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Naomi Blumberg was Assistant Editor, Arts and Culture for Encyclopaedia Britannica. She covered topics related to art history, architecture, theatre, dance, literature, and music.
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Linear perspective, a system of creating an illusion of depth on a flat surface. All parallel lines (orthogonals) in a painting or drawing using this system converge in a single vanishing point on the composition’s horizon line.
Leonardo da Vinci: Adoration of the Magi
Leonardo da Vinci: Adoration of the Magi
Linear perspective study for the Adoration of the Magi, silverpoint, pen, and bistre heightened with white on prepared ground by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1481; in the Uffizi, Florence.
Alinari/Art Resource, New York
Linear perspective
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Linear perspective is thought to have been devised about 1415 by Italian Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi and later documented by architect and writer Leon Battista Alberti in 1435 (Della Pittura). Linear perspective was likely evident to artists and architects in the ancient Greek and Roman periods, but no records exist from that time, and the practice was thus lost until the 15th century.
mathematicians of the Greco-Roman world
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geometry: Linear perspective
The theory of linear perspective, the brainchild of the Florentine architect-engineers Filippo Brunelleschi...
The three components essential to the linear perspective system are orthogonals (parallel lines), the horizon line, and a vanishing point. So as to appear farther from the viewer, objects in the compositions are rendered increasingly smaller as they near the vanishing point. Early examples of Brunelleschi’s system can be seen in Donatello’s relief St. George Killing the Dragon (c. 1416–17) and Masaccio’s painting The Holy Trinity (1425–27), a dramatic illusionistic crucifixion. Andrea Mantegna (who also mastered the technique of foreshortening), Leonardo da Vinci, and German artist Albrecht Dürer are considered some of the early masters of linear perspective. As the limitations of linear perspective became apparent, artists invented additional devices (e.g., foreshortening and anamorphosis) to achieve the most-convincing illusion of space and distance.
perspective of church interior
perspective of church interior
Perspective of a church interior showing the vanishing point.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Naomi Blumberg
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mathematicians of the Greco-Roman world
geometry: Linear perspective
The theory of linear perspective, the brainchild of the Florentine architect-engineers Filippo Brunelleschi...…
Babylonian mathematical tablet
mathematics: The Renaissance
…and Leonardo da Vinci, incorporated linear perspective into their practice and teaching, about a century...…
Filippo Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi: Early years
…Brunelleschi rediscovered the principles of linear perspective known to the Greeks
