Perspective

1
Perspective the History of Art

• Torments of hell, Rock Carving with Painted
  Figures, C.12th Century

2
Perspective the History of Art
Booty from a city taken by Tiglathpileser, Carved
Relief from From Nimrur Iraq, 745-727 BC

• Perspective has been represented in many
  different ways throughout art history
• Most paintings produced outside of Europe
  (between the 15th and 20th Centuries) used
  differences in size of the figures to represent
  relative importance, rather than their physical
  distance from one another and the background.
• Also, when figures are not all arranged on a
  single plane the artist may have intended to
  indicate distance

3
Perspective the History of Art
Zhang Zedung, Going upriver at the Qing Ming
Festival, C. 1111-1126

• Chinese artists evolved a logical perspective
  technique for representing buildings, usually
  from above.
• Partially this was due to the expectation that
  the viewer would slowly unroll a horizontal
  scroll and thus they had no need to depict a
  panorama from a single perspective.
• Each group of buildings in this technique could
  have a perspective coherence unrelated to those
  on either side (note the roofs of the houses but
  also the underside of the bridge.

4
Perspective the History of Art
Landscape with Buddhist sages surrounded by
disciples, C. 1108, Anonymous woodcut

• Buddhist Monks brought this technique back to
  Japan from China, and thus this perspective
  method is widely seen in Japanese art as well!

5

• Multiple different perspectives are found in this
  early Chinese Scroll

Guo Xi-Early Spring, C. 1072
6

• Multiple different perspectives are found in this
  early Chinese Scroll

Li Cheng-Buddhist temple in the hills after rain,
C. 950
7

• This early Chinese scroll depicts a single
  perspective point

Muqi-Six persimmons, 13th Century
8
Early European Art Perspective
Giotto, C. 1304-1313 1. Marriage Feast of Canna
2. Raising of Lazarus 3. Lamentation 4. Noli me
Tangere

• European artists adopted various devises to
  suggest, rather than represent, three dimensional
  forms during the middle ages.
• Interiors were often shown in axial perspective,
  In the Giotto of the upper left the walls seem to
  slant inwards, presumably intended to be
  understood as parallel (joining the far wall at
  angles.

9
European Art Perspective
Donatello-St. Anthony healing the young man's
foot, C. 1446

• It is not until the early 15th Century that
  European artists began to use receding parallel
  lines at right angles to the field of view to
  give the appearance of convergence on a single
  point (the vanishing point).
• This technique was first used in a painting by
  Filippo Brunelleschi in 1415, and codified in a
  treatise by Leon Batista Alberti in 1435 (Both of
  these individuals were architects).

10
Perspective Framing

• Albert Durer, developed the technique of
  perspective framing in the late 15th Century as
  well as a technique of drawing from a single
  perspective

11
Linear Perspective, Multiple Vanishing Points
Jan Van Eyck-St. Marriage of Arnolfini, C. 1434

• Of course not all artists used these single
  perspective techniques, flemish artists ignore
  the single perspective technique until well into
  the 16th century.
• Here the Artist Van Eyck has used multiple
  vanishing points

12
Historical use of Perspective Cues