Eastwood - Alhazen, Leonardo, and Late-Medieval Speculation On The Inversion of Images in The Eye

Annals of Science
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Alhazen, Leonardo, and late-medieval speculation

on the inversion of images in the eye
Bruce Eastwood
To cite this article: Bruce Eastwood (1986) Alhazen, Leonardo, and late-medieval
speculation on the inversion of images in the eye, Annals of Science, 43:5, 413-446, DOI:
10.1080/00033798600200311
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AYYALS Or SCIFYCE, 43 (1986), 413--446
Alhazen, Leonardo, and Late-Medieval Speculation on

the Inversion of Images in the Eye
BRUCE EASTWOOD
1715 Office Tower, University of Kentucky,
Lexington, KY 40506-0027, U.S.A.
Received 1 N o v e m b e r 1985
Downloaded by [University of Lethbridge] at 04:51 06 November 2015
For A. C. Crombie
Summary
No one before Platter and Kepler proposed retinal reception of an inverted visual
image. The dominant tradition in visual theory, especially that of Alhazen and his
Western followers, subordinated the intra-ocular geometry of visual rays to the
requirement for an upright image and to preconceptions about the precise nature of
the visual spirit and its part in vision. Henry of Langenstein and an anonymous
glossator in the late Middle Ages proposed alternatives to Alhazen, including the
suggestion of double inversion of the image. Leonardo da Vinci was aware of both
Alhazen's theory and Henry's contradiction, but perhaps not of the anonymous
hypothesis of double inversion. Leonardo's visual 'theory' has more the character of
a critique than of a theoretical alternative, and he did not transcend the medieval
concept of visual spirit.
Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
2. Alhazen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
3. Late-medieval queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
4. Leonardo da Vinci . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
5. Concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
1. Introduction
A m o n g the m a n y ingenious inspirations of L e o n a r d o da Vinci, not the least was his
application of the well k n o w n camera obscura device to the process of vision, whereby
he likened the opening into the eye to the opening into the darkened box or chamber.
The analogy, however, led L e o n a r d o to ask how the image, thus inverted in the eye,
could be properly u n d e r s t o o d in the completed process of vision, a question which he
answered by arranging for a second inversion and so a righting of the image before its
reception at the optic nerve.1 By contrast, the fundamental a u t h o r for medieval Latin
optics, Alhazen, had considered the possibility of the intersection of visual lines inside
the eye, with consequent inversion of the image, and he had p r o n o u n c e d it impossible,
as it would create an upside-down and backwards image. 2 While quite aware of the
1The basic studies of Leonardo in this regard are those of James S. Ackerman, 'Leonardo's Eye', Journal
of the Warburo and Courtauld Institutes, 41 (1978), 108M6; Martin Kemp, 'Leonardo and the Visual
Pyramid', ibid., 40 (1977), 128-49; and Donald Sanderson Strong, 'Leonardo da Vinci on the Eye: the Ms.D.
in the Biblioth+que de l'Institut de France...' (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los
Angeles, 1967).
2Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham), De aspectibus, edited by Friedrich Risner (Basel, 1572), pp. 24-7.
414 B. Eastwood
camera obscura, Alhazen gave no suggestion that it might be a model for some part of
the visual process in the eye. Both the absence of his use of the camera obscura model
and his positive rejection of any intersection and inversion of visual lines within the eye
would seen to be due to Alhazen's unwillingness to countenance the projection of an
inverted image onto the sense of sight within the eye. F o r both Leonardo, who
proposed two reversals, and Alhazen, who avoided any image reversal in the eye, the
sense of sight, that is, the visual power, must have an upright image to comprehend.
Despite various trends in medieval optical traditions, no Western author from Alhazen
to Leonardo has been found to have proposed an inversion of the visual image at any
point in the eye, either at the pupil or anywhere else. 3 However, the manuscripts of
Alhazen's De aspectibus reveal that the issue of inversion, raised and quickly settled in
the text, was not so readily settled in the minds of all readers. At least one student of
vision in the later fourteenth or early fifteenth century recorded marginally his notion,
or question, to the effect that Alhazen's worry about image reversal would be satisfied
by two reversals within the eye, giving an upright projection at the back of the eye. 4 The
details, context, and significance of this late-medieval proposal, as compared to the
schemes of Alhazen and Leonardo, are what I wish to explain.
2. Alhazen
Because our anonymous glossator introduces his idea in the margin to Alhazen, we
shall begin with the fundamental text and proceed from there.
Alhazen's rejection of any inversion of image in the eye is couched within a most
persuasive visual theory. Since this theory has been described by others, we shall review
it summarily, expanding only on those elements especially germane to our topic. 5
Within the medieval tradition from Alhazen to Leonardo, the question of inverted
images in the eye involves: (a) the location of the apex of the cone of vision in the eye,
(b) the angles at which the incoming visual rays strike the successive layers of the eye,
especially the interface between glacial and vitreous humours, and (c) where and how
the visual power takes effect. The significance of these three elements hangs upon the
understanding that the visual process as described by Alhazen is essentially the fitting
together of a visual cone, representing the ingress of a coherently arranged set of
rectilinear light-rays from an object, and visual spirit, which is a sensate medium
projecting from the brain to the eye. The conjuction takes place in the glacial and
vitreous humours.
Starting from al-Kindi's concern for the ordering of visual rays which originate
from every point of a luminous body, Alhazen proceeded to elaborate a point-to-point
correspondence between the object seen and the glacial humour in the eye (in the
process reversing al-KindT's extramission theory of vision), using a cone of rays with its
base on the object and its apex deep in the eye at the centre of curvature of the forward
surface of the glacial (the forward surface of the lens in modern terms). 6 Inside the eye,
3 David C. Lindberg, Theories of Visionfrom al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago, 1976), pp. 154-68; Strong
(footnote 1), p. 301.
4 Oxford Corpus Christi College MS 150, f. 12v;see Figures 8-9 and the discussion in the latter part of
Section 3 of this study.
5Lindberg (footnote 3), chapter 4, espcially pp. 67-74, 80-4, gives a careful summary, although my
accotint does not agree in all particulars with his. For a detailed discussion see A. I. Sabra, 'Sensation and
Inferencein Alhazen's Theory of Visual Perception', in Studies in Perception, edited by Peter K. Machamer
and Robert G. Turnbull (Columbus, 1978), pp. 160-85.
6 Lindberg (footnote 3), pp. 28-30, 72-3. 1 follow Lindberg's implication that Alhazen knew and used
al-Kindi on this matter. A. I. Sabra has remindedme in a private communicationthat there is no proof of this
knowledge and use.
Inversion o f images in the eye 415
A l h a z e n b e g a n with .Hunayn i b n - I s h a q ' s a c c o u n t of the visual spirit, which flows from

the b r a i n to the f o r w a r d surface of the glacial h u m o u r in the eye a n d b e y o n d , a n d then
denied H u n a y n ' s n o t i o n of emission of the visual p n e u m a from the eye, restricting it
instead to H.u n a y n ' s first container, the unit m a d e u p of brain, optic nerve, vitreous
h u m o u r , a n d glacial h u m o u r . 7 H a v i n g built u p o n a n d redefined in m o r e precise fashion
these earlier concepts of coherent rays outside the eye a n d a sensate p n e u m a , o r spirit,
within the eye, A l h a z e n carefully b r o u g h t the two t o g e t h e r in stages, initially b y m e a n s
o f a virtus visibilis at the f o r w a r d surface of the glacial h u m o u r a n d at two t r a n s i t i o n
p o i n t s b e h i n d t h a t surface as well. T h e i n t e r a c t i o n of the outer, the cone of rays, a n d the
inner, the spirit d e s c e n d i n g from the brain, he defined so as to have the o u t e r b r i n g to
the inner a p a t t e r n representing faithfully the visible surface of the object seen.
W h i l e the funnelling d o w n of the rays, o r d e r e d p e r p e n d i c u l a r l y on the outer,
corneal, surface of the eye a n d a g a i n on the inner, glacial, surface of the eye, preserved
the a r r a n g e m e n t of surface p o i n t s on the object, vision d i d n o t o c c u r simply a n d fully at
this interface of visual cone a n d sensate glacial. If they were to p r o c e e d w i t h o u t
d e v i a t i o n b e y o n d the glacial surface, the rays w o u l d c o m e to a point, the apex of the
visual cone, at the centre of c u r v a t u r e of the glacial, since the p r i n c i p a l rays defining the
cone are all p e r p e n d i c u l a r to the glacial surface. Clearly, A l h a z e n did n o t wish to
d i s c a r d the visual cone at this surface, even t h o u g h he referred to the glacial h u m o u r
as a sentient p a r t of the eye, which received the forms o f light a n d colour, s I n fact,
n o t h i n g is c o m p l e t e d a t this surface; it is simply the b e g i n n i n g of a second p h a s e in the
c o m p l e x process of sight, whose first p h a s e is the ingress o f rays f r o m the o u t e r world. I n
the first stage the eye is passive, while in the second there is a c o m b i n a t i o n of the activity
o f rays a n d the visual sensitivity in the eye, b e h i n d the f o r w a r d surface of the glacial
h u m o u r . T h e first p h a s e is explained by g e o m e t r y alone, the s e c o n d by g e o m e t r y a n d
p h y s i o l o g y together.
O n c e the o r d e r e d cone ( p y r a m i s f i g u r a t a ) of rays passes p e r p e n d i c u l a r l y a n d u n b e n t
t h r o u g h the f o r w a r d surface of the glacial, which we m i g h t best u n d e r s t a n d as a
t r a n s p a r e n t screen where an image is c o h e r e n t l y p r e s e n t e d a n d passed on to a new
region, the process b e c o m e s m o r e involved. Vision d o e s n o t o c c u r c o m p l e t e l y until
r e c e p t i o n of the forms b y the ultimum sentiens in the brain. W i t h i n the glacial, or
crystalline, h u m o u r the sensibility 9 to the forms received on its surface continues to be
7A recent account of Hunayn's visual theory appears in Bruce Eastwood, The Elements of
Vision...H. unayn ibn Ish.aq (American Philosophical Society Transactions, 72, pt 5, Philadelphia, 1982),
especially pp. 21-46 on the visual pneuma. Not only did Alhazen limit the visual spirit to this interior
container defined by .Hunayn, but he also limited its presence within this container. In De aspectibus, l, iv, 4
(p. 4), the final sentence does not say what it at first appears to say. The text is as follows: 'Et dicitur, quod
spiritus visibilisemittitur ex anteriori parte cerebri, et implet duas concavitates duorum nervorum primorum
coniunctorum cum cerebro, et pervenit ad nervum communem, et implet concavitatem eius, et venit ad duos
nervos secundos opticos, et implet ipsos, et pervenit ad glacialem, et dat ei virtutem visibilem'. In this passage
there are four pairs of verbs applied to the spiritus visibilis. First, 'emittitur' and 'implet'; second, 'pervenit' and
'implet'; third, 'venit' and 'implet'; last, 'pervenit' and 'dat'. In all but the last case, the spiritus both arrives at
and fills, while in the case of the glacialis there is arrival but no filling. The glacialis receives a virtus visibilis
from the spiritus, but is not pervaded by the spirit itself. Finally,Alhazen uses glacialis, not humor glacialis; the
glacialis here is best understood as the composite corpus glacialis, as will be shown below. My interpretation
of the limits of the spiritus visibilis is brought out and developed at various points below. Cf. 1,vi, 33 (p. 21) for
the same vocabulary with regard to the visual spirit and the glacial: 'spiritus visibilis..,perveniat ad
glacialem et det ipsi virtutem sensibilem successive...'
s Alhazen, I, v, 30 (p. 17): 'Glacialis ergo alteratur a luce et coloribus tantum ut sentiat'.
9 Alhazen, l, v, 25 (p. 15):'Et etiam glacialis est praeparatus ad recipiendum istas formas et ad sentiendum
ipsas. Formae ergo pertranseunt in eo propter virtutem sensibilem recipientem'.
416 B. Eastwood
according to the geometrical arrangement of their parts as initially received.~~ We have

here the coordination of the two means of transmission, radial geometry and ocular
sensitivity, presumably because a surface of interaction would be inadequate to
guarantee the transformation from one to the other. There must be instead a region
where the two mix, and this region is the glacial body.
Having prescribed a geometrical model wherein the cone of rays passes unrefracted
into the glacial and will reach its apex at a point farther on, Alhazen describes one last
surface to receive and transmit the rays. The purpose of this final surface, that of the
vitreous humour, is to prevent the rays from reaching the apex of the cone at all.
Therefore the surface is placed anteriorly to the centre of curvature of the forward
glacial surface; the final surface is said to be either planar or part of a sphere with radius
of curvature 'of some good size'/~ There is an interesting and easily assumed point
about this spherical surface--let us presume for the moment it is not a plane--which is
quite clearly unspecified here by Alhazen. The point is the location, or the relative
direction, of the centre of curvature of the anterior surface of the vitreous humour.
Contrary to some explications of Alhazen's text, I believe that this centre of curvature is
deeper within the eye, thereby making that surface convex (Figure 1). The centre of
curvature must be distant enough to insure that the refraction of rays at the anterior
surface of the vitreous humour will prevent intersection of the rays before they reach the
sentient body behind it. Strong support for this interpretation of the shape of the
anterior vitreous comes from the diagrams for n, i, 7, in which Alhazen discusses the
effects of positioning the centre of the vitreous surface elsewhere than on the extension
of the axial ray perpendicular to the forward surfaces in the eye. The text specifies a
diagram but in so general a way as to leave unspecified the direction of the centre of
curvature for the vitreous. However, as early as the Edinburgh manuscript of 1269 the
diagram itself was drawn with the anterior vitreous surface clearly convex in shape.t2
Option B_ Option A
vitreous ~ ~ / glacial contreof ~ ~ centreof

