Witelo, whose mother was from a Polish…

Witelo, whose mother was from a Polish knightly house, while his father was a German settler from Thuringia, calls himself, in Latin, "Thuringorum et Polonorum filius"—"a son of Thuringians and Poles."

He had studied at Padua University about 1260, then went on to Viterbo.

He became friends with William of Moerbeke, the translator of Aristotle.

Witelo's major surviving work on optics, Perspectiva, completed in about 1270–78, is dedicated to William.

Perspectiva is largely based on the work of the Persian polymath Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham; d. around 1041) and in turn will powerfully influence later scientists, in particular Johannes Kepler.

Witelo's treatise in optics is closely linked to the Latin version of Ibn al-Haytham's Arabic opus: Kitab al-manazir (The Book of Optics; De aspectibus or Perspectivae), and both will be printed in the Friedrich Risner edition Opticae Thesaurus (Basel, 1572).

Witelo's Perspectiva, which rests on Ibn al-Haytham's research in optics, influenced also the Renaissance theories of perspective.

Lorenzo Ghiberti's Commentario terzo (Third Commentary) is based on an Italian translation of Witelo's Latin tract: Perspectiva.

Witelo's treatise also contains much material in psychology, outlining views that are close to modern notions on the association of ideas and on the subconscious.

Perspectiva also includes Platonic metaphysical discussions.

Witelo argues that there are intellectual and corporeal bodies, connected by causality (corresponding to the Idealist doctrine of the universal and the actual), emanating from God in the form of Divine Light.

Light itself is, for Witelo, the first of all sensible entities, and his views on light are similar to those held by Roger Bacon, though he is closer in this to Alhazen's legacy.