Perspective

Perspective provides a mathematical framework that unifies the elements of a picture with a single mathematical model. Using very simple geometry, an artist is able to project a realistic 3-dimensional image onto a 2-dimensional surface. The mathematical model of perspective unified the saints in the foreground with the churches and the distant mountains in the background. More than any other discovery, visual perspective showed the mediaeval mind that natural laws in the immediate room appear to apply to this entire world in which we live.

вЂÑ"

Perspective in Renaissance was obtained by means of two methods, as found out by researchers: the first one, which consists of combining a horizontal plan, a point of view and a vertical plan, thus obtaining figures in three dimensions, was in 1428, masterly described by Leone Battista Alberti in his treatise De pictura, translated from the Latin original to Italian by himself in 1436. The second method usually called perspective by points of distance was published in 1580, though it had been used for many years before, as we know now. Alberti's contemporaries, Antonio Manetti and Filarete, in their writings, claims that architect Brunelleschi, by means of studies with plane mirrors, preceded Alberti in the discovery of perspective.

Only after the writings of Filippo Brunelleschi, 1377-1446, who is considered the first great architect of the Italian Renaissance perspective was formally accepted as an artistic technique. The development of perspective characterized a wider movement of incorporating realism into the arts. With that objective in mind, Renaissance artists also developed other techniques, such as examining light, shadow and it’s relation to the surrounding environment.

The inherent reason for the changes incorporated in artistic technique was a renewed interest in depicting nature in its natural beauty, as well