Brunelleschi was the first Renaissance artist to use the vanishing point and depth perception during this time period. Brunelleschi additionally noticed that when drawing Florentine buildings, all lines converged at the horizon line, therefore leading to the realization of the vanishing point. Other artists such as Donatello and Perugino helped to further cement the importance of depth during this time, culminating in Da Vinci’s Last Supper; never before had there been a painting with such mathematical accuracy in relation to depth perception and linear formation. The realization of linear perspective and the vanishing point was kept within Italy for years before flourishing throughout the rest of Europe.

The checkerboard floor pattern is one of the most obvious examples of original perspective. Alberti was one of the first artists to recognize this phenomenon, and named it as the “pavement” construction, as it typically led to the addition of a pavement scene. He later wrote a treatise entitle “De Pictura/Della Pittura” explaining the proper methods of perspective painting. His theories were based more on planar projections and calculations using the height of triangles in the distance, and also using previous mathematical concepts from Euclid.

The vanishing point and depth perception are concepts which we take for granted today because we have never known an art world without them; however, if you traverse through the ages, you will see pieces from the Middle Ages where the baby Jesus appears to be the same size as Mary because the artists had no way in which to signify perspective. It is amazing to view in art museums this subtle change in technique; many museums have paintings set up in chronological order, or at least by major movements. The Renaissance was truly its own movement within the art world, and symbolized a shift away from the chaotic, extremely fanatical world of the Middle Ages.

Without this kind of revolution within the art world, we would still be looking at one-dimensional art works, lacking a proper depth perception. This would prove to be a completely different world from the one we know now, perhaps even lacking the fundamentals of television and movies. Without depth in art, that could not have translated over into any other medium. Therefore, we owe a great deal to these post-Medieval artists who truly paved the way for modern art and art movements. Picasso would not have been able to exist without his acute understanding of the many layers of depth and perspective, and we therefore would have missed out on abstract art entirely as well as every subsequent modern art movement.

This post was contributed by Heidi Taylor, who writes about the online schools. She welcomes your feedback at HeidiLTaylor006 at gmail.com.

The mountain is bigger than the house; the house is bigger than the man. When objects are sized according to how large they really are (or are expected to be) then the eye interprets them as existing in orderly three-dimensional space. This works even when a more geometric approach would make a small object that is close to the viewer take up a larger area of the picture than a large object that is far away.

Size perspective is a convention in some pre-Renaissance Western art, as well as many traditional non-Western art styles, such as Persian or Chinese. It is interesting to look at works from certain Eastern art traditions (such as Japanese woodblock prints), comparing art from before and after the adoption of “modern” geometric perspective conventions.

A hard rough edge comes forward. A hard smooth edge also advances, but not so much. A blended edge tends to recede.

In the top example, even with foreshortening and overlap visual cues, the space is fairly flat. In the lower example, the addition of form shadow on the frontmost object, and cast shadow from it, space is much more clearly defined and the illusion of dimensionality is greatly strengthened. This is just a beginning—adding form shadow to the rearmost object, and a cast shadow from it, would enhance the effect.

Objects with less contrast against their background appear to recede. Objects with more contrast against their background appear to advance.

The effective use of linear perspective provides the eye with powerful cues about the nature of three-dimensional space in the scene. The overuse of linear perspective starts to look less like art and more like a silly stunt involving someone with a ruler and not enough to do.

When there is a pattern in which elements of the pattern appear to recede by consistently becoming smaller, denser, and fainter, then the illusion of three-dimensional space is enhanced.

Another sort of perspective occurs when one object overlaps another. The eye interprets one as in front of the other, thereby creating a sense of dimensional space.

Update 2 March 2007: Edited image for clarity.

Here’s another kind of perspective. When a series of objects goes from high chroma, low value, and warm hue to low chroma, high value, and cool hue, the illusion is created that they are receding into the distance as more and more air is between the viewer and the objects as they get further away. This effect can be used as an artistic convention even when the perceived difference in distance is too small to produce the apparent atmospheric effect, as in objects at different distances within a room.

Here’s one: recession perspective. When a series of similar objects gets smaller in a regular manner, the illusion is created that, instead of a series of smaller and smaller objects, they are instead same-sized objects receding in space.