Resumen de Looking in the mirror of Renaissance Art
This essay has a dual focus concerning the use of the mirror in making and viewing Renaissance art. It considers the mirror both as an instrument of artistic practice and as an emblem of pictorial representation within painting. Inaugurated by Brunelleschi's great experiment staged at the door of Florence Cathedral on the hand, and Van Eyck's "Arnolfini Double Portrait" on the other, a Renaissance art of mimetic resemblance was predicted on a deeply worked approximation between the mirror reflection and the theory of painting. This close affinity between the mirror and the painting's surface, as Leonardo's notes make manifest, underpinned both the theory and practice of Renaissance art as constituted in the studied imitation of visual observation. Thus the mirror reflection became, both within the workshop and within representation, the instrument and the definition of what a painting was.
