The geometry in art & nature

This study elaborates the premise that underpinning great works of art – invisible, beneath the surface, as it were – lies a geometrical infrastructure adhering to basic geometric principles. It’s the infrastructure that, to the beholder’s eye, gives the work in question its profoundly experienced sense of coherence and integrity, and that, once understood instead of just being intuited, more clearly accounts for its aesthetic appeal. Similar geometric arrangements are also often to be seen in natural treescapes, with leaves and limbs obeying relevant laws of physics and biology. As examples of these intrinsic patterns, some works of the fifteenth century Northern European artist Albrecht Dürer are examined in detail – in particular, his set of woodcuts accompanying an early edition of the biblical Book of Revelations.