Albrecht Dürer[edit]
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was a German Renaissance printmaker who made important contributions to polyhedral literature in his book, Underweysung der Messung (Education on Measurement) (1525), meant to teach the subjects of linear perspective, geometry in architecture, Platonic solids, and regular polygons. Dürer was likely influenced by the works of Luca Pacioli and Piero della Francesca during his trips to Italy.[32] While the examples of perspective in Underweysung der Messung are underdeveloped and contain a number of inaccuracies, the manual does contain a very interesting discussion of polyhedra. Dürer is also the first to introduce in text the idea of polyhedral nets, polyhedra unfolded to lie flat for printing.[33] Dürer published another influential book on human proportions called Vier Bücher von Menschlicher Proportion (Four Books on Human Proportion) in 1528.
Dürer's well-known engraving Melencolia I depicts a frustrated thinker sitting by what is best interpreted as a “truncated rhomboid” or a “rhombohedron with 72-degree face angles, which has been truncated so it can be inscribed in a sphere”.[34] It has been the subject of more modern interpretation than almost any other print,[35] including a two-volume book by Peter-Klaus Schuster,[36] and an influential discussion in Erwin Panofsky's monograph of Dürer.[37]