Perspective in Art: Renaissance to Cubism
Quattrocento (15th Century, Renaissance)
Effect of perspective: Variations in the apparent size of objects due to their relative distance to the observer. The discovery takes place in Florence. “Artificial perspective” tries to represent the depth of field. Perspective has a Latin etymology, from the verb perspicere, and derives from the Greek optiké. The prospect appears with the knights in the Middle Ages, and is very primitive, using parallel lines. Pecham speaks of “visual pyramids.”
Italian Renaissance
An architect, Brunelleschi, invents a geometric projective system called artificial perspective, based on the so-called pyramid of vision. The rules of perspective of this system, developed alongside the sculptor Donatello and Masaccio, are systematized in the treatise on painting (1436) by Leon Battista Alberti, who introduces the concept of the window. The window represents a cut in plane of the visual pyramid, displaying the proportions of things in the distance. In reality, there are two pyramids. Alberti’s system consists of the progressive decrease in the size of objects from the edges of the image toward the vanishing point.
Piero della Francesca, in his treatise “De Prospectiva Pingendi” (1475), takes a step further. He uses the window effect and the constant presence of architectural elements in his paintings, and he does not use a central vanishing point.
It will be Leonardo da Vinci who will take the study of perspective to its maximum splendor, detailed in his Treatise on Painting. This system of representation receives the name of linear, central, or conical perspective. Leonardo’s treatise on perspective is classified into three parts:
- Linear construction of bodies.
- The vagueness of colors in relation to a variety of distances.
- Loss in the determination of bodies in relation to a variety of distances.
Sfumato, the vagueness of colors and contours, added to the purely linear perspective, gives rise to a new way of understanding perspective that Leonardo will call “aerial perspective.”
Albrecht Dürer and Beyond
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), a German painter born in Nuremberg, wrote various treatises, including one on the art of measurement. The heirs of aerial perspective will be prominent Baroque painters such as Velázquez and Rembrandt. Later, other painters like Paul Cézanne (along with Braque, Picasso, and Gris) gave way to the movement called Cubism.
Composition and Visual Weight
Composition: Placing the parts of an image so that the viewer’s attention falls onto the point of interest.
Attributes of framing:
- Maximum point of interest.
- Internal frame limit.
- Visual force and gravity:
- A) Size: Larger size = greater weight.
- B) Color: Warm colors weigh more than cold colors.
- C) Position: Greater distance corresponds to greater depth or weight. Lower position = greater weight. Left position = greater weight than right.
- D) Tone: Light on dark weighs more than dark on light (d = deep, heavy, but the tone has more contrast). A black area needs a larger white area to counterbalance it. Black on white weighs more.
- E) Form: Regular forms are heavier than irregular forms. A compact form weighs more than a dispersed one.
- F) Texture: Figures with rough textures weigh more than those with polished surfaces.
Balance and the Golden Ratio
There are two types of balance: symmetry and asymmetry.
The Golden Ratio: Luca Pacioli, working with Da Vinci, rediscovered the Golden Ratio in the 15th century (designated as Phi, Φ, approximately 1.618). In his work Elements, Euclid had already defined this division of a line segment into extreme and mean ratio. In 1509, Pacioli published his treatise De Divina Proportione, illustrated by Leonardo, which reveals the beauty and secret of this division: a division of a whole into two parts, in such a way that the smaller part is to the larger part as the larger is to the whole.