surface o f / ~ surface of
glacial --. / \ . vitreous
humour~ ~ 1 humour
centre of
curvature
of anterior
surface of surface o f ~ / / aurfaceof
vitreous glacial ~ / / vitreous vitreous acial
humour humour ~ h u m o u r humo~ ~ / "h. . . . .
Figure 1. Alhazen's options for the surface between vitreous and glacial humours.
,0 Ibid.: '... et ex ordinatione partium formae in sua [glacialis] superficie et suo toto corpore erit sensus
eius ex ordinatione partium operantis', n, i, 1 (p. 25):'... extensio formarum a superficie glacialis intra corpus
glacialis est secundum rectitudinem linearum rectarum radialium tantum, quoniam glacialis non recipit istas
formas, nisi secundum verticationem linearum radialium tantum'.
1, Alhazen, n, i, 3 (pp. 25-6). The following points exhaust the prescriptions he makes for the forward
surface of the vitreous humour. (a) The surface, in order to preserve the same relationship of points as exists
on the surface of the glacial, should be either plane or spherical. (b) The surface cannot have the same centre of
curvature as the anterior surface of the glacial. (c) The surface cannot be part of a small (parva) sphere, because
this would cause a distorted (monstruosa) form. (d) Therefore the surface will be either planar or part of a
sphere of some good size (alicuius bonae quantitatis).
~2 Alhazen, n,i,7 (p. 28). Edinburgh Royal Observatory, MS Cr 3.3, f. 25r.
F u r t h e r m o r e , the s h a p e I have p r o p o s e d for Alhazen's m o d e l of the f o r w a r d surface of

the vitreous m a k e s decisively better sense t h a n an o p p o s e d curvature, if we recognize an
implicit i n t e n t i o n here. W h e n Alhazen states t h a t the interface between glacial a n d
vitreous h u m o u r s m u s t be either p l a n a r o r a spherical surface of very large curvature,
he intends a range of possible refractions u p to a m a x i m u m , a n d t h a t m a x i m u m is the
result of intersection with a p l a n a r surface. Since refraction of light rays always
t h r e a t e n s the o r d e r within a cone of rays, the less refraction r e q u i r e d at the a n t e r i o r
surface of the vitreous h u m o u r , the m o r e easily is r a d i a l o r d e r preserved. T h e
spherically curved surface, an alternative to the p l a n a r , is i n t e n d e d to i n t r o d u c e the
m i n i m u m refraction necessary to prevent the intersection of the rays. It has an o b v i o u s
g e o m e t r i c a l limit, which is the radius of c u r v a t u r e of the a n t e r i o r surface of the glacial
h u m o u r . The r a d i u s of c u r v a t u r e of the a n t e r i o r surface of the vitreous h u m o u r m u s t be
significantly larger t h a n this limit.

At first meeting, A l h a z e n ' s prescription of either a p l a n e or a section of a sizeable
sphere seems a m b i g u o u s o r imprecise, b u t its c h a r a c t e r is revealing. Since he is laying
d o w n the c o n d i t i o n s for a geometrical model, it suffices that this last surface be such
t h a t the rays will be refracted a w a y from the i m a g i n e d a p e x of the cone of unrefracted
rays. T h e c o n d i t i o n s of veridical vision m a y be preserved b y a n y in the range of shapes
he offers for this refracting surface. Here, as well as elsewhere, the h y p o t h e t i c a l side of
A l h a z e n ' s t h e o r y of vision rises to view. H e has saved the p h e n o m e n a . 13
The function of the vitreous h u m o u r , to preserve the a r r a n g e m e n t of the p a r t s of the
form of the visible object a c c o r d i n g to its o r d e r e d being (secundum suum esse), is carried
o u t by a surface which requires refraction o n a c c o u n t o f its s h a p e a n d by a b o d y which
has a different density from that in front of it. After rejecting the possibility of
interesection a n d inversion of the rays of the visual cone, A l h a z e n specifies t h a t the
glacial, o r crystalline, b o d y (corpus) has m o r e t h a n one density, a n d that its p o s t e r i o r
part, called the vitreous h u m o u r , is of different d e n s i t y from the anterior, glacial
h u m o u r . 14 F o r a r e a d e r desiring a precise a n d detailed a c c o u n t of w h a t h a p p e n s within
this single b o d y , the corpus glacialis, m a d e up of two different h u m o u r s a n d p e n e t r a t e d
by the virtus sensitiva, A l h a z e n ' s a c c o u n t is less t h a n satisfying, a l t h o u g h an a d e q u a t e
a c c o u n t can be derived from the text. C o m p l e t i o n of the a c c o u n t of the passage of the
r a d i a l lines, d e s c r i b i n g a well a r r a n g e d form, is o u r first concern. Simply put, the fact is
t h a t the form, which has been refracted at the a n t e r i o r surface of the vitreous h u m o u r , is
3This is not to say that Alhazen was unconcerned with the truth of the matter but rather that he was
concerned first to present a geometrically consistent model. In this vein he presented the theory of
extramission of rays on the one hand as theoretically otiose 0, v, 23) but on the other hand not simply and
totally incorrect or useless 0, v, 24; p. 15). He retained his stand that extramission is simply unnecessary when
he argued yet more persuasively that comprehension occurs only after mental distinction and reason;
therefore, something must come from object to brain (n, ii, 23). As A. I. Sabra has remarked, for Alhazen, 'A
hypothesis was not to be accepted simply (my emphasis) because it saved the phenomena'; see his, 'The
Physical and the Mathematical in Ibn al-Haytham's Theory of Light and Vision', in The Commemoration
Volume of the B~r~ni International Congress in Tehran (Tehran, 1976), pp. 439-78, especially 454. While
Alhazen allotted the study of vision to both physics and mathematics, with neither subordinated to the other,
he also said, 'Mathematicians, for their part, have paid more attention to this science [of optics] than others.
They have pursued its investigation, paying attention to its details and divisions. They have distinguished
objects of vision, assigning causes to their particular properties and stating reasons for each of them'. (Bk. I,
ch. 1, paragraph 3; translation kindly offered by A. I. Sabra). See Eilhard Wiedemann, 'Zu Ibn al Haitams
Optik', Archivfiir die Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, 3 (1910), 1-53, especially 18-9 for a
slightly different translation of the passage. Mattias Schramm, 'Zur Entwicklung der physiologischen Optik
in der arabischen Literatur', Sudhoffs Archiv, 43 (1959), 295~5, points generally to the scientific model of
Ptolemaic astromony and optics as the fundamental pattern followed by Alhazen.
1,*Alhazen, ~, i, 2 (p. 25). It is not made explicit whether the density of the vitreous is greater or less than
that of the glacial humour, although the answer is suggested by what follows in II,i, 6.
418 B. Eastwood
passed, with the order of its parts intact and without further change, to the sentient
body (corpus sentiens) beyond the vitreous, continues through the optic nerve to the
juncture of the nerves, and so on to the brain. Upon leaving the vitreous, the form is said
still to retain the relative arrangement of its parts possessed at the anterior glacial and
anterior vitreous surfaces. The sentient body simply preserves this arrangement up to
the brain.15
The refraction at the forward surface of the vitreous humour channels the radial
lines of the form so that they neither intersect nor expand. The well arranged form has
been prepared to be fully encompassed by the corpus sentiens, which carries the form
from the posterior vitreous surface through the optic nerve to the ultirnum sentiens. The
amount of refraction at the vitreous is not specified, the exact shape of the refracting
surface is not specified, and the relative densities of glacial and vitreous humours are
not specified. All we learn is the direction of the refracted form and just enough about
the model of the eye to understand that the specified direction of refraction is
reasonable. As the account proceeds we also learn that certain extravagant situations
are to be avoided, as they would create 'monstrosities', or disfigurations. The concern
about hypothetical monstrous results occurs at four points in the description. (1) If the
refracting surface of the vitreous were not completely regular and spherical, a
monstrous visual form would appear, x6 (2) If the refracting surface of the vitreous were
the surface of a small sphere, causing the intersection of rays before even reaching the
centre of curvature of the cornea and the anterior glacial surface, once again there could
occur a monstrous visual form. Presumably the disfiguration anticipated here by
Alhazen is simply the inverted image after intersection, but he does not say. 17 (3) In a
most curious passage, Alhazen claims that there is a dual diversity between glacial and
vitreous humours and that the refraction at the interface would either be monstrous or
would produce two forms, if there were not a coordinated diversity across the two
media both of the density (diaphanitatis) and of the quality of the sense of reception
(qualitatis receptionis sensus). 18 Just what this means will be discussed below. (4) If the
corpus sentiens were not of the same density as the vitreous humour, the visual form
would be refracted as it leaves the vitreous and enters the sentient body, thus preventing
the passage of the form for more than a brief distance, and the form would become
monstrous immediately. 19 A refraction at this last surface would, as at the previous
surface, require a coordinated change both in density and in quality of sense of
reception. In saying that a disfigured image would occur immediately, Alhazen implies
that refraction at this final surface would not have the required coordination that he
postulated in the refraction at the anterior vitreous surface. These four hypothetical
occasions for creating a monstrous visual form are the signs of the four critical points in
the passage of the well arranged form after it has entered the glacial humour. In short,
both entrance into and exit from the vitreous humour have special attention and
special importance in Alhazen's account. Here is where the form passes from an unfixed
to a fixed order and from the status of a sensed pattern to that of a visual pattern within
the organ of sense itself.
The third point where a monstrous form must be avoided introduces another
consideration, the sensitivity of the ocular parts involved. With this issue we are drawn
15Alhazen, IX,i, 6 (pp. 267).
16Alhazen, n,i, 2 (p. 25): 'Et debet ista superficiesesse consimilis ordinationis, quoniam, si non fuerit
consimilis ordinationis, apparebit forma monstrousa propter refractionem'.
17Alhazen, ll, i, 3 (p. 25).
18 Alhazen, IX,i, 5 (p. 26).
19Alhazen, iI,i, 6 (p. 27).
Inversion of images in the eye 419
into the last of the three significant questions relating to inverted images, i.e., where and
how the visual power takes effect. On the most general level Alhazen conceived of
sensitivity beginning with the forward surface of the glacial humour. But when we look
for precision, we find three different stages: the glacial, the vitreous, and the purely
sentient.
What reason does the reader of De aspectibus find for the three-stage transition of
the form from a geometrically defined entity to a fixed arrangement of parts
transported by the visual pneuma? Alhazen offered no express reason. The best
interpretation would seem to be that he was not persuaded that an immediate
transition, in one step, could occur from ordered light-rays in an inert medium to an
ordered and fixed form in a sensitive medium. As a result, we encounter successive
responsive properties across the three regions of glacial humour, vitreous humour, and
sentient body.
Alhazen built his discussion of sensitivity on the traditional foundation stone that
the glacial, or crystalline, humour is the most important single locus for the
establishment of effective sight. While the Galenic medical tradition systematized by
.Hunayn ibn Is.h~q based the importance of the glacialis on its central position and its
sensitivity via the visual spirit, Alhazen found both of these factors incomplete and
imprecise in the Galenic school of thought. Not centrality but the axial location of
centres of curvature was the structural property Alhazen emphasized, and he enlarged
its significance greatly by his theory of point-to-point correspondence between the
viewed object and the successive concentric surfaces within the eye. Beyond the
geometrical, structural articulation, Alhazen theorized that the glacialis began visual
sensitivity in a specific way, not exactly like that found farther on in the eye. Vision, he
said, does not take place fully in the glacial humour but rather through, or by means of,
the glacial humour (visio non est nisi per glacialem), 2~ making it necessary but not
sufficient. Throughout the glacial there is a sensus glacialis, whereby the glacial is said
to comprehend the external object according to its being (glacialis comprehendat rem
visam secundum suum esse). 21 This specific sensus is fully dependent on the ordered
radial lines of the form from outside the eye for the completeness of vision in the glacial
h u m o u r . 22
The second stage, transmission of the well ordered form to the vitreous humour,
takes place according to the geometrical structure we have considered and also
according to a physical-physiological shift. In specifying that the vitreous and glacial
humours are of diverse density,23 Alhazen makes at least three important qualifi-
cations. First, the corpus glacialis, also called the membrum sentiens, is said both to
receive the visible form physically, according to its geometrically ordered pattern, and
also to sense it. 24 Second, this duality in manner of reception is repeated when the form
2o Alhazen, I, v, 16 (p. 8). More precisely, Alhazen says at one point: 'apud m e m b r u m istud [i.e. glacialem]
principium est sensus'. (n, i, 3; p. 26). Here principium means 'the beginning'.
21 Ibid.; cf. I, v, 25 (p. 15): ' F o r m a e ergo pertranseunt in eo [corpore glaciale] propter virtutem sensibilem
recipientem.., ex ista operatione [formae] et passione [virtutis sensibilis] erit sensus glacialis ex formis
rerum visibilium, quae sunt in superficie sua et pertranseunt per t o t u m s u u m corpus'.
22 The term sensus alone does not refer simply to what happens in the glacialis, as is evident when, in the
process of describing binocular vision, Alhazen says, 'Et etiam sensus n o n extenditur a membris ad ultimum
sentiens nisi in nervis continuatis membris et cerebro'. Alhazen, I, v, 27 (p. 16).
23 Although the text (n,i, 2-3) refers more than once to both a corpus glacialis and a corpus vitrei, for
clarity I preserve the initial usage, whereby the two parts of a single corpus glacialis are called the glacial and
vitreous humours. While the two h u m o u r s were truly meant to be distinct, I believe Alhazen intended them to
be thought of as a composite body, which together carried the ordered form from the forward, inert parts of
the eye to the sensitive corpus, which fixed and carried the form to the brain.
24 Alhazen, 1I, i, 4 (p. 26).
420 B. Eastwood
passes from the glacial humour to the vitreous humour, which has, strictly speaking, a
power of receiving the sensed form rather than of sensing it--this has already happened
in the glacial humour. 25 Alhazen does not mean here that sensitivity is absent from the
vitreous but rather than the vitreous brings a new strength to the sensing of the form.
The vitreous humour is midway in the gradient from the impermanent sensation
occurring at the anterior glacial surface to the permanent sensation found in the visual
spirit immediately behind the vitreous. Reception by the vitreous enhances the sensed
form. The vitreous humour has its own quality (qualitas) of reception, distinct from the
quality of the glacial humour, and its own density (diaphanitas) also distinct from that
of glacial. This duality requires a corresponding duality in the refraction of the sensed
visible form at the interface of glacial and vitreous humours, according to Alhazen. 26
He conceives that refraction according to either quality of reception alone or density
alone would produce confusion of vision. The third specification is Alhazen's explicit
judgment that the visual spirit, or pneuma, had a density (diaphanitas) identical to that
of the vitreous humour, which is to say that there is no refraction of the form as it passes
from the vitreous to the sentient body connecting the eye via the optic nerve with the
brain. 27 This tells us that the transmission of the form is still physical as well as
physiological until it has entered the sentient body beyond the vitreous, and suggests
that the visual spirit proper does not pervade the glacial and vitreous humours. Among
the inferences to be drawn from this information is that the visual pneuma will be
denser, or less diaphanous, than the glacial humour, since the radial lines passing from
glacial to vitreous humour must bend away from the apex of the visual cone. If the
radius of curvature of the anterior vitreous surface is larger than that of the anterior
glacial, or the interface is a plane (Option A), only a dei:ser second (vitreous) medium
would allow the rays to proceed in the desired direction. The second stage of
transmission of the form therefore involves a carefully structured pair of sequences. On
the one hand we have refraction described across the media of diverse densities so that
the rays bend away from the centre of curvature of the anterior surfaces, through which
they have entered. This refraction is conceived in the same manner as refraction of light-
rays in media outside the eye. On the other hand we have a 'refraction' of the form
according to diverse qualities of sensitive reception (refracta propter diversitatem
qualitatis sensus). The refraction across diverse qualities is conceived by analogy with
ordinary physical refraction, but has no independent explanation or justification.
Alhazen has contrived this account of a dual refraction at the interface of glacial and
vitreous in order to have a complete model. Completeness demands that once
sensitivity has been introduced at the front of the glacial, there must be passage of the
sensation in a manner parallel to the passage of light-rays through inert, non-sentient,
media. The physiology of sensation at this point is unexplained. It is simply asserted
and then described as if passage of sensation of the form follows the same rules as
passage of light-rays. This recognition leads us to ask why Alhazen did not here
perceive a superfluity of explanation. Why not a single refraction, according to the
25Ibid., 'Pars ergo anterior tantum glacialis est appropriata receptioni formarum ex verticationibus
linearum radialium;posterior autem pars, quae est humor vitreus,et virtus recipiens,quae est in illo corpore,
non est appropriata cum suo sensu istarum formarum, nisi ad custodiendum eorum ordinationem tantum'.
However, he later says that the vitreous senses as well as receives the form (n,i, 5).
26Alhazen, n,i, 5: 'refractio ergo formarum apud superficiem vitrei non est nisi propter diversitatem
qualitatis receptionis sensus inter ista duo corpora. Formae ergo refringuntur apud vitreum duabus de
causis, quarum altera est diversitasdiaphanitatis duorum corporum et altera diversitasquatitatis receptionis
sensus inter ista duo corpora'.
2~Alhazen, u,i, 6 (p. 27).
density of media, rather than a dual refraction? The answer, while only implied, seems
clear. Alhazen was committed to the idea that sensation begins at the anterior surface of
the glacial, an inheritance from the Galenic medical tradition represented by .Hunayn.
Furthermore, he seems to have been committed to the idea that sensation takes place
according to stages rather than all at once. Hence the sensitivity of the glacial, the
receptivity and reinforcement by the vitreous, and a further part to be played by the
visual spirit behind the vitreous. These three stages in the physiology of sensation are
asserted, in order to complete the model; they are not explained in physiological terms.
The third stage in the transition of the visible form occurs when it leaves the vitreous
humour. At this point the form enters the corpus sentiens, which extends from the
membrum sentiens, or corpus 91acialis, i.e., the conjoined glacial and vitreous humours,
through the hollow (optic) nerve to the chiasma, and on to the brain. The visual spirit
pervades the corpus sentiens and causes a sensitive power (virtus sensitiva) to exist
throughout this sentient body. The visual spirit is also the source of the sensitive power
which is found beyond the corpus sentiens and pervading the corpus 91acialis, although
the visual spirit itself does not extend beyond the corpus sentiens into the glacial body.
The virtus sensitiva is responsible for the beginning of sensation of the form as it enters
the anterior surface of the glacial humour. There is a continuing sensitive virtus from
the rnembrum sentiens to the corpus sentiens, from glacial body to visual spirit. 28 It is
only at the sentient body (corpus sentiens) that the visible form obtains a fixed character
and is no longer subject to the possibility of losing its ordered arrangement by means
either of the intersection of rays at the apex of the visual cone, or of confused refraction
at the forward surface of the vitreous humour.29 The disposition of the parts of the form
is preserved in the sentient body because of the latter's quality (propter qualitatem
sensus istius corporis), making it possible for the optic nerve to bend without disturbing
the order in the form being transmitted by the sentient body. a~ From here on, the
visible form, which has passed successfully through the eye, is secure as a representative
of the external object.
Using Alhazen's terms and interpolating where he has remained silent, we can
summarize the stages in securing visual sensation by pointing to the relative
characteristics of each successive medium. The glacial humour, which is the farthest
that any sensitive power reaches, is distinct from the visual pneuma and from the
vitreous humour in both density (diaphanitas) and quality of sensate receptivity
(qualitas receptionis sensus). The vitreous humour is identical with the visual pneuma in
density but not in sensate receptivity. The visual pneuma, behind the vitreous, finally
presents the proper sensitive receptivity to maintain the image as it passes to the brain.
The three media have two overlapping transitions, one in 'diaphaneity' and one in
sensitive receptivity, the former change being completed before the latter.
The three-stage transition within the eye combines an increasingly secure
geometrical arrangement with an increasingly strengthened sensitivity, so that formal
order and sensation (but not comprehension) are both complete upon passage into the
corpus sentiens at the back of the eye. It is the combined process which made the notion
of an inverted image, or form, in the eye so unacceptable for Alhazen. The inversion of
the image in geometrical terms alone would have allowed for rectification farther along,
28 Alhazen, n, ii, 16 (p. 34).

