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The Development of One-Point Perspective in Renaissance Italy
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by Jacqueline Marie Musacchio
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, New York
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Leon Battista Alberti's text, On Painting, was written in Latin as De Pictura in 1435; he made an Italian translation of it as Della Pittura in 1436. It is a key primary source for understanding the development of one-point perspective in Renaissance Italy. The assigned reading selection, pages 54-58, is admittedly technical, but it demonstrates how artists learned to structure their compositions to create a convincing three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface. You should use this assignment in the art history survey course when you are discussing early fifteenth-century art in Italy.
Goals
- Students will be able to understand and apply Alberti's methods to Italian Renaissance art.
- Students will recognize deviations from these methods later in the semester.
Activities and Instruction
Assign the excerpt from Alberti and have students come to class ready to discuss and apply it. You can begin this lesson with a review of earlier attempts to create logical space. Although examples survive from antiquity, it might work best to begin with the Byzantine world. The mosaic of Theodora and Her Attendants, from the church of San Vitale in Ravenna circa 547, is a good starting point (Stokstad 1999, 7-32). Ask students to analyze the composition of this mosaic. They should recognize that the frieze of figures stand in a limited setting across the foreground plane, and that the overlapping feet, indicating that Theodora stands slightly forward of the rest, are the only real attempt at representing space. From here you can show Giotto's Ognisssanti Madonna, circa 1310 (Stokstad 16-78); students should note that it uses both a hierarchical scale (the Madonna was painted larger than the other figures because she was the most important figure in the painting) and intuitive perspective (Giotto approximates the appearance of figures standing in front of other figures and those becoming smaller in the distance, although any sense of background was blocked by the flat gold ground). Giotto's contemporaries were content with these characteristics, so developing the space further, to render a more convincing three-dimensional reality, was not necessary.
But artists and patrons in the fifteenth century had a greater interest in depicting the world around them in a recognizable and convincing fashion; hierarchical and intuitive systems were no longer appropriate. The Renaissance advocated an interest in learning and the arts and focused on the rise of the individual. With this human-centered interest so dominant, and a new appreciation of the scientific study of the natural world, artists needed to show their figures inside believable space.
Filippo Brunelleschi was the first to conduct investigations into the development of a one-point perspective system. By showing students various works of art produced during the 1420s, you can demonstrate how many artists were experimenting with his ideas. But they were not codified until 1435, when his friend, Leon Battista Alberti, wrote his treatise On Painting. Remember, however, that the printing press was not invented until the 1450s by the German goldsmith Gutenberg, and there wasn't a press in Florence until even later in the fifteenth century; circulation of this theory had to be done on a limited scale through handwritten copies or word of mouth. The fact that these ideas spread so rapidly is an indication of the close-knit artist community in Florence during this time.
You should use a diagram to illustrate the main ideas behind Alberti's text; an excellent example is Figure 8 on page 55 of On Painting (another can be found in Frederick Hartt and David G. Wilkins, History of Italian Renaissance). Alberti wanted artists to create a window through which the viewer would see the actual world rendered in careful and believable perspective. To do this, artists pick a vanishing point, preferably in the center of the composition. Then they mark off units equivalent to one-third the height of a human figure if that figure were standing in the foreground; in the diagrams, the figure in the corner represents that foreground figure. Lines called orthogonals are then drawn from these marks to the vanishing point. Another space is sketched to the side, off the painting or relief, using the same measurements, and horizontal lines are then extended across to the original window. This allows artists to figure out how tall things should be when they are placed behind the foreground plane. In other words, if an object is three units high in the front, it is still three units high in the back, although the units have gotten proportionally smaller because that part of the scene is further away. This system allowed artists to devise convincing compositions with accurately rendered spatial relationships.
Several artists who knew Brunelleschi and Alberti made paintings and sculptures in the 1420s and 1430s in compliance with this perspective system, evidence that the ideas were circulating around Florence before they were codified in Alberti's text. You can use Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise (1425-1452), particularly the Isaac panel (Stokstad 17-39), or Masaccio's Trinity fresco (circa 1425, Stokstad 17-48) to demonstrate these ideas to the students once they understand the basic concepts. In many cases, this system also helped reveal the narrative. You can show students how the artist used the central point of the composition or the receding orthogonals to highlight important details of the iconography.
Follow-Up
The importance of one-point perspective as a means to structure two-dimensional paintings and sculptural reliefs had a lasting impact on western art; indeed, until the late nineteenth century this was the method employed by almost every artist. It is therefore critical that you ensure students understand this concept and can apply it at this point in the survey.
You can use additional works of art to drive these points home. You might show slides of a variety of works and ask students to analyze their compositions according to Alberti's tenets; they can do so verbally or visually. Among the most obvious are Paolo Uccello's Battle of San Romano, additional panels from Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, Donatello's Feast of Herod (Stokstad 17-40), Masaccio's Tribute Money (Stokstad 17-50), the anonymous Ideal City View, or Raphael's School of Athens (Stokstad 18-16). You might also make photocopies of these paintings and reliefs and have students use highlighters to diagram each one, labeling the parts as necessary and analyzing the resulting composition with these features in mind.
Later in the year, as you get to the late nineteenth century, be sure to point out the alternative perspective systems employed by new artists. Ask students to talk about these new systems and to analyze the reasons behind the change in composition that they represent.
References
Alberti, Leon Battista. 1991. On Painting, 54-58. Trans. Cecil Grayson. London: Penguin Books. (Or any edition, Book I, chapters 19-21.)
Hartt, Frederick, and David G. Wilkins. 2003. History of Italian Renaissance Art. 5th ed., 275. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Stokstad, Marilyn, et al. 1999. Art History. Revised ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc.
Jacqueline Marie Musacchio is an assistant professor of art at Vassar College. She has degrees from Wellesley College and Princeton University. Her area of expertise is Italian Renaissance art, on which she has presented papers at both national and international conferences. Her publications include the award-winning book The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (1999), as well as Marvels of Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics from the Corcoran Gallery of Art Collection (2004), and various articles on birth trays, marriage chests, devotional art, dowry goods, and Fascist revivalism.
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