Unit VII: Technique: Renaissance Perspective
Caption
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Narration
Technique: Renaissance Perspective
Linear Perspective: Fifteenth-century Italian artists developed a system known as linear
or mathematical perspective that enabled them to represent three dimensions on a twodimensional surface, simulating the recession of space in the visible world pictorially in a
way they found convincing.
The sculptor and architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, first demonstrated the system about
1420, and the theorist and architect Leon Battista Alberti codified it in 1436 in his treatise
Della pittura (On Painting). Linear perspective makes pictorial spaces seem almost like
extensions of the viewer’s real space, creating a compelling, even exaggerated, sense of
depth.
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Atmospheric Perspective: Linear perspective is not the only way to simulate spatial
recession in two-dimensional painting. In atmospheric perspective, for example,
variations in color and clarity convey the feeling of distance when objects and landscape
are portrayed less clearly, and colors become grayer, in the background imitating the
natural effects of a loss of clarity and color when viewing things in the distance through
an atmospheric haze. Perugino’s Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, shown here, uses
both linear perspective and atmospheric perspective. The latter can be seen in the blue
mountains in the background.
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Process, One-Point Linear Perspective: For Alberti, in one-point linear perspective a
picture’s surface was conceived as a flat plane that intersected the viewer’s field of vision
at right angles. This highly artificial concept presumed that a viewer stands dead center
at a prescribed distance from a work of art. From this single fixed vantage point,
everything would appear to recede into the distance at the same rate, following
imaginary lines called orthogonals that meet at a single vanishing point on the horizon.
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Optical Illusion: By using orthogonals, in concert with controlled diminution of scale as
forms move back toward the vanishing point, artists could replicate the optical illusion
that things appear to grow smaller, rise higher, and come closer together as they move
farther away from us.
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Example, Perugino, Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter: Fresco on the right wall of the
Sistine Chapel. Vatican, Rome: 1481, 11′ 5.5″ x 18′ 8.5.″
Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter is a remarkable study in linear perspective.
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Optical Illusion: By using orthogonals, in concert with controlled diminution of scale as
forms move back toward the vanishing point, artists could replicate the optical illusion
that things appear to grow smaller, rise higher, and get closer together as they move
farther away from us. Schematic drawing of Perugino's The Delivery of the Keys to St.
Peter showing the Orthogonals and Vanishing Point.
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Paving Stones: The clear demarcation of the paving stones of the piazza provides a
network of orthogonal and horizontal lines for the measured placement of the figures.
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Scale: People and buildings become increasingly, and logically, smaller as the space
recedes.
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Composition: Horizontally, the composition is divided between the foreground frieze of
figures and the widely spaced background buildings vertically by the open space at the
center between Christ and Peter and by the symmetrical architectural forms on either
side of this central axis.
Perugino’s painting is, among other things, a representation of Alberti’s ideal city,
described in De re aedificatoria (On the Art of Building) as having a “temple” (that is, a
church) at the center of a great open space, raised on a dais, and separate from any
other buildings that might obstruct it.