29One of the m a n y corollaries to this point appears at n, ii, 18 (p. 35): 'Lux ergo essentialis
eomprehenditur a sentiente ex illuminatione corporis sentientis, et color comprehenditur a sentiente ex
atternatione formae corporis sentientis et ex eius coloratione...'
g0 Alhazen, n, i, 6 (p. 26).
422 B. E a s t w o o d
b u t the sensing of t h a t inverted image by the sensitive p o w e r (virtus sensitiva) w o r k e d

a g a i n s t a n y such possibility. T h e extension o f the p o w e r of sensation into the b o d y of
the eye as far as the front of the glacial, or crystalline, h u m o u r p r e c l u d e d a n y serious
c o n s i d e r a t i o n of inverted images in Alhazen's model. W h a t this tells us, finally, is that,
for all his s o p h i s t i c a t i o n in the s e p a r a t i o n of p h y s i o l o g i c a l sensation from m e n t a l
c o m p r e h e n s i o n , A l h a z e n d i d n o t assume a r a d i c a l s e p a r a t i o n of sensation a n d
c o m p r e h e n s i o n . T h e whole p u r p o s e of the structures a n d functions occurring in the eye
was to set up a veridical basis in sense in p r e p a r a t i o n for the processes of
c o m p r e h e n s i o n in the brain. T h e essence of this p r e p a r a t i o n was the fixing of an u p r i g h t
a n d well o r d e r e d form, a n d this h a p p e n e d with the sensitive p o w e r a n d was finalized
even before the form reached the retina or optic nerve. T h e visual spirit was m o r e t h a n a
transmitter; it was an organic extension of the b r a i n in which the form as such was no
l o n g e r subject to a n y k i n d of t r a n s f o r m a t i o n . The idea of presenting an inverted i m a g e

to sensation was a b h o r r e n t precisely because the b r a i n was expected to analyse t h a t
i m a g e as given to u n d e r s t a n d it, but not to re-form o r reorient it spatially.
3. Late-medieval queries
W h e r e a s A l h a z e n a s s i d u o u s l y a v o i d e d the m o n s t r o s i t y of i m a g e inversion within
the eye, a r e a d e r of Alhazen's text b y the late f o u r t e e n t h century (or b e g i n n i n g of the
fifteenth) f o u n d this inversion conceivable a n d c o u l d p l a y with the c o n c e p t i o n e n o u g h
to p r o p o s e a s e c o n d reversal of the i m a g e via refraction. F o r such a n o t i o n to arise
within the c o n t e x t of A l h a z e n ' s careful prescriptions, c o n s i d e r a b l e l o o s e n i n g o r
q u e s t i o n i n g with r e g a r d to those prescriptions m u s t have occurred. Possible bases for
such a d e v e l o p m e n t need to be considered.
T h e De aspectibus, o r Perspectiva, was t r a n s l a t e d into L a t i n by the early t h i r t e e n t h
century, b u t its h i s t o r y in W e s t e r n E u r o p e p r i o r to a b o u t 1250 is virtually u n k n o w n . 31
F o r m e r l y t h o u g h t to have been b y J o r d a n u s before a b o u t 1240, the citation of the
Perspectiva in De triangulis has recently been shown to be from a later time, this tract
being d a t e d to s o m e time after mid-century. 32 Use b y the Latins of A l h a z e n ' s w o r k on
vision can r e a s o n a b l y be said to begin in the m i d d l e of the thirteenth century. 33
F o u r t e e n m e d i e v a l L a t i n m a n u s c r i p t s of A l h a z e n ' s optics, which presents his
discussion Of i m a g e t r a n s m i s s i o n in the eye, survive; nine of t h e m have d i a g r a m s
relevant to the passage of the visual form t h r o u g h the corpus glacialis. 34 Three c o m e
31 Lindberg (footnote 3), pp. 209-10, nicely summarizes the situation.

