Getting the point
Move around the columns in this preparatory drawing for Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi and explore how perspective works.
Was Leonardo’s work pointless? Find out here… (expand)
In Leonardo’s time light was thought to travel from the edges of
objects to the eye, forming what is essentially a cone with the eye at
the tip and the object at the broader base. With this in mind, artists
such as Leonardo used a system, now known as linear perspective, to
reproduce this effect in the hope of creating a sense of depth in their
work.
The system relies on the use of something called the vanishing
point. This is the point in the picture where apparently parallel
(though usually imaginary) lines seem to meet up. The number of
vanishing points in a picture indicates just what type of perspective
technique is being used.
Linear perspective relies on there being between one and three
vanishing points in a picture. Far more complex perspective techniques
can also be used, although these do tend to melt the brain.
Linear perspective is thought to have been invented by an architect
from Florence called Brunelleschi, whose ideas were embraced and
developed by the Renaissance artists. The first published account of
these ideas was in On Painting, by Alberti, which was first published
in 1436 but which can still be found today.
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