Pacioli's portrait. A Renaissance sage giving one of his lessons. AN ESSAY.

Abstract

This brief essay analyzes a painting, well known among those of us who cultivate the accounting discipline, in which the central figure is Lucas Pacioli (figure 1). It is located in Naples, in the Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte, where it appears with the title "Portrait of Luca Pacioli with Guidobaldo de Montefeltro".

The tour of its details will help me to review with the reader the biography of Pacioli, an important figure for accounting and, also, for other disciplines: mathematics, geometry, perspective, architecture... in that fascinating period, which we call the Renaissance.

I am grateful to our valued friend Oscar Diaz Becerra, like Pacioli, active and effective professional and teacher in our discipline, for opening the pages of the Magazine of the Board of Deans of Colleges of Public Accountants of Peru, of which he is director, thus giving me the opportunity to get in touch with my colleagues in the Peruvian profession and, with this, share some circumstances of the life and work of this unique character, a key player in the dissemination of double entry in the Renaissance, as an important element of support for the economic activity of his time.