Perspective (graphical)

The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna. The perspective in this painting is from an angle over the subject, towards his head as he is laying horizontally. The artist uses upward foreshortening to create the correct dimensions to match the angle.

In graphic arts, perspective is the representation of how an image is seen by the eye. It was first invented by Filippo Brunelleschi. It is about how the angle and distance of a three-dimensional object is represented on a flat surface. To create a real scene, objects are drawn smaller to show that they are farther away from the person looking at the artwork. The dimensions of an object are also drawn differently depending where the line of sight is. The size of an object's dimensions along the line of sight are usually drawn shorter than dimensions across the line of sight. This is called foreshortening, and is used to create the appearance of three dimensions on a flat surface.

Landscape paintings have a horizon line. This line represents objects that are infinitely far away. They have shrunk, in the distance, like objects on the Earth's horizon. Changing the height of the horizon level changes the view point for the picture. A person lying on the ground and looking up would have a different view to a person on a ladder looking down.

Basic concept

Satire on false perspective by Hogarth.

Perspective works by representing the light that passes from a scene through an imaginary rectangle (the painting), to the viewer's eye. It is similar to a viewer looking through a window and painting what is seen directly onto the windowpane. If viewed from the same spot as the windowpane was painted, the painted image would be identical to what was seen through the unpainted window. Each painted object in the scene is a flat, scaled down version of the object on the other side of the window.

Perspective (graphical) Media

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  Staircase in multi-points perspective as a linear or point-projection prospective example. Each point is a vanishing point from which straight lines come, and these lines are a guide to draw 3-dimensional object.

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  • Last Supper 
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  A cube drawing using two-point perspective

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  A cube in three-points perspective where, compared with the above cube in two-points prospective, there is an additional vanishing point far below the cube, from which straight lines come that are coincident with vertical edges of the cube.

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  Detail of Masolino da Panicale's St. Peter Healing a Cripple and the Raising of Tabitha (c. 1423), the earliest extant artwork known to use a consistent vanishing point

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  Melozzo da Forlì's use of upward foreshortening in his frescoes, Basilica dei Santi Apostoli, Rome, c. 1480

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  Pietro Perugino's use of perspective in Delivery of the Keys (1482), a fresco at the Sistine Chapel

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  Satire on False Perspective by William Hogarth, 1753

References

• Kemp, Martin (1992). The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. Yale University Press.
• Damisch, Hubert (1994). The Origin of Perspective, Translated by John Goodman. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Hyman, Isabelle, comp (1974). Brunelleschi in Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
• Vasari, Giorgio (1568). The Lives of the Artists. Florence, Italy. Archived from the original on 2005-11-30. Retrieved 2008-02-26.
• Andersen, Kirsti (2007). The Geometry of an Art: The History of the Mathematical Theory of Perspective from Alberti to Monge. Springer.

Other websites

• Teaching Perspective in Art and Mathematics through Leonardo da Vinci's Work Archived 2008-06-22 at the Wayback Machine at Mathematical Association of America
• Perspective in Ancient Roman-Wall Painting Archived 2011-03-07 at the Wayback Machine at Southampton Solent University
• Mathematics of Perspective Drawing