Verbal and visual abstraction: The role of pictorial techniques of representation in Renaissance architectural theory

Renaissance discussions on the use of linear perspective point to underlying, implicit views on the aesthetics of architecture. In the next generation of architectural theorists, of which Sebastiano Serlio is the best known, pictorial techniques are not merely used as an instrument which helps to give visual form to the architect's inventions. A somewhat similar position was taken by Andrea Palladio, whose Quattri Libri of 1570 consist of practical and technical instructions in architectural design. For those authors who considered architectural design to be a science of geometrical construction and knowledge of the correct handling of the orders, light and shade and particular points of view are immaterial. Catarreo, L. B. Alberti, and Scamozzi took these aspects into consideration, not by means of a number of verbal instructions, but by advocating the use of visual representations of design, either by means of a model, or by means of perspectival images.