Introduction

In this dossier, we will cover the theme of Perspective in art and its context within Europe. We will look at 10 examples of perspective in European artworks, and we will present one classroom activity that will help us to learn about different types of perspective and see if we can tell the difference between them. 

The objectives of the dossier are to:

• learn about the origins of perspective and the reasons why artist felt the need to develop it further;
• understand the context of the progress of perspective;
• learn the different styles of perspective and the techniques used;
• be able to identify what kind of perspective has been used in a painting. 

European background 

We have chosen the theme of perspective for this dossier for two primary reasons:

• Cultural identity influences the creation of art. To understand why the artists used a specific type of perspective in every period, can help us to find out a little bit more about the artwork and its context. What moved the artist? What was the message they want us to perceive? In this dossier we can learn about art and history, which are two concepts that always go hand in hand.
• Enhance creative thinking among adults. Art was once regarded as a simple and straightforward educational tool. It was created with the intention of demystifying and simplifying complex concepts so that they may be easily understood. Also, art was utilized to emphasize and focus on concepts that, even if we liked them, we might have rejected if they were not presented in an explicit or appealing manner. Religion – Christianity – is a shining example of the educational application of art in Europe that has been communicated through art. European Christianity has left a vast architectural and artistic legacy, including sculptures, not because the Church cared so much about beauty, but because it recognized its power. Art is a potent instructional tool that can heighten the impact of a notion or idea. Not only that but it can act as a catalyst into empowering our creative capacity. When we are exposed to art environment it helps us engage in abstract and analytical thinking. We become more receptive to out-of-the-box ideas and approaches.

The theme

The need to represent space in all its depth has been a subject of research by artists from the old times. The word perspective, which comes from the Latin perspicere, means “to see through”. But beyond talking about the concept, it is interesting to review its origin and trajectory, as well as its influence on painting.

Throughout history, the interest in representing the third dimension on a flat surface has been very present. The Greeks were the first to discover foreshortening, which is based on the idea that a person cannot see an object in its entirety at once. 

Therefore, they represented in sculpture what could be seen from a certain point, without taking into account the other elements.

In classical Greek times, artists and architects knew perspective, they knew that distant objects must be drawn smaller than those that are close. Vitruvius confirms this in the only Latin treatise on architecture that exists (46 B.C.) when he specifically mentions that perspective was well known since ancient times.

Background

Medieval Art

One of the most outstanding characteristics of medieval painting, before the discovery of perspective, was the different size of objects according to their relative position in the image. But most of the time this difference in size did not keep a relative proportion with the surrounding objects.

As seen in the following image, the men in the background are simply too large for the image, and almost as tall as the trees. In general, medieval artists tended to make the preeminent objects in the background too large in comparison to their perspective representation, even though they clearly understood that objects in the background appear to get smaller with distance.

Two of the most important concepts in the representation of scale and distance in medieval art (direct precedents of perspective representation) are conceptualization and polydimensionality.

In conceptualization, the relative size of the objects in an image is given mainly by the absolute, or relative, importance that the author gives to that object, regardless of whether it is located in the foreground or background. The rest of the objects are subordinated, in size and relative scale, to the main ones, producing distortions in the size of the figures in the images, as can be seen in the following painting, in which Jesus makes his entry into Jerusalem. The most important character here would be Jesus, who is as tall as the walls of the city.

Another interesting concept to understand the pre-perspective medieval art, is poly-dimensionality. Polydimensionality is when some objects are shown from a different point of view than the rest of the image, almost always looking for the best position to show those objects. This makes that even some figures are represented from different simultaneous points of view, as seen in the following image, where the wall surrounding the garden is represented as seen from above, instead of horizontally, like the rest of the image. 

The most common technique in this period was to mix both types of representations, as in the previous image, where to the multidimensionality is added the conceptualization, because as we can see, the garden wall itself starts from the foreground, although it is much smaller than the figures represented in the same foreground, as the artista didn’t find it as important.

The person who happens to be the inventor of perspective as we know it today, is Brunelleschi, the Italian artist, who began to apply the techniques already described of lines and vanishing points to his constructions and drawings, to give a greater and more complete sensation of three-dimensionality and spaciousness. Brunelleschi used perspective to capture in his drawings an approximation, as faithful as possible, to the final result of his future constructions. Joseph W. Dauben shows us, in his pages on The Art of Renaissance Science, two images: a drawing by Brunelleschi himself of his Church of the Holy Spirit and a photograph of the same church seen from the same place as the drawing, which gives us an idea of Brunelleschi’s perspectival perfection.

