No. XCVII.
An instrument, whereby an ignorant person may take any thing in perspective, as justly, and more so than the most skilful painter can do by the eye.
NOTE.
Vitruvius is the first author who directly treats on this branch of the fine arts, though there can be no doubt but the ancients fully understood its most essential rules, which they must have practised at a very early period in the decoration of their theatres. Vitruvius, in the proem to his seventh book, informs us, that Agatharchus of Athens noticed the subject, when preparing a tragic scene for a play exhibited by Æschylus: but the principles of the art were more distinctly taught by Democritus and Anaxagoras, the disciples of the former painter.
Pietro del Borgo, early in the fourteenth century, constructed a very ingenious machine, which was afterwards employed by Albert Durer for the above purpose. It consisted of a transparent tablet, through which the object being viewed from a small aperture, the artist contrived to trace the images which the various rays of light emitted from them would make upon it.
Mr. Ferguson has also described a machine for this purpose, the invention of which he ascribes to Dr. Bevis. But the most simple and efficient instrument yet discovered for large objects is the camera obscura and camera lucida; both of which fully answer the description given by the noble author.