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A picture is really a flat surface covered in paint i.e. the picture is two-dimensional. Since antiquity, painters have experimented with ways of achieving the effects of space or three-dimensions within the two-dimensional format. Not until the Renaissance was "central perspective" discovered, which allowed the illusion of a unified depth of surface. This method of depicting space remained fundamental to painting until the start of the Modern art era.
The decisive move towards central or linear perspective was taken by the Florentine sculptor and architect Filippo Brunelleschi. His discovery was utilised by his friend Masaccio. Masaccio (originally named Tommaso Cassai) (1401-1427 or 1428) turned out to be the first great painter of the Italian Renaissance, whose innovations in the use of scientific perspective inaugurated the modern era in painting, and his individual style owed little to other painters, except possibly the 14th-century master Giotto. Masaccio was more strongly influenced by the architect Brunelleschi and the sculptor Donatello, both of whom were his contemporaries in Florence. From Brunelleschi he acquired a knowledge of mathematical proportion which proved crucial to his revival of the principles of scientific perspective, and from Donatello he imbibed a knowledge of classical art that led him away from the prevailing Gothic style. Masaccio inaugurated a new naturalistic approach to painting which was concerned less with details and ornamentation than with simplicity and unity, less with flat surfaces than with the illusion of three-dimensionality. Together with Brunelleschi and Donatello, he was a founder of the Renaissance. Leonardo would have known Masaccio's fresco "The Trinity" (pictured), dated 1427-28, which measures 21' 10 1/2" x 10' 4 7/8" or 6.67 x 3.17 metres and is located in Santa Maria Novella, Florence. "The Trinity" formed a landmark in painting by using the new method - the lines of the vault above and behind the crucified Christ run toward a central point at the foot of the cross. The height of this vanishing point corresponds to the assumed height of the viewer standing in front of the picture, making the image appear as if someone were looking into a niche in the wall. The newness of the effect at that time had a profound influence, as it gave Renaissance art viewers a "window" ("perspective" comes from the Latin verb "perspicere", to see through). Central perspective was taken up rapid in Italian painting. It became widely known in northern Europe somewhat later, from c.1500 through the work of Albrecht Durer.
| Among those who employed perspective techniques was Fra Lippi who also influenced Leonardo. See "The Feast of Herod: Salome's Dance by Lippi" - note the floor. Vasari wrotes in his "Lives" of the great artists that Lippi was inspired to become a painter by watching Masaccio at work in the Carmine church, and Lippi's early work was overwhelmingly influenced by him. |
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Leonardo learned how to represent perpsective during his apprenticeship at the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio. As an example of Leonardo's precise construction of a painting employing perspective, the drawing made as preparation for "The Adoration of the Magi" shows numerous guidelines which run from the bottom of the picture toward the vanishing point - the further objects are away from the viewer the smaller they appear. The drawing illustrates a problem of central perspective, namely that only architectural elements (ideally square objects) can be depicted in this way. |
Leonardo's drawing for "The Adoration of the Magi" painting - note perspective guidelines
Unlike architectural elements, landscapes and living creatures including human figures are not as simple to construct. Painter Piero della Francesca wrote a tract setting out how the human body could be considered as a geometrical body and thus reconstructed, but the technique was very complicated. After reading the tract, Leonardo abandoned his own attempt to write a manual on perspective. Several painters tried to make the task easier by using a piece of equipment called a spectrograph. Leonardo sketched a spectrograph (pictured below), so we know that it comprised a pane of glass through which the artist looked at the object and then captured its outlines on the glass. Leonardo advised artists to use a similar technique to control perspective when drawing nude models.
| Right: Leonardo's sketch of the Perspectograph (a.k.a. spectograph), from the Codex Atlanticus c.5r, located in the Ambrosian Library, Milan, Italy. |  |
However, linear perspective did not play a major role in Leonardo's later work. He realised that human perception was conditioned by other factors such as light and humidity which could not be depicted by means of mathematical constructs. For him, colour and atmosphere assumed greater importance. He felt that a painter could achieve the illusion of space through the correct distribution of light and shade. The modelling of bodies by means of light areas and dark areas was term the "relievo" effect, and Leonardo used it with scientific precision in his sketches and went on to perfect the technique in his painting.
Leonardo in his book on painting:
  polyhedra - see also polyhedra as exercises in geometry perspective and as an art form |
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