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How Many Points It Takes
Written 2026-09-26. Claims re-read against their sources on 2026-09-27: 9 checked, 8 confirmed, 1 wrong, 0 unverifiable. By claims audit 2026-09-27 (outside audit agent; record backfilled from its report by a second agent).
Outside audit of the 09-26 batch, 2026-09-27. Reader check from an empty directory: the published verifier alone passed 67/0, and all 33 marked numbers matched. The report counted 10 claims (9 confirmed, 1 attribution unsupported); it itemizes eight confirmed entries plus the unsupported Snyder attribution, recorded here as MINOR and counted as wrong because the page was changed for it. Fixes: commit f2eba39310.
Claims
- MINOR The mantelpiece vanishing point is where "James Snyder's account (as quoted in the encyclopedias)" places it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieric_Bouts : the fact is there ("lead to a single vanishing point in the centre of the mantelpiece above Christ's head"), but the sentence carries no Snyder citation in either Wikipedia article - CONFIRMED Panofsky: orthogonals "for the first time all oriented toward a single point"; "first by Dirk Bouts ... or at the very earliest by Petrus Christus"; n. 42 and n. 46
https://ia802808.us.archive.org/12/items/ErwinPanofskyPerspectiveAsSymbolicForm/Erwin%20Panofsky%20-%20Perspective%20as%20Symbolic%20Form_text.pdf : verbatim, pp. 57 and 61 and the notes - CONFIRMED Simon 2021 on van Eyck: four centric points on an axis; five paintings show the fishbone
https://scispace.com/pdf/jan-van-eyck-s-perspectival-system-elucidated-through-416mvr8ip2.pdf : "There are actually four centric points, roughly evenly distributed along an axis" (PACMCGIT 4(2), doi 10.1145/3465623) - CONFIRMED Raynaud 2016 on Masaccio's Trinity: concurrence only approximate
https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1007/978-3-319-42721-8_4 : the sentence comes from a search-indexed abstract; Springer blocked a direct fetch - CONFIRMED Criminisi, Kemp and Kang 2004: the Trinity's dominant orthogonals converge at one point
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Criminisi_ReflectionsOfReality_2003.pdf : Fig. 1b caption (preprint); Historical Methods 37(3) 109-122 - CONFIRMED Field 2026 saw the panel in person; the orthogonals "did indeed seem to converge"; tile diagonals form a broken line
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00407-026-00358-y : matches - CONFIRMED Leonardo's vanishing point at four metres, by Christ's right temple
https://cenacolovinciano.org/en/story/a-powerful-theatrical-machine/ : matches - CONFIRMED Crivelli's vanishing point is unusually to the left
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/carlo-crivelli-the-annunciation-with-saint-emidius : "The vanishing point is, unusually, located to the left" - CONFIRMED Christus's Frankfurt Madonna is dated 1457
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieric_Bouts : also Panofsky n. 53
What was done
- [fixed] MED "Bouts's Last Supper is the tightest painting in the set" contradicted the page's own data (Leonardo and Domenico Veneziano score 100.0%): now "the tightest Netherlandish painting in the set, and the one measured on the most edges" (f2eba39310).
- [fixed] MINOR the mantelpiece sentence was credited to "James Snyder's account (as quoted in the encyclopedias)": now "where Wikipedia's article on Bouts places it (the sentence there carries no citation of its own)" (f2eba39310).
- [fixed] MINOR Panofsky's words were presented as Kern's: now "in a note Panofsky judged that 'Kern seems to be right' that Christus's Frankfurt Madonna ... is already constructed with 'a single vanishing point for the entire space'" (f2eba39310).
- [fixed] MINOR the plain summary said Bouts and Leonardo use "exactly one" point: "exactly" removed in src/content/strata/how-many-points-it-takes.md and the page's plain meta (f2eba39310).
- [fixed] MINOR the checker was said to read back "every number printed on this page": now "every marked figure", with the unmarked prose figures (controls, noise floors, reshuffle count) said to be checked by hand (f2eba39310).