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2.3How to create a pedestal in perspective. From Nian Xiyao, The Study of Vision. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Douce Chin. B. 2, p. 7r.

be done [this way], it is not a difficult method.” Nian’s instructions here simply assume that the object (which he does not identify as a pedestal), its three-dimensional representation, and the method for constructing the final form in space are not only implicitly comprehensible, but also recognizably adaptable to more advanced forms. His faith in his reader’s abilities here seems rather optimistic: the instructions for projecting the pedestal in perspective are the last ones in this opening section of The Study of Vision, which continues with twenty-three additional illustrations adapted from the Perspectiva that mostly depict projections of columns and capitals in the same manner as figure 2.3. The Perspectiva includes lengthy instructions and explanations for all of these, clearly demonstrating the need for text even among European readers, but Nian’s reader was simply meant to extrapolate from what came before. Although Pozzo’s European readers would have been familiar with the examples of classicizing Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian capital decoration illustrated in this section, it is difficult to imagine that an eighteenth-century Chinese reader would have been equally familiar with them, much less have understood