5 Things to Know About Perspective

Raphael, who painted School of Athens on page 5, was a great Renaissance master, but he didn’t invent perspective. His teacher, Pietro Perugino (Pee-EH-troh Pehr-ooh-JEEN-oh), taught him. In Perugino’s painting above, done 30 years before Raphael’s, large detailed figures stand in the foreground and the figures in the background are smaller and harder to see. As in Raphael’s painting, all of the architectural lines recede to a single vanishing point.

Early Renaissance artist Masaccio (mah-SAH-choh) used the new system of perspective to set his solid, three-dimensional figures in very real-looking settings. In this detail from his fresco The Tribute Money, two men stand in front of a building painted using two-point perspective. The corner is closest to us, allowing us to see two sides of the building at once. One wall recedes toward one vanishing point, and the other recedes toward a second vanishing point located outside the frame of the picture. For a diagram showing two-point perspective, see this article.

Not all perspective is linear. Renaissance artists also made their paintings—especially their landscapes—look more real using aerial perspective. You can see an example of this in Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece Mona Lisa. In the background, the closest mountains are darker and clearer. Farther away, the forms are smaller and hazier. On the horizon, the colors of the forms blend in with the blue of the sky. The winding roads and mountain peaks draw attention to the focal point—the figure’s face and her famous smile.

Some Renaissance artists said that Paolo Uccello (POW-loh oo-CHEL-oh) was obsessed with perspective. He’d stay up all night making mathematical diagrams for his paintings. In his famous Battle of San Romano (detail at right), the foreground is filled with foreshortened objects like the back legs of the brown horse on the right. The hooves are enlarged so they seem to be coming toward the viewer. Can you spot other foreshortened objects in this scene?

By the 20th century, photography had taken the place of most realistic painting. Artists began using perspective to comment on the anxiety of modern life. Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico (JOR-joh duh-KEER-ih-koh) painted the scene at right using one-point perspective. But he exaggerated the angle of the converging lines, so the buildings seem to rush at the viewer. The diagonal shadows clash with the lines, creating confusion. A ship’s sail rising above the horizon line gives the work a dream-like quality.