Renaissance Art

It was in the Renaissance when Florentine painters began to seriously investigate perspective as a science, with its laws and mathematical principles. Geniuses such as Mategna, Ghiberti, Massaccio and others established certain necessarily observable principles for reproducing distance.

It was Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 – 1446), one of the great Florentine architects of the Renaissance who discovered the mathematical system of calculating the proportion in which objects decrease in size as they move away.

Brunelleschi’s theories influenced Paolo Uccelo (1397 – 1476). In his famous scene of the Battle of San Romano, painted around 1450, Uccello applied geometry in his composition. In the foreground he painted a dead soldier, the first foreshortened body to appear in a painting. However, Ucello’s work is somewhat rigid; he did not master the use of light and shadow, so important to emphasize depth and space.

The main characteristic of the Renaissance was the fase that they moved away from the Medieval concept of God (and the church) as the omnipotent center of life, acquiring more interest in the study of men and the natural world.

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 – 1519) a student of botany, anatomy, engineering and painting, represents the investigative spirit of the Renaissance.

Although it had already been used in antiquity, it is Da Vinci who imposes the atmospheric perspective in the Renaissance, achieving a much more accomplished perspective effect, and breaking with the impression of hardness and rigidity of Quattrocento painting, which has evolved in perspective, but only linearly (from vanishing points).

Of all the types of perspective, the atmospheric (also called “aerial”) is the most effective, since it uses in its conception the role played by light and color in our perception.

It produces the sensation of depth by imitating the effect of the atmosphere, so that objects appear paler and bluer the farther away they are from the viewer.

The reason for this is very simple: dust and moisture particles floating in the atmosphere scatter light. Light of shorter wavelength (blue) scatters more and light of longer wavelength (red) scatters less. This is why the sky is blue, and why dark objects seen from a distance appear bluish in color.

Artists reproduce this natural effect by using faint, pale, bluish tones on the horizon. 

Leonardo explains it this way: “Of things darker than the air, the farthest away will be the least dark. Of things lighter than air, the least white will be the furthest from the eye”.

Renaissance artists quickly became interested in attaining the laws and principles of perspective in order to add that attitude to their works.

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) meticulously employed the new technique of perspective to add detail and precision to his works. His famous “Hare” painted in 1502 is a lesson in illustrative drawing.

The Renaissance that spread in Europe during the fifteenth century shifted the focus of attention to men and, supported by advances in philosophy and science, brought a new analytical discipline and perspective to represent the form and space. The figures acquire greater volume and flexibility whose scenarios showed more clearly the three-dimensional space.

Working with human models and copying the environment in which they lived. Artists began to draw what they saw instead of relying on conventionalisms acquired the study of anatomy and perspective became part of the artist’s work, allowing them to adequately represent what they saw.

Impressionism

The use of drawing as a means of investigating nature, experimentation with geometry, perspective, proportion, composition and free expression as a product of the Renaissance dominated art and artistic training in the West, until the emergence of Modernism in the late nineteenth century, especially related to the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

The Impressionists, while still representing the real world, accepted the two-dimensional quality of the plane: art was no longer only figurative but also abstract. With these new attitudes, artists were encouraged to study other non-Western artistic traditions, becoming increasingly important to drawing scholars as many of these traditions have been incorporated into the work of many 19th and 20th century artists.

Modern Art

Modern Art represents an evolving body of ideas among a number of painters, sculptors, writers and artists who, both individually and collectively, sought new approaches to the craft of art. Although modern art began in retrospect around 1850 with the advent of realism, the approaches and styles of modern art were defined and redefined throughout the 20th century. Practitioners of each new style were determined to develop a visual language that was original and representative of the times.

From the Renaissance through the 19th century the pictorial plane was seen as a window, through which the world was viewed.

Crak! by Roy Lichtenstein, 1964 – courtesy of ©The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. This artwork is under a copyright, therefore it cannot be used in this dossier. The original artwork is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, USA.

The Dutchman Mauris Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) was a draftsman and engraver who revolutionized the perspective of the plane and is considered the interpreter of the mathematical concepts, why are abstract by definition, that support the relativity of space-time proposed by Einstein in 1905 and 1915, an idea continued by his followers, extending, deepening and even modifying it.

Perspective is undoubtedly one of the most important resources that make his engravings and drawings so interesting. He often uses visual games to simultaneously superimpose several points of view of a single object or space, usually geometric. This transgression or combination of the rules of representation requires a great control of the projection planes and a knowledge of optics to generate these impossible perspectives. Thus, with references to polyhedrons and opposing geometric dimensions, with games of perception typical of illusionists, Escher worked with perspective as a means to play with certain concepts.

