Perspective in Art - Slides

Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

Vanishing Points

The fundamental discovery in perspective is that parallel lines appear to converge in the distance, as on this road near Sparta, Wisconsin.

The most familiar illustration of perspective is the convergence of railroad tracks, like these in southern Idaho. Unfortunately, this sort of view was not available to medieval artists.

The tracks appear to converge more rapidly when the viewpoint is lower.

Parallel lines of all sorts converge, even those defined by separate objects like the tips of telephone poles. If the objects are regularly spaced, their perspective separation changes in a regular way, also.

The trees in this newly-planted orchard near Modesto, CA are in a regular square array. There are many sets of parallel lines visible, each with its own vanishing point.

Some of the more important vanishing points are indicated in this view. Note that the vanishing points all lie on the horizon, and that any given tree can be part of several different lines.

Once Western artists discovered perspective, they reveled in it, as in the Pozzo Ceiling, where real wall features are continued upward on a painted ceiling to an infinite height.

Renaissance architects deliberately enhanced perspective effects to create the illusion of immensity. We still do, as in the United Airlines Terminal at O'Hare Airport.

The Duc du Berry's Book of Hours

The Book and its Owner

The pompous fellow in the blue robe and fur hat at lower right is the Duc du Berry, who ruled part of France in the late 1300's and early 1400's. A Book of Hours was a combination almanac and prayer book with illustrations for meditation. The Duke, however, was not noted for piety; he simply liked to own beautiful things, and his Book of Hours was less a glorification of God than the Duke himself.

The Duke's thirst for luxury manifested itself in sumptuous chateaus and works of art; also in the hatred of the populace, who paid for it all. None of the Duke's lovely castles survive except as illustrations in this book. In his notes on the Book of Hours, Emile Pognon suggests that at least the Duke's appetites offer

...attenuating circumstances in the favor of a man whose thirst for loot at the expense of the people was insatiable. After all, there are still rulers in the world today who keep entire nations in poverty - and do so much more effectively than him. They are doing so to satisfy their ideology. One is entitled to feel that the duke of Berry's motives were preferable.

In other words, will Saddam Hussein or any of the other petty dictators or shallow rich of the world leave behind anything that will still be admired centuries from now?

The Book of Hours is celebrated because of its beauty, superb preservation, and detailed views of medieval life. But it's also of great interest because it straddles the period when Europeans discovered perspective in art. There are no true perspective drawings in the Book of Hours, but clear insights into the struggle to discover perspective.

Original Artistry

That there are no true perspective drawings in the Book of Hours is no reflection on its artists, who produced some extremely original work. Clearly the lack of perspective is not due to a lack of talent or creativity, but simply to the fact that the technique was unknown to them. About a half-dozen artists can be identified as distinct individuals, but some of their names are unknown.

Christ in the Graden of Gethsemane. The use of night colors is remarkable. Gold dots represent stars in the sky, and there is even a shooting star.

A winter scene, remarkably realistic in many ways, but also showing some of the limitations of medieval art. The men in the background are simply too big for the picture, and nearly as tall as the trees. In general, medieval artists tended to make prominent background objects too large relative to their perspective representation, although they clearly understood that background objects appear to become smaller with distance.

Superb rendering of architectural detail. What's noteworthy about this picture is the faint shadows behind the foreground figures, one of the first known accurate renditions of shadows in Western art.

A hunting party killing a boar. Note that the figures are too large, relative to the trees. But also note the startling appearance of the towers above the trees, a remarkably unusual and original choice of viewpoint.

Another superb architectural rendition. Many commentators have puzzled over the wall in the foreground. To me it's obvious. The artist messed up somehow. Rather than discard a work that had taken months to create, not to mention the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of dollars in rare pigments, he fudged in a wall to conceal the flaw.

Medieval Approaches to Scale and Distance

Christ entering the gates of Jerusalem. This has elements of the conceptual approach to art. The subject is Christ entering Jerusalem, and background details are conceptually subordinate, therefore drawn smaller. Thus Christ is nearly as tall as the walls. A conceptual approach probably also explains why medieval artists tended to make important beckground objects too large: they wanted to emphasize the objects or portray them more clearly.

Another common style in pre-perspective art is called polydimensional: objects are shown from whatever vantage point displays them best. Thus the garden wall is shown as if seen from above instead of horizontally. The artist may not have known how to represent the wall from a more horizontal viewpoint, or perhaps thought viewers would not understand the representation.

Here we see both polydimensional and conceptual elements. The castle is drawn as if seen from below but the distant shoreline is drawn as if seen from above, and the ship is much too large for its distance, probably to show its details better. The artist clearly understands that objects seen obliquely are foreshortened and that walls seen obliquely appear as parallelograms. The contrast between the relatively unsophisticated techniques of representing distance and the superb eye for architectural detail is striking.

Mont St. Michel is a famous landmark off the northern coast of France, and instantly recognizable in this view. The abbey is famous for its surrounding tidal flats; the abbey is surrounded by water at high tide but miles of tidal flats at low tide. Contrast the excellent detail in the view of the abbey with the oversize beached ship in the background. Saint Michael the Archangel, patron saint of the abbey, and Satan in the form of a dragon battle it out in the sky above the abbey.

Hints of Perspective

Note the exquisitely rendered landscape in the distance, one of the first really realistic landscapes in European art. Note also the converging rows of crops in the garden! This artist obviously understands that parallel lines converge! But comparison with the adjacent garden plots and the wall of the cottage show that he does not yet know how to make parallel lines converge consistently. He knows about convergence but does not know how to apply it consistently across an entire picture.

It doesn't get much clearer than this. The eye for detail is that of an artist of the highest caliber. The tiles on the floor show clear convergence, as do many other sets of parallel lines in the picture, but they do not converge to the same point.

References

Pognon, E., 1979; Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc du Berry, Minerva Press, Fribourg, 124p.

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Created 16 September 1998, Last Update 18 September 1998