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Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 3
Lesson 1: A beginner's guide- How to recognize Italian Renaissance art
- Tiny timelines: global Europe
- Napoleon’s appropriation of Italian cultural treasures
- The study of anatomy
- Contrapposto explained
- Florence in the Early Renaissance
- Alberti’s revolution in painting
- Linear Perspective: Brunelleschi's Experiment
- How one-point linear perspective works
- Early Applications of Linear Perspective
- Linear perspective interactive
- Images of African Kingship, Real and Imagined
- A primer for Italian renaissance art
- Introduction to gender in renaissance Italy
- The Italian renaissance court artist
- The status of the artist in renaissance Italy
- Female artists in the renaissance
- The role of the workshop in Italian renaissance art
- Humanism in renaissance Italy
- Humanism in Italian renaissance art
- Why commission artwork during the renaissance?
- Types of renaissance patronage
- Renaissance Watercolours: materials and techniques
- Retro style in the Renaissance
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Linear Perspective: Brunelleschi's Experiment
An introduction to Filippo Brunelleschi's experiment regarding linear perspective, c. 1420, in front of the Baptistry in Florence . Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- At3:47the book states it was translated into Italian. Was it not written in Italian?(4 votes)
- It was probably written first in Latin.(4 votes)
- How long between the time Brunelleschi invented linear perspective until the time that all major artists all over Europe adopted this technique? In other words, how quickly did the technique spread?(4 votes)
- At2:25, what exactly do you mean by "accurate, scientific one-point perspective"? In what way is it "scientific"?
Prior to Brunelleschi, was there a prevalence of unscientific perspective? (And what would qualify as "unscientific perspective," anyway?)(1 vote)- Scientific = theory + predictions from the theory + tests / experiments that verify accuracy of predictions
So here, Brunelleschi has a theory of how to draw things so they looked right, predicted that if he did a drawing using the theory and then tested it (using the mirror) to check that lines in the actual view and in the drawing would appear in the same place in his field of view.
The more (independent) predictions / tests / experiments, the more credence a theory has. Any time the results of an experiment do not match the predictions, at the least, you need to modify the theory (maybe to state under what circumstances and to what level of accuracy it holds) - at worst, abandon it and look for a new theory. So, in principle, no scientific theory can ever be "proved" - at best it is accepted as a good theory because it has survived repeated rigorous testing!
Brunellschi's theory is good, but post Einstein / general relativity, is only an approximation - albeit an extremely good one for the conditions under which painters / artists work.
"Unscientific" perspective might be a few rules of thumb for artists to apply (e.g. make things further away from the viewer relatively smaller in a drawing) that might do a fair job / get reasonably close in at least some circumstances but which haven't been subject to any explicit testing / verification. AFAIK, prior to Brunelleschi there wasn't any tested theory, though many artists had tried to achieve some degree of "realism" with varying degrees of success.(5 votes)
- If I remember correctly, isn't this is about the same time that the Hockney-Falco theory suggest that optics and mirrors were used by artists to incorporate realism in their work? -- couldn't the "seeming rejection" of the linear perspective be attributed to not understanding or having access to the technology that would allow these artists to visually "see" and/or understand what Brunelleschi was able to perceive?(1 vote)
- Art was a competitive endeavor, competing for patronage, in this era. It would make sense that an artist would seek out any advantage, like optics and mirrors, as he strives for a patron's support.(4 votes)
- Was linear perspective discovered after Leonardo Da Vinci or before?(1 vote)
- Before.
Its use is discernible in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Annunciation in 1344 (http://www.poderesantapia.com/images/art/alannunciationsiena700.jpg), and though Brunelleschi's work demonstrated linear perspective, the first to write down the rules of its use that other artists might learn them was Leon Battista Alberti (in 1436). It is likely that da Vinci learned these principles while he was an apprentice for the famed artist Verrocchio in Florence (1466–76).(3 votes)
- At3:08, how does this way of drawing linear perspective differ from the use of camera obscura?(1 vote)
- Linear perspective allows you to work from imagination or memory, and is not dependent on location or light.