32On Jordanus see Edward Grant, 'Jordanus de Nemore', Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 7 (1973),
171-9; Barnanas Hughes, 'Biographical Information on Jordanus de Nemore to Date', Janus, 62 (1975),
151~5; Ron B. Thomson, 'Jordanus de Nemore: Opera', Mediaeval Studies, 38 (1976), 97 144. On
Jordanus' proposed use of the Perspectiva, see Marshall Clagett. Archimedes in the Middle Ages, I: the
Arabo-Latin Tradition (Madison, 1964), pp. 668-9; this attribution to Jordanus has been re-evaluated and
contradicted by Marshall Clagett, Archimedes in the Middle Ages, v: Quasi-Archimedean Geometry in the
Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 297-301,303-4, 594.
33 Albertus Magnus seems to signal the new awareness with his evident ignorance of De aspectibus in the
1240s and explicit reference to the work of Alhazen in the late 1250s. See Lindberg (footnote 3), p. 106 n. 16
for the evidence.
34 David C. Lindberg, A Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Optical Manuscripts (Toronto, 1975), pp.
17-9, lists 21 manuscripts, of which one is a fourteenth-century Italian translation, two are short fragments,
one is briefexcerpts, and one is a list of propositions derived from Risner's edition. Of the sixteen manuscripts
remaining, all of which are complete or nearly complete, the distribution by centuries is: s. XIII, 7 (6 dated in
Lindberg's catalogue, Vat. Palat. lat. 1355 dated tentatively by myself to s. XIIIex.); s. XIV, 6; s. XV, 2; s. XVI,
1. Of these sixteen, one (London Royal College of Physicians MS 383, s. XIII) lacks a significant portion of
Book l, beginning only at I, 31, according to Risner's numbering, and thereby omits the anatomical section
fundamental to our topic. If we omit as well Paris BN 16199, s. XVI, because of its late date, we have 14
manuscripts to consider in discussing the medieval Latin tradition of Alhazen's account of vision in the eye.
from the thirteenth, five from the fourteenth, and one from the fifteenth century. All but
one of the relevant diagrams are complete or partial anatomical diagrams for the eye,
similar in their fully geometrical character to the ocular anatomical diagrams in the
manuscripts of Roger Bacon's Perspectiva and Witelo's Perspectiva. 35
Initially we need to k n o w whether any significant differences exist between the text
of Alhazen as explained above (section 2) and the illustrations of Alhazen's text. The
only dated and quite possibly the earliest surviving manuscript (c. 1269) is Edinburgh,
Royal Observatory, C r a w f o r d Library MS 9-11-3 (20), in which folio 4v (Figure 2)
contains a marginal, instrumentally drawn diagram of the eye. 36 The essential germane
point is the shape a n d location of the anterior surface of the vitreous humour. In the
E d i n b u r g h diagram we have a lenticular glacial body, the anterior half labelled
'glacialis humor', the posterior half labelled 'spera glacialis' and 'vitreus humor', and
the major diameter labelled 'tela que dicitur aranea'. The straight line for the aranea,
which covers the surface of the glacial body, is the only division of any sort between
glacial and vitreous, and we cannot simply assume that this line was intended to serve
as well to indicate the whole interface of glacial and vitreous humours. The
a c c o m p a n y i n g marginal gloss likewise gives no prescription for the c o m m o n surface of
the two adjoining humours. In short, the diagram, which accompanies B o o k I, C h a p t e r
4 of the De aspectibus, describes no more than the text at that point, and there is no
further diagram to illustrate the shape of the interface between glacial and vitreous,
which is described in B o o k IT, Chapter 1. 37
In the remaining eight manuscripts with diagrams there seems to be a development
towards increasing explicitness on the question of the anterior vitreous shape. In the
two thirteenth-century figures besides the Edinburgh manuscript, and in two of the
fourteenth-century illustrations, the picture is essentially unchanged from that found in
the early, Edinburgh manuscript design.3 s Only !n the fourteenth and fifteenth-century
manuscripts do signs of concern appear over the patent imprecision in Alhazen's
description of the interface between glacial and vitreous. In a fourteenth-century
manuscript at St O m e r (MS 605, f. 3r; Figure 3), the illustration shows a full hemisphere
for the posterior vitreous and less than a hemisphere for the anterior glacial, the two
h u m o u r s being separated by an unlabelled line which is very slightly curved so as to
make the anterior vitreous surface convex. 39 A n o t h e r fourteenth-century manuscript
in the British Library (MS Roy. 12 G. VII, f. lr; Figure 4) provides a diagram with
evident mislabelling. I n this design the label for ' h u m o r albugineus' is in the region for
which the label ' h u m o r glacialis' is appropriate, and the albugineus should be located
3s A nice example of how these geometrically conceived anatomies of the eye were naturalized in the
Renaissance without any change in anatomical doctrine appears in John E. Murdoch, Album of Science.
Antiquity and the Middle Ayes (New York, 1984), pp. 238-9.
36The facts that many of the manuscripts of De aspectibus have no diagram of the eye,that no manuscript
has the anatomical diagram within the text on the page, and that no manuscript has a space left in the text for
insertion of such a diagram, make it almost certain that the Latin translation was made from an Arabic
manuscript or manuscripts without any such figure. The extant diagram tradition may well have begun only
at some point after the copying of the Latin translation began.
37In the Edinburgh MS of Alhazen, section 11,i, 3 (pp. 25-6) appears at f. 23r, 27 23v, 6. No diagram or
further enlightening gloss accompanies the passage.
38Cambridge Trinity College MS lat. 0. 5. 30, f. 2v (s. XIII) contains an anatomical diagram so badly
faded that neither shapes nor the labels for the corpus glacialis can be preceisely determined. Vat. Palat. lat.
1355, f. 3v (s. XIIIex.) has a figure the same as Figure 2; n,i,3 is found on f. 23vb and has no accompanying
diagram or significant gloss. Paris BN lat. 7247,f. 5r (s. XIV) presents the same anatomy; f. 23v has the text of
n, i, 3 with no diagram and no gloss. M/inchen CLM 10269,f. 3v (s. XIV) is the same, with 11,i, 3 (no diagram,
no gloss) at f. 19r.
39Search for any diagram or gloss to n,i, 3 in this manuscript (at f. 17ra) produces no results.
424
\
B. Eastwood
9
9
O
r.~
O
..o
,.Q
_o
t
/
/
If
Figure 3. St. Omer Biblioth6que Municipale MS lat. 605, f. 3r, lower margin (by permission of
the Biblioth6que Municipale).
Figure 4. London British Library MS Roy, 12. G. VII, f. lr, lower margin (by permission of the
British Library).
426 B. Eastwood
one layer forward. The familiar labels 'spera glacialis' and 'humor vitreus' appear in the
next layer back, thus making the spherical curve between the glacial and the vitreous
fairly certainly represent the interface between them instead of standing for the tela
aranea as in the thirteenth-century figures. This means that the posterior glacial
humour is concave and the anterior vitreous humour convex. 4~
What has happened is simple. The earlier diagrams, accompanying the initial
anatomical description of the text, found it appropriate to present only what the text
contained, and this included the tela aranea while saying nothing about the glacial-
vitreous interface. The later diagrams show an apparent judgment that depiction of the
tela aranea is not nearly so important as adding precision to the text's account of the
shape of the surface between glacial and vitreous. Therefore a subsequent concern of
the text is moved forward and inserted into the anatomical diagram at the beginning of
the work, displacing a less important element of the diagram. The most sensible
interpretation of this development would seem to be that discussion, perhaps teaching,
of the text brought forward the recognition that the issue we have identified as
important was at least as important in the medieval treatment of Alhazen's text and
gradually came to demand an amendment to that text. We see the amendment in an
unambiguous form, an element added to the anatomical diagram for the eye. This
interpretation finds added strength in the pair of fifteenth-century diagrams in a Vienna
manuscript (NB 5322, ft. 3v-4r; Figures 5 and 6). There we see both of Alhazen's options
in Book n, Chapter 1, in the shape of the glacial-vitreous interface, imported into the
anatomy of the eye of Book I.41 The two diagrams are alike in all respects but one, the
labels and surface shapes in the glacial body. The first option--Alhazen offers 'aut
plana aut spherica'--is the planar surface (f. 3v, Figure 5), no longer easily seen, though
visible as the two ends of a straight line under the label 'anterior glacialis'. In this
diagram the planar surface appears in conjunction with a rather large radius of
curvature for the anterior glacial, or crystalline, humour. The second option, also
Alhazen's second, is a spherical surface with a convex vitreous (f. 4r, Figure 6). The
'humor glacialis' and 'humor vitreus' are separated by a curved surface whose radius is
noticeably longer than that of the anterior glacial, which is smaller than that in the
preceding figure.
The illustrations introduced so far were intended to depict what Alhazen actually
meant, while the remaining one clearly poses an alternative to the text of Alhazen. That
the question of the shape of Alhazen's forward vitreous surface came more sharply into
focus over the fourteenth and into the fifteenth century we can see from the manuscript
figures. They initially make explicit the understood spherical shape; later, they advance
two possibilities found in the text, thus pointing up a question to be answered rather
than a final resolution of the meaning of the text. This development is very much in the
spirit of later medieval science, including optics. As David Lindberg summarized it a
decade ago:
the basic issues had surely been settled long before, and the appropriate task was
therefore to raise questions, restricted in scope, about unresolved and debatable
40WhileI haveexcludedit frommy primaryconsideration,the 1341manuscript of the Italian translation

includesan anatomicaldiagram wherethe situationisjust the same as in BL Roy.12. G. VII. In Vat.lat. 4595,
f. lr, the glacial humour is improperlylabelled "humoralbustius', and the glacial-vitreousinterfacehas the
same shape as in the BL MS. figure.
41 WienNB 5322,IT.24v-25rhas the text of u, i, 3, accompaniedby no diagram and no significantglosses.
Figure 5 (Left) Wien Nationalbiblio-

thek MS lat. 5322, f. 3v, lower margin
(by permission of the National-
bibliothek).
Figure 6 (Right). Wien Nationalbiblio-

thek MS lat. 5322, f. 4r, lower margin
(by permission of the National-
bibliothek).
aspects of the theory. For example, the intromission doctrine was not really in
doubt, but its implications required further exploration... Neither was the
perspectivists' theory of radiation and the visual pyramid in doubt .... but it
needed to be reconciled with troublesome physical truths .... and there were
always problems of ray-tracing within the humors of the eye on which anybody so
inclined could exercise his mathematical talents. It was in this spirit that scholars
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries adopted a piecemeal approach to visual
theory and dealt with the limited range of issues which in their view required
further discussions. 42
Before presenting and discussing the late-medieval query found within the
manuscripts of Alhazen, it will be instructive to consider one already well known
questioner, Henry of Langenstein, a teacher and writer on perspectiva and other
42Lindberg (footnote 3), pp. t45-6.

subjects d u r i n g the last t h i r d of the f o u r t e e n t h c e n t u r y . 43 I n his Questiones super

perspectivam, IX, concl. 4-5, H e n r y deals with m a t t e r s directly c o n c e r n e d with i n v e r t e d
images. H e p r o p o s e s , c o n t r a r y to A l h a z e n , t h a t r e f r a c t i o n of the rays at the g l a c i a l -
v i t r e o u s interface will n o t be a b l e to p r e v e n t i n t e r s e c t i o n ( F i g u r e 7). H e t h e n a d v o c a t e s
the a d v a n c e m e n t of full s e n s a t i o n , e q u i v a l e n t to t h a t w h i c h A l h a z e n places behind the
v i t r e o u s h u m o u r i n the corpus sentiens, into the v i t r e o u s h u m o u r , t h e r e b y o b v i a t i n g a n y
c o n c e r n for i n t e r s e c t i o n of the rays b e h i n d the a n t e r i o r vitreous. 44 H e n r y ' s first
c o n t e n t i o n , a b o u t i n t e r s e c t i o n a n d i n v e r s i o n , is m a d e b y i n t e r p r e t i n g A l h a z e n to m e a n
a full s p h e r e for the v i t r e o u s h u m o u r , w h i c h allows e n o u g h d i s t a n c e for the refracted
rays to r e a c h their i n t e r s e c t i o n p o i n t . H o w e v e r , e n d i n g this v i t r e o u s sphere a n y w h e r e
a n t e r i o r to the i n t e r s e c t i o n p o i n t b y m o v i n g the c e n t r e of c u r v a t u r e of the p o s t e r i o r
surface of the v i t r e o u s h u m o u r sufficiently f o r w a r d , will u n d e r c u t H e n r y nicely a n d
p r e s e r v e the o r d e r e d visual form. 45 H e n r y ' s s e c o n d c o n t e n t i o n , while n e c e s s a r y o n l y

