Renaissance Linear Perspective

Timeline

1. c. 1415Piazza del Duomo, Florence · TuscanyFilippo Brunelleschi performed the "panel experiment" before the Florence Baptistery: he painted the Baptistery precisely on a small wooden panel, pierced a hole in the back, and had the viewer look through the hole so that the reflected image in a mirror coincided with the painting, proving that a three-dimensional scene could be projected onto a two-dimensional picture by geometric rules. This experiment first revealed empirically the law of the vanishing point, laying the mathematical foundations of linear perspective.
2. 1435Florence · TuscanyLeon Battista Alberti wrote De Pictura in Latin in 1435, systematically expounding the method of perspectival composition for the first time: using a "veil" (velo) grid to aid divided observation, and constructing space by having parallel lines on the ground converge to a vanishing point. Translated into Italian the following year, the book became Europe's earliest treatise on painting, transforming perspective from an artisan's secret into a teachable geometric science.
3. c. 1474–1480Borgo San Sepolcro · TuscanyThe mathematician and painter Piero della Francesca wrote De Prospectiva Pingendi, elevating perspective to rigorous geometry, introducing multiple vanishing points and calculations for projecting objects from arbitrary angles, and providing the mathematical tools for Pacioli's De Divina Proportione and Leonardo's perspective studies.
4. c. 1490–1520Italy (Florence, Rome, Venice, Milan) · ItalyBetween 1490 and 1520, Leonardo further studied atmospheric perspective and curved-surface projection in his Treatise on Painting manuscripts; Raphael brought multiple-point perspective to its fullest in the School of Athens fresco in the Vatican Stanze; and Michelangelo made extensive use of foreshortening in the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Linear perspective thereby became the common visual language of European painting, architectural drawings, and printed illustrations, spreading to Northern Europe (Dürer and others) through printing technology.