Camera obscura requires a pinhole camera, a dark space with a small aperture. Camera could be a little deceptive as there are entire structures that act like camera obscura. So camera obscura also requires good light, so the image will be projected, as well as the dark enclosure and aperture.(2 votes)
- Are there any videos on Claude Monet and his art?(1 vote)
- There are several. Look for them starting here: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/later-europe-and-americas/modernity-ap/a/monet-gare-saint-lazare(2 votes)
- I am confused with the handle and mirror part(1 vote)
- The mirror is used to reflect the image the artist has drawn or painted so that the artist can see it. The artist can move the mirror out of the way to look at the real object. By looking at the image in the mirror then comparing it with the real life object, the artist can tell if what they have drawn or painted matches the real life object. It's a test to see if what they drew or painted it accurate and life-like.(2 votes)
- so linear perspective started off as a experiment?(1 vote)
- What was the first painting that incorporated linear perspective?(1 vote)
- We can't say for sure. Like they said in the video, if there was linear perspective in Egypt, it had been lost. It could have possibly been due to the burning of the Alexandrian Library or the Serapeum which Coptic Pope Theophilus destroyed horrifically in 391 AD. Either way, if one-point linear perspective was initiated in ancient times, it was not found. As far as we know, Brunelleschi is probably one of the first to "re-institute" one-point linear perspective (if ancient painters did have knowledge of one-point linear perspective).(1 vote)
Video transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: According
to Filippo Brunelleschi's biographer, he stood just
inside the main doors of the Cathedral
of Florence when he conducted his first
perspectile experiment. And that's where we're
standing right now. DR. BETH HARRIS: We're
very close to it. Brunelleschi's
experiment demonstrated that linear perspective could
produce an incredibly realistic illusion of
three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
So this notion that we can actually develop a
system that would be relatively easy to follow, but
highly accurate, that could translate the
volumetric world that we move through, through time, onto a
frozen two-dimensional surface is really an
extraordinary achievement. There is some discussion
among scholars as to whether or not there
was linear perspective in the Ancient World. But if there was, it was lost. And linear perspective
was created, at least for us in
the Modern World, by Brunelleschi in the
15th century, around 1420. DR. BETH HARRIS: Right. And so some people would say
that Brunelleschi rediscovered linear perspective in case
the Ancient Greeks and Romans had had it before him. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
Brunelleschi had gone to Rome and had studied antiquity. And some have hypothesized
that he developed the basis for linear perspective
in an attempt to be able to accurately portray
the buildings that he was looking at, that he was
sketching, that he was drawing. DR. BETH HARRIS: It's
certainly something that artists, beginning,
really, in the 1300s, were creating forums. They were creating human figures
that were three-dimensional by using modeling and making the
figures bulky and monumental. Then you have the challenge
of putting those figures within a believable space. Giotto and Duccio had
approximated that space and began to create a
kind of earthly setting for their figures, but had not
achieved a perfect illusion of space for their
figures to inhabit. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: As the
culture becomes increasingly analytical, mathematical--
it's a trade-based culture-- this is a culture
that, in some ways, may have demanded of its
artists a kind of precision, a kind of mathematical
accuracy, in its representation. And Brunelleschi delivers that. So what does he do? DR. BETH HARRIS:
Brunelleschi creates a perspectively accurate
image of the baptistery and its surround. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Right. So Brunelleschi
develops a system with just a few
essential elements and, through these elements,
is able to construct accurate, scientific,
one-point perspective. They include a
vanishing point, which is at the viewer's
horizon line, as well as a series of orthogonals,
or illusionistically receding diagonals. What Brunelleschi
then does is he paints or draws an
image of the baptistery with linear perspective
and puts a small hole in the center of it. He takes that small drawing or
painting, puts a handle on it, and holds it in
front of his face-- but facing away from him. He then takes a mirror and
holds it in back of that. Now remember, his painting
has a small hole in it. So he can see through it
straight to the vanishing point. DR. BETH HARRIS: So he's holding
the mirror at arm's length and the actual painting
with the hole in it right in front of him for
his eye to look through. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Right. So he can see the painting's
reflection in the mirror. And if he pulls
the mirror away, he can see the actual baptistery. And he can bring the mirror
back to see the painting, move the mirror away to
see the actual baptistery, and see if, in fact, those
lines are well coordinated. And it was a very
convincing experiment. DR. BETH HARRIS:
What Brunelleschi saw in the reflection
of the painting looked exactly like the reality
that was in front of him. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: This would
have the most profound effect on the history of Western art. Virtually every painting
in the Western tradition, after the 15th
century, is responding to linear perspective--
either adopting it or very consciously
rejecting it for some reason. DR. BETH HARRIS:
And within a couple of decades after
Brunelleschi's discovery, Alberti, the brilliant
architect and theoretician, writes a book called "On
Painting," in which he codifies Brunelleschi's
discovery and creates a manual
for artists of how to use linear perspective and
how to make great paintings. [MUSIC PLAYING]