Perspective and the Plan and Elevation Technique, in particular in the Work by Piero della Francesca

It is often stressed that the plan and elevation technique was an important ingredient in the descriptive geometry which Gaspard Monge created in the late 1760s. It is also well known that some of the elements of descriptive geometry are already to be found in Albrecht Dürer’s Underweysung der Messung [Dürer 1525]. It is in particular known that Dürer used the plan and elevation technique in connection with a description of skew curves and as a basis for constructing the perspective image of a cube. It is more seldom to see references to the fact that about half a century before the publication of Dürer’s work Piero della Francesca extensively used the same technique as Dürer. Thus Piero preceded Dürer in applying the plan and elevation technique to perspective constructions; moreover Piero used it to produce anamorphoses.