b e c a u s e of his i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of A l h a z e n , s h o w s clear u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the limits of
s e n s a t i o n at the a n t e r i o r glacial surface a c c o r d i n g to A l h a z e n . H e n r y p r o p o s e s m o v i n g
full visual p n e u m a t i c s e n s a t i o n f o r w a r d i n t o the v i t r e o u s h u m o u r , b u t n o t as far as the
a n t e r i o r glacial surface. H e n r y p r o p o s e s , in o t h e r w o r d s to e l i m i n a t e the c o m p l i c a t e d
vitreal stage f r o m A l h a z e n ' s three-stage t r a n s f o r m a t i o n o f visual s e n s a t i o n . T h e r e a s o n s
for this i m p r o v e m e n t w o u l d seen to be the a v o i d a n c e of a n i n v e r t e d i m a g e a c c o r d i n g to
the r a d i a l g e o m e t r y in the p r i o r c o n c l u s i o n a n d at the s a m e time the s i m p l i f i c a t i o n of
43 I depend in part upon ibid., pp. 123-30. In addition I have consulted the two manuscripts readily
available to me on microfilm, Paris Arsenal 522, ft. 66r-87r (esp. f. 78rb-va), and Firenze BN conv. soppr. J. X.
19, ft. 56r-85v (esp. f. 72r-v). These two manuscripts differ at a number of points in the text. While the Paris
MS is somewhat easier to read, I prefer the text reported in the Firenze MS, f. 72r, 47-v, 15, which I reproduce
here. '4a conclusio: Fraccio radiorum in occursu interioris glacialis/(72v) non tollit vel pervenit concursum
radiorum in glaciali et eorundem interseccionem. (R)* Probatur quia nullus radius frangitur ultra suam
perpendicularem vel in suam perpendicularem secundum perspectivos, et sicut postea probabitur, ergo
conclusio vera. Consequencia nota est inspecienti figuram in qua o sit centrum anterioris glacialis et k
interioris, et incidat visibile sub pyramidale eod, que posito, notum est quod dc radius non frangitur in
perpendicularem ck nec ultra, et similiter efnon frangitur in suam perpendicularem; ergo radii refracti post c
etfnecessario concurrent inter perpendiculares ck etfk et se se intersecantes procedunt ad destrum et sic ad
sinistrum permutatim. Et conclusio sequitur ex hac primo si in ocursu interioris glacialis radii frangitur a
perpendiculari cicius concurrunt quam si irrefracti penetrarent. Sequitur 2 ~ sive glacialis interior fuerit
subtilior quam anterior sive grossior, per fractiones secundum legem diametri et processus radiorum fractus
latera perpendicularium piramidis super visum necessario concurrent. (R)* Ex quibus sequitur alia [5 ~]
conclusio, quod radii talium pyramidum in ocursu interioris glacialis non amplius secundum legem diametri
multiplicantur, sed in meatibus vicinorum spirituum quorum forte plenus est ille humor ulterius deferuntur
alias in destra apparent sinistra sicut coniunctis deducitur nisi diceretur quod cognicio adprensiva fieret
antequam illi radii se intersecarent et immediate sub superficie convexa in interiori glacialis, sic dicendo
nullum inconveniensaduceret radiorum concursus in interiori glaciali'. The key, (R), to which I have given an
asterisk, refers to a marginal gloss below the relevant marginal diagram. This marginal gloss summarizes the
point of the diagram thus: 'et hoc infra perpendiculares ck etfk'tum infra oet supra k et hoc propter radios dc
et efnon posse pertingere in eorum fraccione ad perpendiculares ck etfk'. See my Figure 7; the MS labels
both ends of the initially perpendicular rays, thus ee and dd.
44Lindberg (footnote 3), p. 126, neatly summarizes Henry's contentions. I would interpret these
arguments differently from Lindberg, as I see them relating directly to what the Latin text of Alhazen says or
implies, as explained in Section 2 of this study. Lindberg considers Henry's first point flawed, because Henry
assumed the anterior vitreous convex; I believe Henry understood correctly, pace anything in Roger Bacon.
Lindberg's suprise (p. 129) at Henry's location of the visual power in the vitreous also seems to me needless,
for the real problem is the location of conjoined sensitivity and non-rectilinear transmission, which Alhazen
placed completely beyond the corpus 91acialis.
45 Lindberg (footnote 3), p. 127, Figure 16, gives a good reconstruction of the very rough diagram in the
Florentine MS, f. 72v left margin, upper diagram. At p. 258 n. 18 (ref. p. 126) Lindberg comments on the issue
of convexity vs. concavity of the glacial-vitreous interface, 'only a concave surface would prevent intersection
of the rays'. Since I disagree with this interpretation, I should say that the distances, curvatures, and density
gradients are not quantified, so that a concave surface simply is not the 'only' possibility.
Alhazen's model of visual sensation that results in the latter conclusion. 46 Henry of
Langenstein offers a good example of both continued awareness of Alhazen's model
and a sharpened, argumentative attitude towards critical elements in Alhazen's visual
theory.
By the end of the fourteenth century a student of Alhazen's De aspectibus would
have additional stimulus to raise questions about the text beyond the inclinations of
thirteenth-century scholars, who were intent primarily upon comprehending the text.
Both the general scholastic tendency to pose disputatious questions and the specific
example of a teacher like Henry of Langenstein offer grounds for new proposals such as
the notion that the visual rays may be supposed to intersect in the eye. Henry's reason
for moving pneumatic sensation forward into the vitreous was to obviate the problem
of an inverted image, but if one could change the location of completed visual sensation,
one might also consider an inverted image--especially if that imag e were only
temporarily inverted.
In a hand of the later-fourteenth or early-fifteenth century, an anonymous glossator
of Alhazen's De aspectibus added a diagram to the thirteenth-century manuscript at
Oxford, Corpus Christi College 150, folio 12 verso (Figure 8). 47 The manuscript has no
diagram of ocular a n a t o m y of the standard sort found in eight other Alhazen
manuscripts, but m a n y parts of the eye appear in geometrical form in this illustration.
The figure under consideration, the upper of two in the outer margin (Figure 9), is set
beside the text for the first section of Book II, Chapter 1, which deals with the axial ray,
connecting the centres of the parts of the eye. 48 The second section, dealing with
refraction at the glacial-vitreous surface, covers the last part of this page as well as the
first nine lines of the next. 49 The relationship of the diagram to the text is somewhat
e d
Figure 7. Redrawing of Firenze Biblioteca Nazionale conv. soppr. MS J. X. 19, f. 72v, upper
marginal diagram.
46Lindbergconceived(p. 129)that Henry may have intended to improvethe theory,not simplyexplainit.
1 agree.
4vThe MS is describedin most laconicfashion in H.O. Coxe, Catalogus...(Oxford, 1852),u, iv, 59: 'codex
membr.,fol. min., ft. 114,s. XIII'. I have no further information on origin or early provenance.There seem to
have been two main glossators,the earlier s. XIIIex.(?),the later responsiblefor the diagram under discussion.
48Alhazen, n,i,1 (pp. 24--5),ends at line 32, some seven lines below the diagram.
49Alhazen, Ii, i,2 (p. 25): ft. 12v, 32-13r, 9.
430 B. Eastwood
%
:. ~--~,----- ~ -~ , j- ~- --a '_~_

~ " r. ~ / ~ , , j , - ' - ' " - ~
~:, ~ 4m'"2~..._~. , . 9....
Figure 8. Oxford Corpus Christi College MS 150, f. 12v (with permission of the President and
Scholars of Corpus Christi College).
complicated by the presence of another diagram, for binocular vision, and additional
marginal glosses. The content of each section of this marginal material must be
identified and given a point of reference as a preliminary to treatment of the diagram for
inverted images.
There are seven marginal elements to consider. From the top down these are: (1) the
gloss, 'Quid est axis pyramidis?'; (2) the diagram for inverted images; (3) a key, which
relates the main text, line 27, and to the gloss in the bottom margin of the page; (4) the
Inversion of imayes in the eye 431
' " / ...... "-1 'j
Figure 9. Detail of Figure 8, outer margin (with permission).

432 B. Eastwood
gloss, 'Dubitatio bona'; (5) a gloss which reiterates part of the main text just below;5~ (6)
a diagram for binocular vision; (7) the longer, keyed gloss in the bottom margin. Of the
seven elements, items 1, 5 and 6 have nothing to do with the question of inverted images.
The first gloss is simply an index for the general subject of the first section, viz. the
placement of the axial ray; the fifth item reiterates part of the text; the binocular-ray
diagram, with labels (top to bottom) for 'sensus communis', 'nervus communis', and
'res visa', likewise is not directly related to inverted images. We are left with items 2-4
and 7 on our list.
The last item, the bottom marginal gloss, pertains most clearly to the keyed location
in the main text, beginning: 'Et declaratum est in primo tractatu quod forme... ,,51 and
extending many lines to deal with the refraction of forms at the anterior vitreous surface
and subsequent passage of the forms to the brain. The text of this gloss reads as follows.
Demonstratio quod forme vise non perveniunt ad nervum communem secundum

extensionem linearum radialium piramidis, terminante in centro visus, sed quod
ipse franguntur, et obliquuntur forme apud anteriorem superficiem vitrei ad hoc
ut forma veniat secundum suum esse ad ultimum sentiens.
A demonstration that forms seen do not reach the juncture of the nerves by
following the extension of the cone of radial lines, which terminates in the centre
of the eye, but that they (forms) are refracted, and forms are bent at the anterior
surface of the vitreous in order that a form arrive at the ultimum sentiens in accord
with its true being.
What makes this gloss especially interesting is the key symbol, which is found not only
beside the gloss and in the main text but also at the foot of the inverted-image diagram
and just above the gloss 'Dubitatio bona' (items 2~4 above). In other words, the lower
marginal gloss, which seens to have been keyed initially to the main text, appears to
have been keyed also to the inverted-image diagram by an addition of the key at its foot.
If my interpretation is correct, this would give a dual meaning to the long gloss
transcribed above, making it on one hand no more than an adaptation of the main text
but on the other hand a clarification that the upper diagram does in fact offer a way for
a visual form to reach the brain in proper, upright order, i.e. after two intersections of
the rays with an intermediate refraction (as in Figure 8).
The only element unaccounted for in this list of marginalia is item 4, the gloss
'Dubitatio bona'. It is very tempting to call it a label for the inverted-image diagram just
above it, but that diagram's labels and the gloss iitem 4) appear to be in different hands,
with the gloss hand much closer to that of the main text. It is clear that the upper figure
is an alterantive to the text and is a diagrammatic question on the text, but the
'Dubitatio bona' remains itself as a tantalizing question.
The diagram for inverted images is a fairly straightforward design, which essentially
relocates the refracting vitreous surface behind rather than in front of the centre of the
eye and therefore beyond the point of intersection of the cone of rays passing
perpendicularly through the surfaces of the cornea and the anterior glacial humour.
Horizontally across the diagram there appear, from right to left, the unlabelled seen
object, the cone of rays with the central ray labelled 'axis', three concentric circles, each
with a label, and the apparently complete circle at the far left with its label 'pars vitrea'.
50The gloss('Situs partiumeiussecundumsuumessein superficieglacialisest sinealiqua mixtione;forma
autem non pervenita superficieglacialis ad nervurecommunem')is identical to the text at lines 35-6 except
for the addition of 'est' in the gloss.
51Alhazen, IX,i, 1 (p. 25, line 2).
The labels for the concentric layers are, from outermost in, 'cornea', 'uvea pars cuius
foraminis centrum axis transit pyramidis', and 'glacialis'. Within the uveal layer on the
right side we see theforamen, or pupil. The rays pass from the external object unbroken
through the cornea, the pupil, and the anterior glacial surface. The diagram then shows
a very sketchy and imprecise intersection of the rays at the centre of the glacial sphere
followed by passage of the inverted rays (and form) to the vitreous. Between glacial
centre and vitreal surface the radial lines are not actually drawn as rectilinear
extensions of the rays before intersection, and they expand more rapidly than an
exactly correct diagram would allow. This discrepancy seems to be due to hurried
drawing and the scale of the image; the added expansion of the rays makes the
individual lines clearer. Upon striking the surface of the vitreous, the rays are refracted
by a denser medium towards the perpendiculars, but here again the person making the
figure over-emphasized the event. He has depicted the rays as intersecting at the middle
of the vitreous sphere rather than beyond the centre, which would be the correct
location. The rays, as drawn, come to a point at the middle and are not projected
further. Taking this figure as given, we can say that the question intentionally raised is,
'If a single intersection will cause an inverted image, what will a second intersection,
after refraction of those reversed rays, cause to happen?'. This question is raised by
relocating the vitreous sphere, just as Henry of Langenstein had chosen in his question
to relocate the site of full pneumatic sensation.
The illustration does not show the optic nerve with its extension inside the uveal
sphere according to Alhazen (see Figure 2). Whether the optic nerve was omitted to
avoid problems with its location or simply because the nerve was beyond the very
specific limits of the question, I cannot say. Surely the relative size of the vitreous sphere
could also be called into question and perhaps be decreased somewhat, giving more
advantage to the point being made by the diagram. Finally, it is possible, though very
unlikely, that the designer intended the inverted form, after refraction, to meet the
visual pneuma before the second intersection. This sort of prefiguring of Kepler,
however, has nothing to recommend it, since the question then would be much more
bizarre, to medieval eyes, than one concerning doubly inverted images, which come
upright to the brain.
4. Leonardo da Vinci
In an incomplete treatise On the Eye, composed in 150852 Leonardo presented and
elaborated his now famous proposal, first introduced in 1495, that rays from an object
intersect in the eye in a manner similar to that in the camera obscura. Recent studies of
his optical work emphasize that it is mistaken to interpret Leornardo's proposal as an
equation of the eye with the camera obscura, thereby seeing Leonardo as a precursor of
the idea of a mechanical theory of vision, 53 for in this matter Leonardo was as medieval
as his predecessors. The virtfi visiva of Leonardo's account is equivalent in function to
the virtus sensitiva described by Alhazen and his followers in the West. That is, the
visual power (virtfi) has sensation (not perception), is responsible for transmitting the
sensed species (or image) to the brain, and ultimately requires an image the same as
what we see in order to make sense of the outside world. 54 However, Leonardo's visual
52 Strong (footnote 1), p. 212. Strong's dissertation includes a translation of this text, known as MS D in
the Institut de France, as well as a detailed commentary on its contents.
53 As examples, Lindberg and Kemp (footnote'l); Ackerman's article seems to me to stray too far in the
direction of modernizing Leonardo in this regard.
54 A useful s u m m a r y of main points in Leonardo's theory appears in Lindberg (footnote 3), pp. 164-8.
434 B. Eastwood
power meets the species at various proposed locations in the eye and not always where
the projected image is upright, corresponding directly to what we see. Leonardo differs
from his predecessors in other matters, two of which are especially germane to the
question of inverted images in the eye. First, he does not pursue or use the geometrical
analysis of the cone of rays between object and eye, an essential part of a correct
analysis of inverted images through apertures of finite size (like the pupil). 55 Second, he
appears much more willing to entertain fundamentally new theoretical responses to
new experimental problems.
In his treatise On the Eye, Leonardo introduces the question of inverted images with
a problematical experiment. He describes a situation in which an object seen through a
small aperture is seen upright. Because the aperture is small, the image must be
understood to pass through it by intersection of the rays, thereby inverting the image.
This image is then said to project onto a refracting sphere, 'the crystalline sphere' of the
eye, which bends the rays towards its centre and brings about a second intersection of
rays, within the crystalline, thus righting the image for reception by the visual sense. 56
The experiment makes it clear that upright vision includes an initial inversion of an
image. Leonardo conceives that the artificial aperture performs the function usually
performed by the opening into the eye; because of the closeness of aperture to the eye in
the experiment, the rays intersecting at the artificial aperture are close enough together
upon entering the eye that no initial inversion takes place at the natural aperture of the
eye. 57 However, this arrangement of an initial inversion before the eye and a second
inversion within the eye does not seem to have inspired Leonardo to closer analysis,
and he deals only with intra-ocular double inversion thereafter.
While it would seem that Leonardo now has the opportunity to develop a single,
consistent theory of visual sensation, he introduces an important qualification which
q,
2t
!
Figure 10. Paris Institut de France Leonardo MS D, f. 2v (by permission of the Institut de
France).
55Regarding these 'pinhole images' and the decline in proper understanding during the fourteenth
century, see David C. Lindberg'sthree consecutivearticles:'The Theory of Pinhole Imagesfrom Antiquity to
the Thirteenth Century', Archivefor History of Exact Sciences,5 (1968), 154-76;'A Reconsideration of Roger
Bacon's Theory of Pinhole Images',ibid., 6 (1970), 214-23; 'The Theory of Pinhole Imagesin the Fourteenth
Century', ibid., 6 (1970), 299-325.
56MS D, f. 2v; Strong (footnote 1), pp. 47-8.
57Kemp (footnote 1), pp. 144-5, remarks on Leonardo's reasoning with regard to this point, but
Leonardo does not require the aperture to be close to the eye as does Kemp.
muddies the waters considerably, his idea that the visual virtue exists across the whole
pupil or even the cornea. 58 Immediately following the first statement of this forward
location of the virtfi appears an experiment whose d i a g r a m makes it clear that the effect
perceived is supposed to be presented at the pupil, not in some posterior part of the eye.
This is the experiment (Figure 10) in which there are arranged horizontally in sequence
the eye, a m o v a b l e straw, and a paper with a pinhole. W h e n m o v e d vertically, between
the eye and pinhole, the straw will be seen as if m o v i n g on the far side of the perforated
paper and with a m o t i o n the inverse of its actual direction. L e o n a r d o refers to this as
'the experiment from which the certainty (my emphasis) of such a new investigation is
born'. 59 Further on, the presence of the virtfi visiva t h r o u g h o u t the pupil is argued on
the basis of the experiment in which an object smaller than the pupil in diameter, when
placed close to the eye, does not block the seeing of a n y object beyond it (Figure 11).
This is due, says L e o n a r d o , to the presence of the virtfi at the whole surface and not at
just a point on or immediately inside the eye as the painting perspectivists maintain. He
continues the a r g u m e n t by saying that such a visual point would receive rays at
different angles t h r o u g h different parts of the anterior convex surface of the eye, thereby
causing a loss of the true proportions of the parts of an object viewed t h r o u g h this
convex surface. 6~ Here L e o n a r d o seems rather close, in a very inelegant manner, to
Alhazen's concern for maintaining the ordered a r r a n g e m e n t of rays on the successive
surfaces of cornea and anterior glacial humour. At the end of On the Eye the presence of
the visual power across the surface of the pupil is once m o r e affirmed, this time to
explain the experiment with indistinctly seen edges of objects (Figure 12). The edge of
-.Air
Figure 11. Paris Institut de France Leonardo MS D, f. 6v (as transcribed by Martin Kemp
[footnote 1], p. 139; reproduced by permission of the author and the Journal).
h.
at
Figure 12. Paris Institut de France Leonardo MS D, f. 10v, bottom (as transcribed by Martin
Kemp [footnote 1], p. 140; reproduced by permission of the author and the Journal).
58For my purposes it is not so important to determine whether Leonardo meant something close to the
modern 'pupil' by 'popilla' or something much more ambiguous. Kemp (footnote l), p. 140 n. 43, thinks the
former, noting that in MS D 'popilla' means 'gateway' of the eye. Ackerman (footnote 1), p. 130 n. 73, thinks
the latter and translates 'popilla' as 'cornea'. While it is true that Leornardo locates the visual power at more
places than this forward surface, whether pupil or cornea, he explicitly states that it is to be found here also.
59MS D, f. 2v. Strong (footnote 1), pp. 48-9. The same experiment is described again at f. 4v (Strong,
pp. 60-1) with the explicit purpose of showing that the visual power, or virtue, covers the surface of the pupil.
60 MS D, f. 6v. Strong, pp. 68 70.
an object directly before the eye is seen by w a y of s i m u l a c r a from a succession of p a r t s of

