The Renaissance: Florence Leads the Way - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 101

PERSPECTIVE, SHADOWS, LIGHT
Most everyone who reads these pages takes perspective for granted. We are so used to it
in the visual arts that we fail to realize that it is an optical trick—a technique creating an
illusion of reality that makes a two-dimensional picture (width and height) appear three-
dimensional (width, height, depth). Perspective is a triumph of space. With perspective,
a picture on a flat, two-dimensional surface tricks the viewer into thinking that he or she
can look into the far distance. Like so much else that we associate with the modern world,
perspective is a rediscovery of the Renaissance. And once again, it is Brunelleschi who is
given credit (along with his pupil, Alberti) for pioneering the rediscovery. The Greeks and
Romans had found ways of conveying distance by foreshortening. In the Middle Ages, fig-
ures and buildings “near” to the viewer were made large; those “far” from the viewer were
merely made small. And the painting was clearly two-dimensional.
Brunelleschi invented perspective through experiment. In one hand, he held a small
mirror. In the other, he held a panel of wood with a small hole in it. Through the hole, he
looked at the reflection of a building in the mirror. And then, through memory, he replicated
the reflected building on the wood panel. With this picture, he discovered the fundamental
principles of perspective—parallel lines and a vanishing point. Over several years, the lines
and vanishing point were given mathematical formula. Artists now talked of points, lines,
and angles and described their subjects in terms of squares, cubes, and tetragons.” And for
500 years, western painting would never again be the same.
Other Florentines also burnished the painter's art. Giotto had turned the artist's eye
away from religion to the natural world. To paint the human figure beautifully and realist-
ically became the artist's great ambition. Light and illumination were given new use and
meaning. In the Middle Ages, light was regarded as a manifestation of God's creation; dark
was its opposite. For Florentine painters of the early Renaissance, light is “cool, vernal,
bright.” [91] Illumination now becomes the “signature” of the great painter. Figures are illu-
minated by backlight. Some are made to emerge from shadows and stand bathed in light.
And others are defined by the merging of shadows and light. In paintings in the Middle
Ages, God's grace is signified by light, while saints and celestial beings are uniformly illu-
minated, bathed equally in the same light. In the Renaissance, the play of light is used for
several purposes: to give drama to the subject and to give unity to a scene. And color and
light are used to organize the composition of the painting, in order to balance forms and to
direct one's eyes along particular lines.
Also outstanding among Florentine artists is Masaccio, the master, some say the in-
ventor, of foreshortening—the technique of enlarging a body part, the hand for example, to
bring it fully into the viewer's eye and attention.