The optical games and perceptual deceptions that he carried out on the plane of the paper make his drawing become, in a certain way, a visual poetry. His work tends to create a confrontation or dichotomy between concepts such as day and night, sea and sky, the symmetry of the composition or the confusion between opposites such as descending and ascending, falling and rising. In his modular networks, one animal often transforms into another, or fits into its emptiness, into the negative of its form. His imagery also refers to an infinite circuit, to a circle of eternal return or perpetual motion. These poetic images speak to us of an idea very typical of his time: the relativity of both perception and the meaning of things. Everything that goes up comes down, or perhaps goes up and down simultaneously, because everything depends on the point of view from which it is shown.

In his drawings, space is simulated with various codes of representation that establish various levels of reading and create a trompe l’oeil that makes us reflect on what is real and what is drawing. In this sense, Escher constructs space beyond perspective, simulating that the creation comes to life on paper, that the tesserae drawings become real or directly that it is the drawn hand that draws itself. This great technical control of the spatial codes, both two and three dimensions, is what makes his works have an almost mathematical finish, and gives veracity to the deception. 

They say there are no coincidences, especially in the fields of science and art, which, with some exceptions, go hand in hand. Escher, like Leonardo da Vinci in his time, managed to capture the crucial moment of the civilization in which they developed.

Postmodern Art

Postmodernism is a very complex term, which has different approaches depending on the author or artist we are referring to. It is not a term that defines an artistic style. Like the term modernity, postmodernity defines a cultural period.

Within this type of art, the following are relevant to the subject of perspective in the context of Europe.

Abstract Expressionism – Mark Tobey

In an attempt to deny traditional forms and designs, he adopted the techniques of oriental calligraphy to create what he called white writing, a confusing pattern of filiform lines of white ink on a dark background. A sense of depth is suggested in these works by the overlapping of lines rather than by the use of traditional perspective.

Op Art

Among the most representative works of Op Art are the pictures painted by Victor Vasarely during the 1960s and 1970s. In Vonal-Stri (1975) the gaze rushes towards the black square in the center of the canvas. The sense of movement is enhanced by the illusion of curvature of the plane on the left.

New European Painting

New European Painting is a historical artistic term used to describe contemporary painting in Europe from the 1980s and 1990s to the present. This movement is characterized by a new figuration in relation to the previously dominant American abstraction, marked by our collective history, memory and post-war trauma. 

When we think of perspective in traditional terms, we most likely associate it with the concept of linear, one- and two-point perspective. 

Today’s postmodern and contemporary artists take the principle of perspective beyond the basic concept of linear perspective and view it from an entirely different perspective.

Julian Beever is a well-known street artist who uses anamorphosis to create the illusion of three dimensions. When viewed from the preferred angle, Beever’s sidewalk drawings have a height and depth that astounds the viewer. However, by simply walking around these sidewalk drawings, the illusion is lost.

Felice Varini also incorporates the concept of localized perspective in his work. When viewed from the correct angle, Varini’s paintings of lines and circles magically float in space. When the viewer moves slightly to the left or right, the work appears to be nothing more than strange markings on the walls and floor.

Pedagogical Approach

Why is this theme relevant to adult learners?

Art history provides a means by which we can understand our human past and its relationship to our present, because the act of making art is one of humanity’s most ubiquitous activities. Perspective is relevant in this case because it helps us understand what mattered for the artist in each period. For instance, in theoretical perspective we can see a reflection of the society back then. With Renaissance we start seeing how the curiosity and the need to go deeper starts.

Learning about perspective in the art of European history can also boost the creativity of adult learners, and provide with more tools to understand and explain art.

What are the learning outcomes of embedding this cultural/art theme with an educational activity?

All kids in school learn how to draw a cube. The basics of perspective. Everything around us follow these rules of perspective. We have learned about its: it’s all illusion, but perspective technique skills play a major role in drawing and painting. When we paint with those skills, we can understand better the bigger picture of our work. So, if we teach our students how to use those perspective skills, we will help them have a more spatial point of view of the art world.

How to do it: strategies, tools and techniques.

Adult learners will study the history behind specific artworks through the techniques used and will be able to create their own painting putting in practice that knowledge.

