After first learning about it, I was under the impression that linear perspective was limited only to works of art that portrayed the interior of a building. It occurred to me that if someone were to take the scene above (outside of the Met) and draw it, they’d have to use the technique in order to get the correct proportions and to convey depth, creating a three-dimensional scene on a flat surface.
-Carrissa Normil, Team Hestia (20)
This is a notebook I found in my home which have a picture of a town in Paris as it cover. The reason I chose this picture as a relevant information from the art class I had week ago is because I believe this picture is related to what call— Linear Perspective. Look closely to the river sides, the distance between the two river bank seems to be getting smaller as the river goes down, but what we know in our prospect is that the river banks will never touch each other, because they are actually parallel. The further the river goes, the smaller the distance is between the river bank. But one thing we know for sure is that there will always be a river between to two sides. Similarly to what the reading Linear Perspective Interaction, it says in the text that “linear perspective eliminates the multiple viewpoints that we see in medieval art, and creates an illusion of space from a single, fixed viewpoint.” This discovery of linear perspective was so important at the time because it had great influence to the Humanism of the Renaissance. Why? Because this prove that “‘it structured all images of reality to address a single spectator who, unlike God, could only be in one place at a time.'” It strongly support individualism, which it’s the most important things in the Renaissance.
This is a painting I found in the staircase of the Brooklyn College Student Center. It perfectly represents the use of the system of linear perspective to create the illusion of a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Below is a copy of the above image with the orthogonals traced in green and then the main lines extended to demonstrate the vanishing point.
The orthogonals are the lines that would be parallel were you actually to stand in that scene and measure them. Instead, when seen from a certain angle, they seem to converge on a single point. As you can see, this technique is very effective at tricking the eye and mind into thinking there is depth to the image.
The painting was set on the wall against the staircase so that as you descend the stairs, the vanishing point becomes eye level for you. This is how linear perspective works best, like we discussed regarding how Massacio’s painting of the Trinity was set at eye level for maximum effort.
-Chaya Ovits, team Venus
The Past in Present Tense 