Perspective Other perspectives Perspectives Commentary

Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Piero della Francesca optics

Perspective

• People in Florence had it figured out—
• how to trick the eye with an illusion of depth.
• Filippo Brunelleschi demonstrated its realism
• by comparing the view of the Florentine Baptistery
• from a doorway of the unfinished Il Duomo
• with his painting reflected in a mirror.
• Leon Battista Alberti wrote the first manual for artists.
• Piero della Francesca completed the picture
• by adding illustrations and showing how
• to represent solids in any area of the picture plane.

Other perspectives

• Other artists had had other schemes.
• In ancient Egypt, major characters
• were larger and placed higher in the composition.
• In medieval illustrations, larger figures
• had more spiritual or social importance.
• Early Italian masters used shadowing
• to create an illusion of depth.
• In Byzantine art the settings of important figures
• were put in reverse perspective,
• where the vanishing point was in front of the picture.

Perspectives

• Sitting at a dockside cafe with her, I seemed
• to think the sea stood upright like a blue wall.
• A small boat crawled slowly down
• like a snail with sails. As I raised a toast to the two of us,
• a jet passed overhead like the head of an arrow
• leaving a small hole in a cloud, like the hole in my heart.
• I waited for the evening’s wine to reverse
• the effects of my afternoon coffee, while the sun set
• and the sea disappeared under red flags,
• inverted, as though I were inside a camera obscura.