Tim Burgess makes a fine case for the arts (The arts aren’t a luxurious hobby, Rishi Sunak. They’re a lifeline for millions, 8 October). However, the assertion from Ravi Somaiya that he quotes – “Nobody remembers Renaissance accountants” – runs counter to the facts. Luca Pacioli (1447-1517) is widely known to this day as the father of accounting and bookkeeping.
Pacioli published his Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita (which contains work on bookkeeping), in 1494. He is also known to have provided employment in the arts industry as a portrait of him dating from about 1495 and attributed to Jacopo de’ Barbari still exists. The Renaissance father of accounting has also been celebrated more recently in the name of an accounting software package, Pacioli 2000, published nearly 500 years after the accountant’s death.
Edward Fordyce
Twickenham, London
• Most Renaissance accountants were mathematicians doing a gig job on the side, bean-counting for merchants keeping track of cargoes with their risks and profits. The mathematicians Tartaglia, Cardano and Ferrari were prime examples, and their mathematical work was used as a means of advertising and promoting availability and expertise for their “second” jobs.
That much of their work exploited what are now called “imaginary” numbers would have horrified their merchant employers, but modern electronics wouldn’t be here without their pioneering efforts. As another spin-off, they and other colleagues developed the geometry of perspective that made much of Renaissance art what it was.
Art, mathematics and trade, a powerful trinity – take one away and everything else falls.
Barry Lewis
Former president, The Mathematical Association