Artworks

Art-work #1 The Tempest by Giorgione (Renaissance)

• Its position-relation to the theme: aerial perspective or atmospheric perspective
• Short description: a natural landscape with architectural elements and three characters visible in the foreground. In the background it is noticeable that the structures are about to be taken by a storm.
• Location and European dimension: Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, Italy
• The Author: Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco (Giorgione). Giorgione was an Italian painter of the Venetian school during the High Renaissance, who died in his thirties. He is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are firmly attributed to him.
• Possible educational exploitation: Giorgione was a master of aerial perspective. He used it so correctly that it reaches sublime levels of realism. In this painting we can appreciate a remarkable aerial perspective: the color degrades as the distance increases, as does the sharpness of the contours, which almost disappears in the landscape background. The contrast between the clarity of colors and contours of the foreground and the black and threatening stormy background is very evident. The vanishing lines are clear: the creek and the line of houses. 

Art-work #2 Las Meninas by Velázquez (Baroque)

• Its position-relation to the theme: aerial perspective or atmospheric perspective
• Short description: there is a dark room whose center is the portrait of the Infanta Margarita surrounded by her small court. To the left is Velázquez in front of a canvas. In the background there are paintings and a man standing in a doorway.
• Location and European dimension: Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
• The Author: Diego Velázquez. Velázquez was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period (c. 1600-1750). He began to paint in a precise tenebrist style, later developing a freer manner characterized by bold brushwork. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family and commoners, culminating in his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).
• Possible educational exploitation: This great work is the bible of perspective, a compendium of all the strategies aimed at deceiving us spatially through the recreation of an illusory space. In Las Meninas we find:

• Linear perspective: with lines and vanishing points
• Colour perspective
• Diminishing perspective
• High point of view
• Alternating light-penumbra

Art-work #3 Retable of St Christopher, unknown painter (Gothic)

• Its position-relation to the theme: theological perspective
• Short description: a saint in the middle of the altarpiece with images of clerics around him.
• Location and European dimension: Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
• The Author: Unknown
• Possible educational exploitation: in medieval Gothic art the most important figures, in this case St. Christopher, are larger. We cannot find a sensation of depth, only figures on a flat surface. The colours do not present gradation nor light effects are reflected. It is like children’s drawings, splendid in its simplicity and ingenuity, but lacking pictorial science that could resemble painting to reality

Art-work #4 The Mona Lisa by da Vinci (Italian Renaissance)

• Its position-relation to the theme: sfumato
• Short description: portrait of a half-smiling woman with hands resting one on top of each other
• Location and European dimension: the Louvre Museum, Paris, France
• The Author: Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor and architect. Leonardo’s genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal,[4] and his collective works compose a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo.
• Possible educational exploitation: Da Vinci’s pictorial concerns led him to research in the field of perspective, where he contributed his famous “sfumato”, a technique consisting of blurring the contours, dispensing with the black line that contains the figures and achieving a vaporous and suggestive atmosphere. With gradual sfumato (the farther away the more obvious) a great sensation of realism is achieved, the objects appear more blurred the greater the distance between them and the observer

Art-work #5 The School of Athens by Raphael (Italian Renaissance)

• Its position-relation to the theme: conical or frontal perspective
• Short description: an idealized scene of the classical world and its relationship with philosophy is represented. Therefore, Raphael unites in the same space all the classical philosophers, placing Plato and Aristotle at its center. Heraclitus, Euclid, Alciabades, Diogenes, Protagoras, etc. make an appearance in this painting too. As a curiosity, many of these classical figures are represented through portraits of their contemporaries.
• Location and European dimension: Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
• The Author: Rafael Sanzio. Raphael was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.
• Possible educational exploitation: In the fresco we see an absolutely symmetrical and balanced composition (the figures are distributed in symmetrical masses to the right and left of the vertical axis of the image as well as the elements of the architecture represented). The image is ordered with a very precise drawing, with a clear preponderance of color and a perfect frontal conical perspective (whose vanishing point is on the vertical axis of the image) and allows it to represent with absolute precision the architecture in which the characters are placed.

Art-work #6 Mural in a building by Patrick Commecy (New European Painting)

• Its position-relation to the theme: perfect perspective and depth with 3D effect
• Short description: an alley with stairs and neighbors going about their daily life, painted on the side of a building
• Location and European dimension: Eyzin-Pinet, France
• The Author: Patrick Commecy. French artist Patrick Commecy is based in Eyzin-Pinet, France, but travels all over the country to paint walls. Using the facade of buildings as his canvas, he captures the history and culture of the place through his art. Commecy uses trompe-l’œil, a technique where realistic looking scenes are used to create optical illusions. What’s interesting here is that while these realistic yet fake facades trick you at first glance, some of the people painted there were once real. Commecy often paints many notable people from the history of the town the mural is in.
• Possible educational exploitation: the perspective work is so precise, that it really looks like there is an alley in the middle of the building