the b a c k g r o u n d p r o c e e d i n g p a s t the edge to the pupil. Since these s i m u l a c r a from the
vertical b a c k g r o u n d pass a n d intersect at the edge a n d proceed, e x p a n d i n g in i n v e r t e d
order, to the pupil, all are sensed, b u t those closer to the centre are sensed m o r e clearly
a n d those m o r e p e r i p h e r a l less so; therefore we experience an indistinct image of the
edge of the object. This e x p e r i m e n t a l result w o u l d n o t occur, if the perspectivists were
right in their claim that the visual p o w e r senses f r o m a point. 61 L e o n a r d o ' s c o n c e p t i o n
of the visual virtue's existence across the f o r w a r d surface o f the eye need not, however,
be a c o n c e p t i o n which excludes the presence o f t h a t virtue elsewhere. I n fact, he
explicitly also locates the visual virtue at the b a c k of the eye at the end of the optic
nerve. 62 I n this r e g a r d we can see a parallel with A l h a z e n ' s model, a l t h o u g h the l a t t e r is
m u c h m o r e c o n t r o l l e d t h a n L e o n a r d o ' s . In each m o d e l there is a distinction between a
region in which a visual power, passively sensitive, 63 c o m b i n e s with geometrical (or, for
L e o n a r d o , m o r e generally spatial) o r d e r i n g of the image, a n d a region in which the
visual p o w e r has t a k e n firm e n o u g h effect so that the i m a g e can be preserved w i t h o u t
further i n v o l v e m e n t of the g e o m e t r i c a l a n d physical o p t i c a l properties of t r a n s m i t t i n g
media. A r a t h e r i m p o r t a n t difference, of course, b e t w e e n A l h a z e n a n d L e o n a r d o is t h a t
the latter c a n n o t m a k e up his m i n d a n d shifts his l o c a t i o n of final, o r fixed, s e n s a t i o n
from time to time.
H a v i n g established the necessity of an initial intersection of rays in the g a t e w a y to
the eye, L e o n a r d o feels himself c o n s t r a i n e d to d i s c o v e r the l o c a t i o n of a second
intersection, o r inversion of the image, in o r d e r to have a correct r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of the
outside w o r l d to t r a n s m i t to the brain. But while he finds e x p e r i m e n t a l c o n f i r m a t i o n of
the l o c a t i o n of the initial inversion, his a t t e m p t s to identify the second p o i n t are
p r o v i s i o n a l a n d hypothetical, resulting in v a r i o u s schemes for the overall d o u b l e
inversion. In fact, he m e n t i o n s d o u b l e inversion nine time in On the Eye ( M S D), once in
a d e s c r i p t i o n w i t h o u t details o f p a t h s in the media, a n d a n o t h e r time in a d i a g r a m with
no text; 64 there r e m a i n seven c o m p l e t e descriptions, p r o d u c i n g six different p a t t e r n s as
m e a n s to a c c o m p l i s h d o u b l e inversion. In only one of these p a t t e r n s does the initial
intersection occur well b y o n d the a p e r t u r e a n d within the central, or crystalline, sphere
of the eye; this version seems to be rejected in f a v o u r of one i m m e d i a t e l y following,
placing the first intersection p r i o r to the central (this time, 'vitreous') sphere. 65 W e are
left with five different p a t t e r n s n o n e of which is clearly preferred to the others. T h e
61 MS D, f. 10v. Strong, pp. 91-2.

