What are the standard books and/or papers for learning classical projective geometry?

Question

I am interested in a number of sources concerning the development and teaching of classical projective geometry, both as it relates directly to vanishing points and straight line geometry, as well as its subsequent development during the 20th century.

I would like to know of any books that are of a similar standing as Rudin in Analysis, or Ahlfors/Conway in Complex Analysis. I believe that for a period projective geometry was a standard on high school curricula in Europe (especially Italy) but can't find references for the books that they used (if any).

Furthermore, I would be interested in resources for the primary sources considered seminal in the development of projective geometry, from Pappus', Desargues, and Pascal, to the Italians of the early 20th century - especially prior to any subsumption of the field into categorical algebraic geometry.

Answer 1

I like Robin Hartshorne's little book a lot ("Foundations of Projective Geometry"), because it's a semi-modern view of the subject, but despite Hartshorne's expertise, avoids any real hint of algebraic geometry.

What's nice is that the introduction to the new edition (Ishi Press) explains how he came to know about the subject, through Reye and von Staudt. The (brief) bibliography has pointers to some other text, but not back to original sources for the most part.

Answer 2

This is a huge topic, but maybe this is useful: Menghini's The Role of Projective Geometry in Italian Education and Institutions at the End of the 19th Century. Cremona of course was and is a big name, and his book was translated into other languages, including English.