The Psychology of Perspective and Renaissance Art

1999

Perception, 2010

Abstract. In an attempt to address major debates in perspective studies, this study brings perceptual research to bear on the problem of the status of perspective in the Renaissance. Between one school that see perspective as mathematically rigorous but imperfectly applied and another that regards perspective as an incoherent discipline, this study argues that errors in the use of perspective are consistent and can be classified into two tendencies: first, the tendency to normalize a foreshortened form toward frontality and, second, the tendency to flatten a three-dimensional object to reveal its hidden sides. These tendencies find confirmation both in the Renaissance doctrine of the judgment of the eye (giudizio dell’occhio) as well as in gestalt-oriented perceptual research. Numerous examples of their working are given in regard to the representation of human figures, architecture, and the relation of figures to space.

This PhD dissertation was about Italian Art , especially about the perspective in the Italian Renaissance Painting and its influence in Ideas and Science revolution. My big concern was to demonstrate how the early painters since the twelve century were creating a new conception of space in painting then in architecture. Giotto was the first one who applied the notion of third dimension in his paintings by using chiaroscuro technics. [light and shadow]. Chiaroscuro is considered as the basic step to linear perspective used as new geometric application. However, in theory the Euclidian solid geometry attempted to do more than replicate what the human eye perceives according to the tenets of Euclidian geometry, which medieval Europeans understood as synonymous with the vision of God. My approach to Italian Renaissance painting had various points of view, but my concentration was on E.H GOMBRICH and Samuel Y. Edgerton, JR. theorems through their important published books that I got at Penn fine art library in Philadelphia/PA. In parallel Erwin Panofsky theorems about Renaissance in art in general and Italian Art particularly were the theorems ground of my opinions and views. Indeed there was a big renovation in the way the painters were composing the space, there was a move from the middle age notion of creating a painting, which was very simple without any notion of third dimension. The space was flat and the painters couldn't compose the space as if there is deepness in it. I will here ask the same question that Samuel Y. Edgerton, JR. did in his book named " The Heritage of Giotto's Geometry ". Why was capitalist Europe after 1500 the first of all civilizations in the world to develop what is commonly understood as modern science, moving rapidly ahead of the previously more sophisticated cultures of the East? Why were some of the most spectacular achievements of both the Western artistic and scientific revolutions conceived in the very same place, the Tuscan city of Florence? Was it only coincidence that Giotto, the founder of Renaissance art, and Galileo, the founder of modern science, were native Tuscans? In fact the perspective geometry of Giotto and Brunelleschi had considerable influence on the visual thinking of Renaissance artisans-engineers, those practical technologists who carried out projects of all sorts for civic and princely patrons in times of war and peace, from designing fortifications and weaponry to the creation of monumental buildings and labor-saving machines. Filippi Brunelleschi was himself an artisan-engineer. His masterpiece, the soaring cupola above the cathedral in Florence, pays tribute both to his traditional engineering methods and to his further quantification of Giotto's three-dimensional visual perception.

Nexus Network Journal, 2010

Human Vision and Electronic Imaging V, 2000

Technè, 2019

The concept of a central perspective, as invented in the Early Renaissance, is unknown in ancient Greek painting. There is no visualization of space either in archaic images, where the fi gures stand on a continuous ground line, or in early classical ones, when a specifi c art of perspective (body perspective) is invented and the fi gures, in contrapposto postures, may stand on ground lines placed at various heights but are still not coordinated in size. Shortly after the middle of the 4th century, there appear new pictorial means: enhanced body perspective, often combined with a ground surface, viewed-from-below body perspective and color perspective. Even with these revolutionary innovations, no space as such comes into being in Greek painting; perspective appears only as applied to bodies.

Nexus Network Journal, 2003

demonstrates an approach and method for constructing perspectival space that may account for many of the distinguishing spatial and compositional features of key Renaissance paintings. The aim of the paper is also to show that this approach would not necessarily require, as a prerequisite, any understanding of the geometric basis and definitions of linear perspective as established by Alberti. The author discusses paintings in which the spatial/geometric structure has often defied conventional reconstruction when the strict logic of linear perspective is applied.

Art & Perception, 2020

Perspective plays an important role in the creation and appreciation of depth on paper and canvas. Paintings of extant scenes are interesting objects for studying perspective, because such paintings provide insight into how painters apply different aspects of perspective in creating highly admired paintings. In this regard the paintings of the Piazza San Marco in Venice by Canaletto in the eighteenth century are of particular interest because of the Piazza's extraordinary geometry, and the fact that Canaletto produced a number of paintings from similar but not identical viewing positions throughout his career. Canaletto is generally regarded as a great master of linear perspective. Analysis of nine paintings shows that Canaletto almost perfectly constructed perspective lines and vanishing points in his paintings. Accurate reconstruction is virtually impossible from observation alone because of the irregular quadrilateral shape of the Piazza. Use of constructive tools is discussed. The geometry of Piazza San Marco is misjudged in three paintings, questioning their authenticity. Sizes of buildings and human figures deviate from the rules of linear perspective in many of the analysed paintings. Shadows are stereotypical in all and even impossible in two of the analysed paintings. The precise perspective lines and vanishing points in combination with the variety of sizes for buildings and human figures may provide insight in the employed production method and the perceptual experience of a given scene.

2003

João Pedro Xavier Exhibit Review Nel segno di Masaccio. L'invenzione della prospettiva. (In the Traces of Masaccio. The Invention of Perspective.

There are only two perspectives among the extant drawings of Juan de Herrera (1533–1597), who succeeded Juan Bautista de Toledo as architect of the Escorial. Both belong to the collection of engravings of that building made in 1589, after construction had already been completed. One is a bird’s eye view showing the exterior of the building; the other is an interior perspective of the main altar. Although both drawings appear to be rigorous, the external perspective shows a cupola with an unrealistically high tambour, dome and lantern. This paper analyzes both of these, along with a third, a bird’s eye view drawing of the building site by an unknown artist, conserved at Hatfield House (England), contextualizing them within the Escorial’s construction process and Herrera’s knowledge of perspective. The analysis argues that the elongated representation of the cupola was not an error caused by the difficulty of constructing a rigorous perspective or representing curve forms but was instead a deliberate choice made by the architect to make the cupola appear taller and slimmer.