Illusion du réel et esthétique de la correction : mimesis et phantasia dans la théorie vitruvienne de l’architecture

Abstract

The question of the beauty of an edifice by the human eye rests, in Vitruvius’s De architectura, on two notions, symmetria and species. The latter term, the sense of which is close to that of phantasia, brings the Vitruvian exposition on architecture nearer to the tradition of Greek historians on painting and sculpture, whereas, through his ethical analysis of the concrete answer that the architect must give to the errors of the eyesight, the treatise is an echo of the philosophical debate at the end of the Roman Republic on the veracity of perception.

Keywords

• mimesis
• phantasia
• optics
• ethics