Linear Perspective

In the Human-centered world of the Early Renaissance, artists desired to make increasingly accurate images of the world around them. During the early 13th century an architect named Phillipo Brunellischi invented a mathematical system for fixing objects in space on a two-deminsional surface. This system is called linear perspective. Where previous painters had used intuitive perspective to approximate the appearance of the real world on canvas, after 1420, artists began using linear or Renaissance perspective.

For the 13th century artists, the canvas was a flat plane that was parallel to the viewers field of vision. In Renaissance perspective, a one-eyed, un-moving viewer was standing at a fixed distance from the scene. From this vantage point, objects appeared to recede into the distance at a constant rate.

The pace at which objects recede into the distance can be determined by imaginary lines called orthogonals. The orthogonals move into the distance and converge at a single vanishing point on the horizon. The horizon line corresponds to the eye level of the viewer. This system replicates the optical illusion that things grow smaller as they recede into the distance.

Linear or Renaissance perspective is not at all based on the way we actually see the world, but it offers instead a cohesive system that makes the viewer perceive a type of "real" space on a flat surface.

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