perspective

Although the classical Greek and Roman world was widely admired and imitated in the Renaissance, the art of antiquity was surpassed in several technical aspects by later artists. One of the most important advances was made in the science of perspective. The artists of the classical world attempted in vain to accurately portray three-dimensional space on their wall paintings, while medieval artists had depicted scenes and figures on a flat plane, with no attempt to create an illusion of depth. The techniques of perspective were finally developed in Italy in the early Renaissance, in the work and the writings of several Italian artists. “Linear perspective” makes use of a single vanishing point, toward which objects appear to grow smaller and the lines of structures and surroundings appear to converge.

The basic principles of this system were discovered by the Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi in the early fifteenth century. While observing the Baptistery, an octagonal structure near the cathedral of Florence, Brunelleschi painted the structure directly onto a mirror, then held up a second blank mirror in order to verify that his painted version was an exact replica. He then carefully analyzed and measured his painting to discover the underlying mathematical principles that governed perspective. The Baptistery instructed Brunelleschi in the use of a vanishing point and the horizon line, where the lines of different planes and objects converged.

Brunelleschi published his findings to be used by other artists, and Renaissance painting took on the most important aspect of its naturalistic, lifelike quality. Paolo Uccello, another artist of Florence, used perspective with surprising effect on his mural The Battle of San Romano, where horses, weapons, and human figures all serve to emphasize lines of perspective and the vanishing point. The science of perspective was further explored in Della Pittura, a work by Leon Battista Alberti, who offered precise mathematical formulas for the use of artists. Later artists developed new systems of perspective, including aerial perspective, in which objects go out of focus and appear in a bluish light with greater distance. Leonardo da Vinci put aerial perspective to use in The Virgin of the Rocks, in which a sense of great depth and mystery is achieved by the rendering of the natural landscape as well as the contours of the figures.

See Also: painting