Art-work #7 “Cinq Ellipses Ouvertes,” Exhibition: Constellation by Felice Varini (New European Painting)

• Its position-relation to the theme: localized perspective
• Short description: lines drawn on several buildings that seen from an exact side give the impression of being hoops or protruding piers
• Location and European dimension: entry of The Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France
• The Author: Felice Varini. Varini is a Paris-based, Swiss artist who was nominated for the 2000/2001 Marcel Duchamp Prize. Mostly known for his geometric perspective-localized paintings in rooms and other spaces, using projector-stencil techniques. Felice paints on architectural and urban spaces, such as buildings, walls and streets. Varini argues that the work exists as a whole – with its complete shape as well as the fragments. “My concern,” he says “is what happens outside the vantage point of view.”
• Possible educational exploitation: The depth work is accurate and really gives the impression that the object is protruding from the “canvas”

Art-work #8 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) by Picasso (Cubism)

This artwork is under a copyright, therefore it cannot be presented in this dossier. The original artwork can be seen in Museum of Modern Art in New York, USA.

• Its position-relation to the theme: without perspective, this was the beginning of moving away from the norms set by the Renaissance when they realized that there are other possibilities
• Short description: five naked women, two of them wearing African-style masks. They are in a kind of half circle and in front of them there is a bowl of fruit.
• Location and European dimension: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, United States
• The Author: Pablo Picasso. Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.
• Possible educational exploitation: Picasso eliminates all the sublime of tradition, breaking with Realism, the canons of spatial depth and the existing ideal of the female body, reducing the whole work to a set of planes

Art-work #9 Drawing Hands by Escher (Modern Art)

• Its position-relation to the theme: 2D and 3D
• Short description: two hands painting each other at the same time
• Location and European dimension: It is referenced in the book Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter (Escher was a dutch artist)
• The Author: Maurits Cornelis Escher. Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. Despite wide popular interest, Escher was for most of his life neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the late twentieth century, he became more widely appreciated, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions around the world.
• Possible educational exploitation: It is an example of what author Douglas Hofstadter has called a “strange loop,” a paradoxical system that continually repeats itself in a self-referential manner without seeming to have a beginning or an end. Escher was fascinated by these paradoxical recursions, whether he explored them in the form of staircases, waterfalls, or self-illustrated hands. This is also one of Escher’s clearest explorations of the illusionism implicit in representational art, as the line between two-dimensional drawing and three-dimensional reality are skillfully at play

Art-work #10 The Persistence of Memory by Dali (Surrealism)

This artwork is under a copyright, therefore it cannot be presented in this dossier. The original artwork can be seen in Museum of Modern Art in New York, USA.

• Its position-relation to the theme: Linear perspective
• Short description: a sight beach with rocks on the right side in the background. A little tree or branch coming out what seems to be a table. 3 melting clocks, one on the branch, one on the table, and another one over what looks like a human or animal figure. There in an orange clock at the bottom left of the painting covered in ants.
• Location and European dimension: The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, United States (Catalan painter)
• The Author: Salvador Dalí. Dalí was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.
• Possible educational exploitation: This painting represents a linear perspective. The objects in front of the piece, the tree, the clocks, the table stand out more than the objects that the artist wants the viewers to notice like the mountain, the sky, the ocean, and the rocks in the background.

Practical activities

Activity 1 – Analyze a painting, its perspective and context

Aims

Analize two pictures (try that they’re very different from each other) and try to identify what kind of perspective has been used and the reasons behind the artists intentions.

Materials

A laptop, computer or tablet per student or per group of students and access to internet.

Preparatory stage

Show the two painting to the students, ask them to search the author’s biography and period.

Development

Present two artworks to the students and ask them to do a little research about the context first. The idea is that they have some knowledge of the timeline so it’s easier for them to proceed.

Then, in teams or individually, ask them to write down :

• what kind of perspective has been used;
• what are their thoughts about what could have moved the artist to do it that way;
• compare one painting to the other.

Example of two paintings that would go well together:

• Handouts or practical sheets – this guide of types of perspective and how to identify them:

Types of perspective drawing — Cristina Teaching Art

References

• Dauben, Joseph W.: The Art of Renaissance Science
• Dutch, Steven: Perspective in Art – Slides
• Perspective art lesson
• Todo Sobre Arte
• Contemporary Art Issue (CAI)
• The Art of Education University
• Sartle ; blog
• Joy of museums virtual tours: Virtual Tours of Museums, Art Galleries, and Historic Sites
• Bavarian State Painting Collections
• Totally History