The Art Of Perspective

When I was in London nine years ago, I had the opportunity to visit
The National Gallery, a museum founded in 1824 that houses a vast collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900 in its home on Trafalgar Square.

Being in the hallowed halls of this art palace and sauntering down the shiny marble slabs of elegance, I was taken by these gargantuan paintings that made me feel like I had been transported by a time machine.

I remember one painting in particular that beckoned me to come near. It was The Tribute Money, (pictured above) by Masaccio.

The colors were warm and comforting and the painting itself had a remarkable quality as if I could walk into it and touch the flesh of the subjects.

It wasn’t until years later that I found out that the method in which Masaccio used to transport me into the painting was that of perspective.

The art of perspective started back in the Italian Renaissance with Masaccio (born Tommaso Cassai or in some accounts Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone.)

Masaccio was the first illustrious painter of the Quattrocento period. Apart from his frescoes being the earliest monuments of Humanism, he was instrumental in using scientific perspective in his paintings for greater realism.

Masaccio knew the importance of perspective - seeing things as they really are - and successfully employed the vanishing point technique in art for the first time.

In a perspective drawing, a vanishing point is a point to which parallel lines appear to converge. The amount of vanishing points (VP’s) determined the perspective technique.

Linear perspective is a drawing that utilizes 1-3 vanishing points.




Curvilinear perspective is a drawing that utilizes 5 vanishing points mapped into a circle with 4 VPs at the cardinal headings N,W,S,E and one at the circle origin.

Reverse perspective is a drawing where vanishing points are placed outside the painting with the illusion that they are "in front of" the painting.

Masaccio was a master illusionist by capturing a three-dimensional reality that no other artist had done before.

He also teaches us that without perspective in life we are nothing more than one-dimensional surfaces - without movement or depth.

Perspective is an art, but we don’t need a brush to capture it - just an open mind and an open heart.

If we only see one vision, then we are still blind to others. Without perspective, we are single minded, closed to new ideas, growth, change and the ability to feel all around us.

Perspective encompasses compassion and lets us see around us not just in front of us.

Through a formal analysis of his masterwork The Tribute Money, (pictured above) Masaccio teaches the basic principles of Renaissance perspective.

The Tribute Money is considered one of the first paintings in the history of the Italian Renaissance to comfortably integrate figures, architecture and landscape.

Masaccio depicts the rarely painted biblical story of Peter's confrontation with Roman tax collectors. Peter, who sought instruction from Christ (the central grouping in the painting) was told that he would find the tax money in the mouth of a fish near the shore of Lake Galilee.

On the left side of the painting, Peter is seen extracting the money from the mouth of the fish, and on the right, Peter pays the Roman tax collector. By using a method known as continuous/simultaneous narrative, Masaccio represents the entire story in one painting.

What is your perspective on perspective?