NOTICIAS SOBRE EL MANUSCRITO ANÓNIMO “ARTES EXCELENÇIAS DE LA PERSPECTIBA”: BREVE CRÓNICA DE UNA PUBLICACIÓN

Recently, an edition of a manuscript on perspective has been published. It is both a curious and unexplained work, which provides new elements for the knowledge of our scientific and artistic history. But if such a publication always means a remarkable event and, consequently, a reason for scholars to rejoice, it is even more due to the fact that both its edition and final study could be connected, to a great extent, with the Architectural Graphic Expression. Something that increases its value is the fact that the manuscript has been, long since, swirling around specialized publications, sometimes without presenting its true content. The Artes excelencias de la perspectiva” is preserved at the Fundacion Casa de Medina Sidonia in Sanlucar de Barrameda, Cadiz, which also commissioned the facsimile edition to the Consejeria de Cultura of Murcia. With colophon in June 2010, and distributed the following year, this edition was published in two volumes, and comprises the studies and transcriptions by three authors who will be quoted from now on: Andres Martin Pastor, Domingo Beltran Corbalan, and Francisco Reyes Marsilla de Pascual 1. Thus, it seems necessary to present a short chronicle of the vicissitudes of this peculiar work, to give a full insight into historic Spanish perspective experiences –nowadays underrated– together with the not always simple ways of approaching them.