Albrecht Dürer, the Father of Polyhedral Nets
Did you know that you can "write" in polyhedra? I just stumbled across a $24.99 font called Divina Proportione. Created by Brazilian graphic designer Paulo W, the typeface is constructed with beautiful geometric renderings by the famous Renaissance printmaker Albrecht Dürer.
I had no idea that Dürer made math art:
"The German Renaissance printmaker made important contributions to polyhedral literature in his book, Underweysung der Messung (Four Books on Measurement) (1525), meant to teach the subjects of linear perspective, geometry in architecture, Platonic solids, and regular polygons.
While the examples of perspective in Underweysung der Messung are underdeveloped and contain a number of inaccuracies, the manual does contain a very interesting discussion of polyhedral. Dürer is also the first to introduce in text the idea of polyhedral nets, polyhedral unfolded to lie flat for printing."
It's official. Dürer is even more awesome than I thought. Check out his depiction of a polyhedra below.
6 Comments
Oh wow. I didn't realize this about him. That's really cool. There's another famous renaissance era german text on polyhedra that is excaping me right now. I'll post it up when I remember it.
Ah. Found it. Might have to post this up somewhere else at some point. Flickr user peacay has a bunch of historical book plates in his photo stream. He has a set that contains the plates from Wentzel Jamnitzer's Perspectiva from 1568 which has some amazingly cool polyhedra.
So beautiful.
Here is a picture of Durer getting a geometry lesson
Here is Pacioli's construction
Here is some more on Durer
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