62 MS D, f. 8r; Strong p. 77. As remarked by Kemp (footnote 1), p. 140 n. 43. Also at MS D, f. 3v; Strong,
p. 54. At least provisionally, Leonardo explicitly rejects the option pf placing the visual power in the
crystalline humour: MS D, f. 7v; Strong, pp. 73-4. Antonio Borsellino and Corrado Maltese, 'Leonardo, un'
agucchia e un foro: uno studio sull' ottica leonardiana', Physis, 18 (1976), 221-44, at pp. 238-9 argue
unconvincingly that Leonardo reached a final conclusion at MS D, f. 8r-v that the visual power is localized at
the end of the optic nerve. (The historical part of the article is by Maltese alone.) The argument is
unconvincing, because Leonardo returns again at f. 10v to his earlier statement that the virt~ is present across
the whole front of the pupil. Borsellino and Maltese are far too concerned to show how perceptive and
forward-looking Leonardo was.
63 While there is some ambiguity about the properties of Leonardo's visual virtus, there is none about
Alhazen's. In a description of the properties of the glacial humour, Alhazen describes the passive nature of the
humour's virtus sensibilis, which receives the visible forms: 'appareat virtuti sensibili forma lueis et coloris,
quae figebantur in eo. Nam si esset [humor] diaphanus in fine diaphanitatis, pertransirent formae in co, et
non pateretur a formis passione, quae est ex genere doloris; et sic non comprehenderet formas'. See Alhazen,
~,vi, 33 (p. 2I).
6*The former at MS D, f. 7v; Strong, p. 74. The latter at MS D, f. 10v; Strong, p. 91.
65 The only pattern in which Leonardo delays initial intersection until the crystalline is at f. 3r; Strong,
pp. 50~1. The preferred alternative is also on f. 3r; Strong pp. 51 2.
v a r i o u s d i a g r a m s are c o n c e i v e d to e x p l a i n different s i t u a t i o n s , a n d n o h i e r a r c h y of
i m p o r t a n c e a p p e a r s in these situations. T h e o n l y s i g n i f i c a n t c o m m o n e l e m e n t is the
p o s i t i o n of the first i n v e r s i o n of the i m a g e at s o m e p o i n t a n t e r i o r to the c e n t r a l sphere,
w h e t h e r n a m e d ' c r y s t a l l i n e ' or 'vitreous'. 66 T h e s e c o n d i n v e r s i o n m a y o c c u r w i t h i n the
crystalline sphere ( F i g u r e 13) 67 o r p o s t e r i o r to it ( F i g u r e 14). 68 T h e p a t t e r n of
refractions b y the c e n t r a l sphere in the eye also varies, so t h a t a c o n s t a n t l y p r e s e n t
Figure 13. Paris Institut de France Leonardo MS D, f. 3v, bottom (as transcribed by Martin
Kemp [footnote 1], p. 145; reproduced by permission of the author and the Journal).
Figure 14. Paris Institut de France Leonardo MS D, f. 3v, middle (as transcribed by Martin
Kemp [-footnote 1], p. 146; reproduced by permission of the author and the Journal).
66 In only one of the five hypothesized (unrejected) patterns does Leonardo name the central, refracting
sphere 'crystalline';see MS. D, f. 10r (Strong, pp. 88-9). At f. 8v (Strong, p. 79) no name is given to the central
sphere. In all the other patterns, he calls this sphere 'vitreous'; see ft. 3r, 3v (twice), 8r; Strong, pp. 51-2, 54-7,
76-7. Leonardo may have been influenced by Lorenzo Ghiberti's imprecise ocular anatomy here. Ghiberti
depicted a single body with the labels 'spera gratialis' and 'humor vitreus', having no division or demarcation.
While this can be correct in Alhazen's scheme, the labelling is also misleading and can suggest that the two
names are qui~e interchangeable. See Firenze BN Centr. MS. n, i, 333 (Magi. XVll, 33), f. 18v;edited by Julius
yon Schlosser, Lorenzo Ghibertis Denkwiirdigkeiten(1 Commentarii)(Berlin, 1912), I, 79. At f. 48r-v (I, 180-3),
Ghiberti di~cffsses refracted and unrefracted rays in the visual pyramid using a simple three-layer model of
the eye, exactly like Leonardo's, With a central glacial sphere surrounded by the albugineous humour, which
is in turn enclosed by the cornea and its extension.
6v The second intersection of rays is placed within the crystalline in MS D at ft. 3v, 10r; Strong, pp. 54-5,
88 9.
68A location posterior to the crystalline is given in MS D at ft. 3r, 3v, 8r, 8v; respectively in Strong,
pp. 51 2, 567, 76 7, 79.
refraction of rays entering the anterior surface of the central sphere is followed
sometimes by a refraction at the posterior s u r f a c e 69 (Figure 14) and sometimes by no
refraction (Figure 15). 70
With regard to the naming of parts of the eye by Leonardo, the shift from
'crystalline' to 'vitreous' and back again when referring to the central sphere of the eye71
suggests two possible connections. In his first hypothesized pattern (Figure 17),
subsequently dismissed, L e o n a r d o speaks of the rectilinear passage of rays into the eye
towards a first intersection at the centre of the sphere of the corneal surface, but in front
of this centre the cone of rays encounters the surface of the smaller 'crystalline sphere',
which refracts the rays slightly so that they travel farther before intersecting. The initial
inversion of the rays takes place just b e y o n d the centre of the 'crystalline sphere',
followed by refraction at the 'vitreous sphere' and a second intersection (at point 's')
within the vitreous sphere. The 'vitreous sphere' here is the posterior portion of the
concentric layer surrounding the central, crystalline sphere. The paths of the rays as far
as the first intersection are the same as those given by H e n r y of Langenstein, where he
proposes that the perpendicular rays must intersect even though they are refracted
(Figure 7). L e o n a r d o found exactly that part of this arrangement suggested by H e n r y to
be unacceptable for a reason different from Henry's. F o r L e o n a r d o this initial place of
Figure 15. Paris Institut de France Leonardo MS D, f. 10v, top (by permission of the Institut de
France).
69 Refraction of the rays leaving the central sphere is posited in MS D at ft. 3r, 3v, 8r; Strong, pp. 51-2,
56-7, 76-7.
70 Rectilinear exit of the rays from the central sphere is posited in MS D at f. 8v (Strong, p. 79). At f. 10r
(Strong, pp. 88-9) the optic nerve abuts the central, or crystalline, sphere, so that no path is shown for exiting
rays (Figure 16).At f. 3v (Strong, pp. 54-5) there is not geometrical definition of the rays leaving the central, or
vitreous, sphere, though it would be reasonable to assume refraction in this case, because of the location of the
visual power at the optic nerve.
1The locations of the alternative namings are given above, n. 66. The followingarrangement discussed in
detail appears at MS D, f. 3r; Strong, pp. 50-1. A preferable arrangement is given immediately after (Strong,
pp. 512), where the only refractions are by the 'vitreous sphere'.
Inversion of imaoes in the eye 439
Figure 16. Paris Institut de France Leonardo MS D, f. 3r, top (by permission of the Institut de
France).
Figure 17. Paris Institut de France Leonardo MS D, f. 3r, middle (by permission of the Institut
de France).
440 B. Eastwood
d
Figure 18. Paris Institut de France Leonardo MS D, f. 10r (by permission of the Institut de
France).
inversion was too deep within the eye. His access to Henry's discussion may have been
through one of the manuscripts or the published version, as the Questiones super
perspectivam was published in 1503 at Valencia. 72 It is noteworthy that the total
pattern of rays in the diagram, to which Leonardo immediately proposes an
alternative, is the only pattern in On the Eye which can be related to the tradition of
Alhazen. Despite Leonardo's simplification of the anatomy, his design here shows
perpendicular rays refracted slightly by a spherical surface just prior to the centre of
curvature, followed by an intersection anyway as predicted by Henry of Langenstein,
and forming an inverted image in the posterior half of the crystalline sphere. This is what
Alhazen says will happen if there is not a refracting surface, and it is what Henry says
will happen even with that refracting surface. Leonardo seems intent on showing the
inadequacy of Alhazen's model. The refraction by the vitreous sphere that Leonardo
proposes as a means to achieve a second inversion of the image is analogous, despite
differences in the geometrical arrangement, to the double inversion pattern we found in
the anonymous speculation a century prior to Leonardo in the margin of an Alhazen
manuscript. Whether there was any real connection between Leonardo and this
anonymous query cannot yet be determined, but it is noteworthy that such a pattern is
not acceptable to Leonardo, who insists on the location of the first image inversion
before the rays reach the central sphere, which is the only surface causing refraction of
the image in the revised, or second, pattern (Figure 18).
The absence of a single, or even one clearly preferred, model to achieve the second
image inversion required by Leonardo makes it difficult to draw specific conclusions
72For the manuscripts of Henry of Langenstein, see above, n. 43. Henry's Quaestiones were published as
an appendix to Pecham's Perspectivacornmunisadjoined to Thomas Bradwardine'sarithmetic and geometry
in Praeclarissimummathematicarum opus in quo continentur perspicacissimi mathematici... (Valencia, 1503).
Leonardo also seemsto have known Pecham's Perspectivacomrnunis;see Lindberg(footnote 3), p. 266 n. 41,
on Leonardo's medieval sources.
about his treatment of the problem. However, if we return to the three elements of the
question of inverted images as given at the beginning of our discussion of Alhazen,
certain comparisons emerge. First, Leonardo moved the location of the apex of the
cone of incoming rays from the centre of curvature of the anterior surface of the eye to
the neighbourhood of the anterior surface itself, thus producing what is most often
called his use of the camera obscura effect. Secondly, Leonardo was much less certain
than Alhazen about the angles at which the incoming rays strike the successive surfaces
of the eye, because Leonardo abandoned--perhaps he never adequately considered--
Alhazen's combination of the ocular anatomy of .Hunayn with a geometrically precise
reshaping and repositioning of the parts of the eye, determined by the requirements of a
sophisticated hypothetical geometrical model. Leonardo set out to replace the
hypothetical character of Alhazen's model with a more experimentally based theory,
but was unable to find the means to do it. As a result, Leonardo's location of the
refracting surface(s) varied with the requirements of his situation.
The third and final element in the question of inverted images is where and how the
visual power takes effect. In some respects this issue controls the whole question, for
there are two related properties of visual sensation, at least in the tradition of Alhazen,
which must be considered at the very beginning. One is the idea that sensation in the
optic nerve is an organic transmission of specifically visual stimuli from eye to brain
according to physiological but not geometrically defined means. In short, the geometry
of rays does not apply to the transmission to the brain, and whatever is present at the
beginning of this transmission process is exactly what is delivered to the brain for
perception, judgment, etc. For Alhazen the transmission always begins at the corpus
sentiens, immediately behind the vitreous humour. For Leonardo it seems to begin at
the end of the optic nerve. A second property of visual sensation is the dissemination
into the eye from the fully sensate medium in the optic nerve of a visual virtus/virtfi,
which senses but does not preserve unchanged the optically shaped and transmitted
images in the media of the eye. If Leonardo can be compared here with Alhazen, it
would seem that the later theorist has moved the principium sensus, the initiation of
visual sensation, from the anterior surface of the crystalline humour forward to the
anterior surface of the eye, whether cornea or pupil. If this was Leonardo's intention,
the reason for it is not far to seek. For both Alhazen and Leonardo the visual power is
present anterior to the initial refraction of rays and on a surface prior to all, or as many
as possible, optical changes in the image (refraction or inversion). It is as if visual
sensation requires, or perhaps benefits from, a preparatory stage, during which the
image, whether shrinking, expanding, or inverting, becomes a more and more familiar
object. If we extend the comparison of Alhazen and Leonardo, it appears that the latter
never intended completed visual sensation to occur prior to the optic nerve. Given the
elliptical character as well as the ambiguity of his descriptions of the virtfi visiva plus an
established relevant tradition in the medieval theories of vision,73 this interpretation of
Leonardo's visual power seems acceptable and satisfying.
There remains the question of Alhazen's spiritus visibilis, or visual pneuma, and its
parallel in Leonardo's theory. At least one modern commentator maintains that
Leonardo generally departed from the medieval use' of the concept of visual spirit. In his
wide-ranging article, based on an admirable coverage of sources, Ackerman claims, 'He
always sought mechanical explanations, and distrusted reliance on mysterious powers
73Revisingolder opinions to the effectthat Leonardo developedhis ideas without notable influenceof
medieval Latin writings, Lindberg,pp. 155-6, as well as Kemp and Ackerman find numerous connections
between Leonardo's writing on vision and medievalworks.
such as the visual spirit'. TM At another point A c k e r m a n notes that by 1508, in his On the
Eye, L e o n a r d o imagined that the organ of perception (the imprensiva) in the brain could
extend t h r o u g h the optic nerve into the eye itself. A b o u t this notion, Ackerman says it is
part of 'an important departure from ancient and medieval dependence on
spirits .... [because] the imprensiva... [while] perhaps no more material than the visual
spirit . . . . is significantly different in being p a s s i v e - - i n awaiting s t i m u l a t i o n - - r a t h e r
than an active force that emanates from the brain'. 75 This remarkable m61ange of
misapprehensions appears to rest on the following view.
The final problem to be solved [in the study of vision] was how the image righted
by the crystalline sphere was to be perceived by the brain. The ancient and
medieval system of perception involved a visual spirit that issues from the brain
t h r o u g h the optic nerves, captures the image at the crystalline humour, and
returns with it to the juncture of the optic nerves (chiasma) where the evidence of
the two eyes is coordinated. TM
While L e o n a r d o ' s positive contribution to this question is less than clear, the prior
traditions are dearly not reducible to A c k e r m a n ' s characterization here. The doctrine
of the Latin text of Alhazen, for example, should not be simply grouped with an ancient
'system of perception' involving active visual spirit, nor is it correct to say that
Alhazen's visual spirit 'captures the i m a g e . . , and returns with it', for these verbs are far
m o r e active than this theory allows. 77 N o r does Alhazen propose that the chiasma is
'where the evidence of the two eyes is coordinated'. In fact, the 'evidence' in Alhazen's
theory is well coordinated separately in each eye by geometrical optical means alone,
not by spirits, and the chiasma simply joins the two well arranged and identical images
into a uniform image. We must recognize initially, in concluding our interpretation of
Leonardo, the nature of the tradition to be f o u n d in the Latin Alhazen.
L e o n a r d o ' s view of the physical medium and the process of transmission from eye
to brain appears at times to be very much in line with Alhazen's. 78 As we have already
seen, visual sensation in Alhazen's theory involves the impression of a geometrically
arranged form upon, first a sensitive virtus, then a sensate spiritus. The spiritus, which
advances as far as the glacial body, is not an inert physical medium, for this would not
preserve a visual form along the curved p a t h w a y to the brain. O n the other hand, the
spiritus is strictly corporeal, an organic rather than a dead substance, whose nature
74Ackerman (footnote 1), p. 139.

rs Ibid., p. 141.
76Ibid., p. 138.
77It is ironic that Ackerman associates such voluntaristic notions with the medieval tradition, which is
not a single tradition anyway, when Leonardo employs such language so often himself. For example, in
Codice Atlantico, f. 270rb, Leonardo writes, 'That water which is in the light that surrounds the black centre
of the eye serves the same purpose as the hounds in the chase, for these are used to start the quarry and then
the hunters capture it. So also with this, because it is a humour that derives from the power of the imprensiva
and sees many things without seizing hold of them, but suddenly turns thither the central beam which
proceeds along the line to the sense, and this seizes on the images and confines such as please it within the
prison of the memory'. Translation by Edward MacCurdy, The Notebooks ofLeonardo da Vinci(New York,
1958), l, 237;see also Carlo Pedretti, The Literary Works ofLeonardo da Vinci. Commentary (Oxford, 1977),l,
135.
78Ackerman (footnote 1), p. 140,comments that one of Leonardo's schemes, which places the imprensiva
in the eye itself, was a 'conclusion to which Leonardo apparently arrived independently, [that] happened to
bring his thinking into line with that of Alhazen'. In so far as the imprensiva is the organ of perception, not
sensation, this conclusion is unlike Alhazen's, which clearly places perception, involving judgment, in the
brain and nowhere prior to it. On the other hand, there is an interplay between Leonardo's scheme at this
point and Alhazen's theory, and I doubt that the scheme was conceived altogether independently.
allows it to preserve visual forms impressed u p o n it. Sensation, a n d sensation alone, is

w h a t the r a d i a n t form causes u p o n e n c o u n t e r i n g the visual p o w e r a n d then the visual
spirit. These e n c o u n t e r s are a passive event for the virtus a n d spiritus. The o n l y active
characteristic of the visual p o w e r a n d spirit is their act of p r e s e r v a t i o n a n d t r a n s m i s s i o n
of physically i m p r e s s e d properties, which are light a n d c o l o u r only. R e c o g n i t i o n of
further properties, the visible intentions, occurs o n l y after analysis a n d j u d g e m e n t
which t a k e place in the ultimum sentiens, v9 A l h a z e n ' s three stages, beginning at the
a n t e r i o r crystalline surface, p r o c e e d from a membrum sentiens (the c o m p o s i t e of glacial
a n d vitreous h u m o u r s ) to a corpus sentiens (the visual spirit) to an ultimum sentiens
(perception in a p a r t o f the brain).
If we l o o k for a L e o n a r d i a n parallel to the n e a t m o d e l of Alhazen, we m u s t d o a
g o o d bit of e x p l i c a t i n g a n d i n t e r p r e t i n g to find it, a n d it c a n n o t be said to be a settled
t h e o r y held b y L e o n a r d o over a long time. H o w e v e r , his treatise On the Eye shows

