The ceiling of the Church of St Ignatius and the perception of concave surfaces.

ABSTRACT

This research describes two hitherto unobserved phenomena in the frescoes of the seventeenth century architect and painter, Andrea Pozzo, painted on the vaulted ceiling of the central nave of the Church of St Ignatius in Rome. The present research also reports the results of two experimental studies on the problem of the perception of shapes projected on concave surfaces. A quantitative evaluation of the phenomena perceived from various points of observation is made by means of stimuli projected at various angles on a semicylindrical surface. The validity of the assumption of invariance, and in particular of the projective invariant called the cross-ratio, is discussed within the framework of ecological theories on perception.