The origins of Western linear perspective are once again being hotly debated. Particularly important among art historians has been the work of James Elkins and (most recently) Hans Belting, whose Florenz und Bagdad. Eine westöstliche Geschichte des Blicks (2008) charted Western perspective's ‘invention’ in relation to the social, cultural and theological debts of Arabic geometry. Where Belting somewhat played down the Graeco-Roman archaeology, Classicists have been re-examining ancient ‘perspective systems’ in their own right, and with particular reference to Campanian wall-painting: alongside the recent contributions by Pierre Gros and Rolf A. Tybout, one thinks of Philip Stinson's 2011 article in the American Journal of Archaeology (115, 403–26), situating itself against Erwin Panofsky's classic 1927 essay, Die Perspektive als ‘symbolische Form’.

Such is the intellectual backdrop of Sinisgalli's own intervention. Turning to both literary and archaeological evidence, S. sets out to prove (pace Panofsky and co.) a fundamental continuity between Classical and Renaissance theories of linear perspective: ancient writers, S. contends, ‘reveal and confirm thoughts and ideas that, in Greece and Rome, were at the origin of the science of images, that is, of modern representation’ (41). Central to this thesis is an argument about mirrors. In line with S.'s earlier research into Renaissance perspective (the work of, inter alios, Alberti, Borromini, Brunelleschi, Commandino and Leonardo), S. argues that it is ‘“catoptrics”, or the science of mirrors, that makes the concept of linear perspective comprehensible’ (1). After a short introduction, the first chapter lays out the approach with reference to the De speculis of Euclid: Euclid's explanation for ‘the capturing of images upon the flat surface of the mirror suggests the possibility of painting, upon a surface, images that can be mistaken for real objects’ (14). The following chapters on Lucretius, Vitruvius and Ptolemy explore how these authors adopted and adapted Euclid's theories, sometimes with explicit reference to scaenographia (‘that is, the perspectival representation of a three-dimensional structure on a surface’ (70)); sandwiched between these chapters are two brief forays into the material evidence, surveying in turn ‘perspective at the center of power’, and ‘perspective in the area of Vesuvius’. Bar a few short paragraphs on ‘Socrates and Plato’ (9–11), there is no analysis of Euclid's predecessors, nor any discussion of extant Greek imagery before the first century b.c.

Although S.'s interest in catoptrics offers some new and interesting perspectival perspectives, above all with reference to Euclid, the volume is beset by major problems of structure, argument and presentation. There is little attempt to bridge the transition from one chapter to the next, and a conspicuous lack of overarching conclusion (the final chapter abruptly ends with an incomprehensible diagram of ‘Ptolemy's analemma 2’ on 158). If S. is prone to glib generalization (‘the objective representation of reality … was a distinctive sign of all classical civilization’ (87)), he also imposes back onto antiquity his own Alberti-derived definitions of what ‘perspective’ is or might be. So it is, for example, that the two chapters on Roman wall-painting neglect to ask basic questions about the different sorts of (‘convergence’ and ‘parallel’) ‘perspective’ employed. The discussion reaches its low-point in the attempt to explain the Palatine ‘Room of the Masks’ in light of Suetonian biography: for S., at least, the room's rationale can best be explained with reference to the historical height of Augustus (‘between 154 and 156 centimeters’, but with due allowance made for the ‘slippers’ purportedly worn by the Princeps in his cubiculum (110; cf. 172–3, n. 8)). Confusing diagrams only exacerbate such problems. The choice of pictures is often puzzling — not least the decision to start the book with a picture of Narcissus (not an ancient image, but a bestialized line-drawing after a late sixteenth-century painting by Caravaggio). At other times, diagrams are introduced without any meaningful explanation (e.g. fig. 58 on p. 97 — apparently ‘a spatial projection of the inherent problems in “scaenographia” of the ancient world’).

No less problematic is the book's production, which sets a new nadir for the New York division of Cambridge University Press. English is not the author's native language, and due allowance should be made. But the standard of copy-editing is so dismal that one wonders whether anyone at the Press actually read the book before or during production (e.g. Rome as ‘capitol’ city (36); mirrors ‘associated … to’ wall paintings (90); ‘the principal reason … is especially because’, (120) etc.). Had more care been expended on such corrections, perhaps we might have been spared the references to, for example, Aristoteles, Horatius and Platon (185–6). It is not only the English that is garbled: there are also errors in French and German (especially unfortunate that Panofsky's ‘Perspective als symbolische Form’ is attributed to the ‘Vortrage der Bibliotek Warburg’ on 168): here, as elsewhere, some word-processing ‘autocorrect’ function seems to have mangled S.'s text (cf. fur for für on 179; ‘the Latin title of the [Vitruvian] work is De Architecture Libri Decem’ on 168; ‘le text est obscur’ — and likewise Ptolemée on 178, etc.). Similar errors can be found in the Latin, which at times offer light relief (‘Graecia capta ferum victorem coepit … “Greece conquered, overthrew the proud victor”’ (163)). Thanks to the use of transliterations, the ancient Greek is spared. Unfortunately, however, the transcriptions also appear to have gone unchecked — hence the reference to e.g. Ptolemy's ‘katoptrikē tēkne’ (14).

The author has evidently been let down by the Press. But other oversights lie squarely at his door: numerous citations, especially to Renaissance theorists, are given without reference (e.g. 174–5 n. 5); quotations are at times garbled (e.g. 179 n. 19 — crucially, Lejeune refers here to the twelfth, not first, paragraph of Ptolemy's third book); and basic errors have been allowed to slip through (‘Titus Lucretius Caro’ (40)). Most crippling of all are the omissions in bibliography: with the exception of Panofsky, there is no reference to the scholars mentioned in my opening paragraph. This is not the standard expected of a serious academic press.