awareness of the question. L e o n a r d o ' s equivalent of A l h a z e n ' s ultimum sentiens is the
imprensiva, a n o r g a n of perception. It also seems r a t h e r clear t h a t the virtfi visiva for one
a u t h o r is the virtus sentiens for the other. W h a t we are l a c k i n g for L e o n a r d o is an
i n t e r m e d i a t e m e d i u m like Alhazen's corpus sentiens. But if we recall t h a t A l h a z e n places
a virtus sentiens t h r o u g h o u t the corpus sentiens a n d m a k e s the virtus t h a t which gives
the corpus sentiens its sensitive quality, 8~ a n d further t h a t this virtus pervades from the
b r a i n to the f o r w a r d crystalline surface, then L e o n a r d o ' s v a r i o u s locations of the virtfi
visiva at the pupil a n d the o p e n i n g to the optic nerve, a n d m o r e especially his a p p a r e n t
e q u a t i o n at one p o i n t of virtfi visiva with imprensiva, lead us to c o n c l u d e that
L e o n a r d o ' s r e q u i r e m e n t s for the c o m m u n i c a t i o n of visual sensation from within the
eye to the b r a i n are the s a m e as Alhazen's. 81 Because he d o e s n o t p a y m u c h a t t e n t i o n to
the m e a n s of t r a n s m i s s i o n , L e o n a r d o generally fails to recognize that a virtfi m u s t
p e r t a i n to a m a t e r i a l b o d y except when he carries the imprensiva all the w a y to the
crystalline sphere. A t this point, L e o n a r d o uses the imprensiva exactly as A l h a z e n does
the spiritus visibilis. L e o n a r d o says, ' F r o m this [ p o s t e r i o r ] surface [of the crystalline
sphere], where they are n o w u p r i g h t as the object from which they originated, the
species are t a k e n by the i m p r e n s i v a a n d t r a n s m i t t e d to the c o m m o n sense where they
are j u d g e d ' . 82 H e has at this time only recently recognized t h a t a n o r g a n o r sensate
m e d i u m is a necessary intermediate, a s i t u a t i o n p r o b a b l y first discussed in a n o t h e r
m a n u s c r i p t , where he concluded, 'If the imprensiva were o u t s i d e the eye straight lines
w o u l d n o t reach i t . . . the [ r a d i a n t ] line that goes to the imprensiva is straight a n d
oblique so it is necessary t h a t the imprensiva be in the eye'. 83 L e o n a r d o ' s decision to
place the imprensiva in the eye, not just in the brain, a n d to retain it as a t r a n s m i t t e r all
79Alhazen summarizes this in De aspectibus, n, ii, 16 (p. 34), referring to the limited function of the corpus
sentiens, which is simply a sensate transmitter. 'Et ira corpus sentiens extensum a superficie membri sentientis
usque ad concavum nervi communis, scilicet spiritus visibilis est sentiens per totum, quoniam virtus sensitiva
est per totum istius corporis. Cum ergo forma extenditur a superficie membri sentientis usque ad concavum
nervi eommunis, quaelibet pars corporis sentientis sentiet formam, et cum pervenerit forma in concavum
nervi communis, comprehendetur ab ultimo sentiente, et tune erit distinctio et argumentatio'.
a0 See n. 79. The corpus sentiens transmits because it is corporeal and senses because it has the virtus. Both
attributes are essential.
81 MS D, f. 2v; Strong, p. 47. Leonardo begins at the top of this page by remarking that the virtfi visiva
always sees things as they are, and then proceeds to show that as soon as the species are righted, in this case at
the posterior crystalline surface, they are received by the imprensiva; see Figure 18, taken from f. 10r. If we
understand Leonardo to mean that the imprensiva is encased in the optic nerve, then Figure 18, minus the
reflected rays (which Leonardo says are ineffective)between crystalline and uvea, is a good representation of
what Leonardo means here at f. 2v. See footnote 78.
82 MS D, f. 2v; Strong, p. 47; pursuing the same text a bit further.
8.~Codex Arundek f. 171 v; Ackerman (footnote 1), p. 140.
444 B. Eastwood
the way to the common sense while preserving at the same time the virtit visiva, shows us
his fullest accommodation and closest parallel with Alhazen's explanation of visual
sensation from crystalline humour to brain. When Leonardo describes elsewhere the
virtfi visiva as located at the end of the optic nerve, it is clear that he has no notion of a
sensitive retina and is simply engaged in relocating the limit of the sensitive power as
required by the relocation of a terminal upright image, which is hardly a departure from
Alhazen's requirements though the details of the model are quite different.
5. Concluding remarks
Analysis of approaches to the problem of inverted images in the eye illumimates
certain elements of visual theory in the Middle Ages and Renaissance which have not
customarily received a great deal of consideration. The precise details of the passage of
light rays between the anterior glacial, or crystalline, surface and their reception by a
medium of transmission to the brain is a matter of literally central importance. Yet
Alhazen's treatment of this question was so theoretical and lacking in specificity that
fourteenth-century Latin (and Italian) manuscripts of De aspectibus reveal a concern to
add precision, though only modestly, beyond the prescriptions of the text. More
especially, the event of image inversion, which Alhazen worked hard to avoid in his
theory, was exactly the point that fourteenth-century treatments of ocular optics chose
to explore in more detail. Henry of Langenstein claimed the event could not be avoided.
An anonymous glossator on Alhazen's optics considered not one but two intersections
of the light rays in the eye. And all these attitudes--avoidance of inversion, inevitability
of inversion, possibility of double inversion were deeply enmeshed in the concern to
guarantee an upright, or veridical, image for presentation to the sentient medium at the
rear of the eye, which carries the image to the brain. The location and properties of that
medium were established with care by Alhazen and his followers, since passage from
the optical media of the eye to the medium of transmission was also a passage from
determination of the image by geometrical physical criteria to determination by non-
geometrical physiological criteria. In the optic nerve what this meant was no more than
preservation and transmission of the image arriving at the back of the eye. Henry of
Langenstein bears witness to the willingness of at least one fourteenth-century critic to
relocate the sentient medium as required by the optics of the anterior geometrical
physical media. The anonymous speculator in the Oxford manuscript of Alhazen gives
us no information on the issue, but he would surely have located the sentient medium
posterior to the second intersection of light rays, if he intended to offer an alternative.
When we turn to Leonardo's discussions of the elements of the problem of
inversion, we find some things old, some things new, too little borrowed, and more than
one model advanced as true. Leonardo retains the general requirement for an upright
image to enter the sentient medium of transmission, and he locates the visual power, a
property of sensitivity, as often at the forward surfaces of the eye as at the back (at the
opening to the nerve). There is some evidence that he distinguished between a sentient
medium of transmission and a visual virtft in the eye, although the subject is obscure
and ambiguous in his work. At more than one place Leonardo's On the Eye parallels
either Alhazen or later medieval critics, so that a Leonardian debt to predecessors
dealing with the question of inverted images seems almost certain. Lindberg lists
medieval Latin works on physics and perspectiva known to Leonardo, including
Pecham's Perspectiva communis and Witelo's optics. 84 However, Leonardo's relation-
84 Lindberg (footnote 3), pp. 155 6, 266 n. 41.
ship to medieval perspectivists was rather loose; he either knew that tradition quite
imperfectly or else proceeded as an implicit and independent critic of the tradition. If
the latter, then his departure from and disregard for much of the medieval geometry of
ocular media would seen to have issued from a belief in the inability of that geometry to
prevent the inversion of images. In this respect we can say that Leonardo apparently
consulted Henry of Langenstein's Questions on perspectiva, which can only have
encouraged his divergence from the medieval approach to the question of image
inversion.
The new in Leonardo is, first and foremost, his experimentalism, whereby he is
willing to differ with established visual theory on the basis of empirical evidence. His
stated antagonists are almost always the Renaissance artistic perspectivists who
claimed that vision takes place at a point. Furthermore, it seems reasonable that his
experiments establishing the necessity of intersection of light rays as they enter the eye
were inspired by the perspectivist device in which one looks at a distant image through
a small hole at a carefully fixed position. That is, he may well have conceived that he
could use the perspectivists against themselves when he demonstrated the inversion of
images at the front of the eye and the sensing of these images on a surface of the eye, not
at a point. Leonardo's anatomy of the eye was also new, after a fashion, though its over-
simplified pair of concentric spheres (most often) is somewhat reminiscent of the earlier
Galenic tradition, especially in the version of .Hunayn ibn Is .h~q (Johannitius, as he was
called in the West). On the basis of diagrams in medieval optical manuscripts, Lindberg
has proposed an intriguing explanation for this over-simplified anatomy of the eye, a
sphere of albugineous humour encasing a uniform glacial sphere. 85 However,
consultation of any of the Alhazen manuscripts with the anatomical diagram, including
the fourteenth-century Italian version at Florence, s6 would have revealed to Leonardo
the greater complexity of the geometrical model in that tradition. Rather than
emphasize Leonardo's arguable ignorance of the medieval perspectivist tradition on
ocular anatomy, I should like to emphasize implicit criticism of that doctrine, since no
amount of modification and manipulation of the lenticular glacial body, composed of
glacial humour and vitreous humour of differing refrangibilities, could obviate the
necessary inversion of the visual image discovered by Leonardo. Indeed, taking the
manuscript of the Italian translation of Alhazen as an example, we can theorize that the
detailed diagram of ocular anatomy on folio 1 recto would have struck Leonardo as a
fruitless exercise in geometrical contrivance, far inferior to the very simple image on
folio 7 verso, which shows a spherical 'glaeialis' contained by a concentric unlabelled
sphere. This is just the sort of model that Ghiberti made use of when describing
refractions in the eye. 8~ Leonardo's use of a two-sphere model, glacial within
albugineous, makes most sense as the conscious choice of a model which could be
manipulated to invert the visual image a second t i m e - - a feat which Alhazen's model
85Ibid., pp. 268-9 n. 78.

86Vat. lat. 4595. Graziella Federici Vescovini,'Contributo per la storia della fortuna di Alhazen in Italia:
II volgarizzamentodel MS. Vat. 4595 e il 'Commentario terzo' del Ghiberti', Rinascimento, series 2, 5 (1965),
17-49, showsthat Ghiberti (1381 1455)used this manuscript. Many of the labelled diagramsare in Latin, not
Italian, and by another hand than the text. While it says nothing about Leonardo's use of Vat. 4595, it is
interesting to note that the diagram for ocular anatomy is much closer to that in London BL MS Roy. 12. G.
VII, f. lr, than to any other extant diagram of Alhazen'seye anatomy. There is similarityin the choice of other
diagrams and the nature of those diagrams across the two manuscripts.
87See footnote 66. Both Ghiberti and Vat. lat. 4595, f. lr, show in their diagrams a blendingand confusion
of the spera glacialis and humor vitreus.
446 Inversion of images in the eye
and its Latin followers could not perform. Leonardo's awareness of Alhazen, probably
through the Italian translation, seems an unavoidable conclusion.
Despite his creative experimentalism, Leonardo used too few of the contributions of
his predecessors, certainly too little of the radial geometry to be found in De aspectibus,
and thereby was doomed to failure in any attempt to offer a unified theory of vision.
Even his vacillation with regard to visual power and his carelessness with respect to the
need for a medium of neural transmission could have been diminished or eliminated by
a more considered review of Alhazen's model. The inevitable result for Leonardo was a
series of experimentally ingenious criticisms and revisions of earlier theoretical
traditions, but not enough geometrical and theoretical material to construct a powerful
and integrated alternative. With the discovery of inversion of images initially at (or
near) the pupil, the need to establish a second inversion was crucial to Leonardo. His
many proposals do not point clearly to a single solution of this question, which had
already arisen as a possible problem in the medieval tradition of Alhazen. Leonardo's
innovations spring from an explicit criticism of contemporary artistic perspective and
an implicit criticism of the medieval tradition of Alhazen. Apparently unaware of the
questions raised by the anonymous commentator of the Oxford manuscript, Leonardo
offered another and far more trenchant objection to the model of a composite glacial
body for avoiding inverted images in the eye. But as his approach in On the Eye shows,
he did not arrive at a satisfactory replacement for the tradition of Alhazen.
Acknowledgments
The purchase of microfilms of MSS used for this study was generously supported by
a grant from the American Philosophical Society. I am most grateful to David C.
Lindberg and A. I. Sabra for helpful comments on this paper, though I have at some
points held stubbornly to my views. I alone am responsible for the errors and infelicities
that may be found herein.

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Annals of Science

ISSN: 0003-3790 (Print) 1464-505X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tasc20

Alhazen, Leonardo, and late-medieval speculation

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Published online: 22 Aug 2006.

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Download by: [University of Lethbridge] Date: 06 November 2015, At: 04:51

Alhazen, Leonardo, and Late-Medieval Speculation on

A l h a z e n b e g a n with .Hunayn i b n - I s h a q ' s a c c o u n t of the visual spirit, which flows from

according to the geometrical arrangement of their parts as initially received.~~ We have

vitreous ~ ~ / glacial contreof ~ ~ centreof

F u r t h e r m o r e , the s h a p e I have p r o p o s e d for Alhazen's m o d e l of the f o r w a r d surface of

significantly larger t h a n this limit.

28 Alhazen, n, ii, 16 (p. 34).

b u t the sensing of t h a t inverted image by the sensitive p o w e r (virtus sensitiva) w o r k e d

l o n g e r subject to a n y k i n d of t r a n s f o r m a t i o n . The idea of presenting an inverted i m a g e

31 Lindberg (footnote 3), pp. 209-10, nicely summarizes the situation.

40WhileI haveexcludedit frommy primaryconsideration,the 1341manuscript of the Italian translation

Figure 5 (Left) Wien Nationalbiblio-

Figure 6 (Right). Wien Nationalbiblio-

42Lindberg (footnote 3), pp. t45-6.

subjects d u r i n g the last t h i r d of the f o u r t e e n t h c e n t u r y . 43 I n his Questiones super

p r e s e r v e the o r d e r e d visual form. 45 H e n r y ' s s e c o n d c o n t e n t i o n , while n e c e s s a r y o n l y

:. ~--~,----- ~ -~ , j- ~- --a '_~_

' " / ...... "-1 'j

Figure 9. Detail of Figure 8, outer margin (with permission).

Demonstratio quod forme vise non perveniunt ad nervum communem secundum

an object directly before the eye is seen by w a y of s i m u l a c r a from a succession of p a r t s of

61 MS D, f. 10v. Strong, pp. 91-2.

74Ackerman (footnote 1), p. 139.

allows it to preserve visual forms impressed u p o n it. Sensation, a n d sensation alone, is

t h e o r y held b y L e o n a r d o over a long time. H o w e v e r , his treatise On the Eye shows

85Ibid., pp. 268-9 n. 78.

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