu zorlayabilir. Ayrıca kitabın Koç Üniversitesi Yayınlarından çıkan bu siyah-beyaz basımı yazarın eklediği örnek resimlerin incelenmesini zorlaştırıyor. Bu yüzden sonraki edisyonlarda kitabın renkli olarak basılması daha yerinde bir tercih olacaktır.
March 9, 2016
perspektif meselesine dair müthiş bir kitap. konu ve yöntem itibariyle bilim tarihi, sanat tarihi, kültür tarihi gibi alanları kapsıyor. tüm bunlara uzanabilmek büyük başarı.
konularını çok iyi işlemiş. doğu bahsi ister istemez kısa kalıyor ama ibn heysem'e yaptığı yakın okumayı çok kıymetli buldum.
konularını çok iyi işlemiş. doğu bahsi ister istemez kısa kalıyor ama ibn heysem'e yaptığı yakın okumayı çok kıymetli buldum.
November 4, 2024
I realized pretty early on in reading Hans Belting's "Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science" it was going to be a difficult book for me. The writing is dense and difficult for me to follow. And while I know a little about the history of art in the West, I don't know much about Arab history. or how the taboos of Islam when it came to art works.
But I figured this text would fill in some gaps in my knowledge of art history. It didn't. As I mentioned, the writing is dense, even scholarly, and I wasn't ready to tackle a book who's author wrote for someone more familiar with the subject than I am.
But I figured this text would fill in some gaps in my knowledge of art history. It didn't. As I mentioned, the writing is dense, even scholarly, and I wasn't ready to tackle a book who's author wrote for someone more familiar with the subject than I am.
June 18, 2025
Bu güzel kitabı tesadüf eseri aldım ve okumaya başladım, bittiğinde uzun bir inceleme yazısı yazacağım, zihnimde “altaylardan tunaya” çalıyor nedendir bilemedim.
February 14, 2021
Konusu ve içeriği itibarıyla gayet orijinal bir eser.
July 24, 2011
Belting verknüpft Kunstgeschichte mit einer Theorie des Sehens. Er erklärt, dass im Westen und Osten der Welt anders gesehen wird. Während sich der Westen rasch auf "Bilder" konzentrierte, arbeitete die Kunst des Orients mit Geometrie und Schrift. Er beschreibt wie Alhazen seine neuen optischen Erkenntnisse entwickelte, ohne die der Westen die Theorie der Perspektive nicht hätte erfinden können. Ein interessantes und lesenswertes Buch!
December 30, 2024
Hans Belting'in Floransa ve Bağdat: Doğu'da ve Batı'da Bakışın Tarihi kitabı, sanat ve kültür tarihine dair derinlemesine bir inceleme sunuyor. Belting, doğu ve batı arasındaki görsel kültür farklarını çok güçlü bir şekilde ele alıyor, özellikle iki şehir olan Floransa ve Bağdat’ı merkez alarak bu iki dünyanın bakış açılarını karşılaştırıyor. Kitap, görsel temsilin tarihsel süreçteki rolünü anlamak isteyenler için değerli bir kaynak. Belting, sanatın gelişimine dair katmanlı bir bakış açısı sunarken, batılı ve doğulu toplumların sanatla olan ilişkilerini anlamamıza yardımcı oluyor. Her ne kadar teorik açıdan zengin ve derin bir analiz sunsa da, bazı bölümlerde daha akıcı bir anlatım olabilirdi. Ancak bu küçük eksiklik, kitabın değerini ve sunduğu içeriğin derinliğini gölgelemez. Farklı kültürlerin bakış açılarını keşfetmek isteyenler için önemli bir eser.
January 4, 2022
Réflexion très intéressante sur la généalogie de la perspective et le rôle trop longtemps ignoré des sciences arabes dans son apparition en Europe. Les parties sur les "formes symboliques" du monde arabo-musulman sont de loin les plus passionnantes mais aussi les plus courtes ! Le livre est finalement très déséquilibré dans son traitement des deux espaces géographiques, ce qui est fort dommage. Autre point faible: l'écriture. Le livre est mal structuré, l'auteur part parfois un peu dans tous les sens, et certaines phrases font penser que la traduction n'est peut-être pas non plus de la meilleure qualité. En tout cas malgré ces défauts, l'ouvrage présente un réel intérêt ! ...pour quiconque prendra la peine de le lire assez attentivement pour le déchiffrer.
Note réelle: 3.5/5
Note réelle: 3.5/5
Read
February 28, 2025Hans Belting propone este acercamiento a las singularidades de la óptica de Oriente y Occidente para incentivar los intercambios culturales en la historia del arte. El capítulo «Horizonte y Ventana» y «Cambio de óptica: la forma simbólica de la mashrabiyya» resultan imprescindibles para comprender el concepto de mirada desde la más profunda de las particularidades de ambas culturas. Trabajar dichos capítulos de la mano del profesor Gabriel Cabello Padial ha resultado muy propicio a la hora de ahondar en una profunda interpretación del texto.
October 2, 2025
Ovo je stručna literatura bogata ilustracijama, a radi se o komparativnom istraživanju povijesti pogleda u europskoj renesansi te arapskome svijetu.
Italija je razvila pojam perspektive i matematičkog prostora pod utjecajem znanstvenih tekstova iz područja optike arapskoga svijeta, a obje kulture to znanje razvijaju u suprotnim smjerovima.
Italija je razvila pojam perspektive i matematičkog prostora pod utjecajem znanstvenih tekstova iz područja optike arapskoga svijeta, a obje kulture to znanje razvijaju u suprotnim smjerovima.
May 21, 2025
Love Belting, an innovator in Art History who went on to have an institutional impact on Video Art.
He was a real one.
This book was extremely good , a trove of observations for anyone interested in islamic influence on Renaissance art.
Belting's book on H. Bosch is also worth a look.
He was a real one.
This book was extremely good , a trove of observations for anyone interested in islamic influence on Renaissance art.
Belting's book on H. Bosch is also worth a look.
May 11, 2021
This is gold
August 7, 2012
Thought provoking long after last page turned. Insight into (normally invisible) norms of depicting.
October 14, 2012
A bit long winded and, at times, repetitive but some very detailed and intriguing research on Islamic mathematics and Western painting tradition.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews