ABSTRACT
Based on Manetti’s description, Edgerton, Krautheimer, White and other historians have diagrammed the montage of elements – viewer, view including the Baptistery, painting and mirror. The angle of view determined by the aperture of the Cathedral doors encompasses the Baptistery and part of the receding façades that enclose Piazza de San Georgio, what White calls a coulisse. The object of desire is always in two places, it is always in the subject’s view of the world and in the subject. It is always inside and outside the subject at the same time, and it is for this reason that the subjectivity of viewing wrecks havoc with the spatial distinction, codified by perspective and instantiated everywhere by architecture, between inside and outside the window. Lacan does not directly link the visual field with identity, but it is clear that identity resides in the image/screen. Brunelleschi’s diagram should make clear that Lacan’s diagram encompasses the mirroring relation of identity.
