Leon Battista Alberti: An Introduction to a New Dimension
During the transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Era, people began to shift their iconography from the worship of Christ to the mortal world that they lived in, leading to works of art that featured natural landscapes and buildings, rather than paradise. Contrary to The Promised Land, people saw the physical world around them every day, leading to the artistic problem of not having a way to make these landscapes seem real on a two-dimensional surface. Leon Alberti’s theory of linear perspective revealed a new dimension for artists of the Renaissance Era, as well as served as a new foundation that realism was built upon. Leading up to the Renaissance Era, most European …show more content…
He came to the conclusion that objects appear to shrink when they are positioned farther away from the human eye, and vice versa. The nature of his conclusion and date of discovering this remain ambiguous, and Brunelleschi did not fully grasp how to put it into physical work. In order to solve this issue, there required more extensive knowledge of why things got smaller as they got farther and a standard way of determining the rate at which they shrank when applied to a two-dimensional plane. Leon Alberti, who met Brunelleschi after being allowed to return to Florence in 1434 after his family’s exile, developed common interest with Brunelleschi in the works of Renaissance humanism and classical art. He began to further develop his acquaintance’s theory into something more …show more content…
According to this theory, an artist created a two-dimensional floor where primary objects would be placed on which he would draw a dwindling grid. This grid served as a guide to other objects, relative to other elements in the picture. Specifically, Alberti mentioned comparing the tile size to the viewer’s—not the artist’s—height upon observation to make the picture more realistic. From there, the artist would then use straight lines connecting to a single vanishing point, allowing all objects to have a base to go off of in size, with the floor being the largest seen objects and the vanishing point, which would be placed on the horizon, being where the objects are infinitesimally
During the transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Era, people began to shift their iconography from the worship of Christ to the mortal world that they lived in, leading to works of art that featured natural landscapes and buildings, rather than paradise. Contrary to The Promised Land, people saw the physical world around them every day, leading to the artistic problem of not having a way to make these landscapes seem real on a two-dimensional surface. Leon Alberti’s theory of linear perspective revealed a new dimension for artists of the Renaissance Era, as well as served as a new foundation that realism was built upon. Leading up to the Renaissance Era, most European …show more content…
He came to the conclusion that objects appear to shrink when they are positioned farther away from the human eye, and vice versa. The nature of his conclusion and date of discovering this remain ambiguous, and Brunelleschi did not fully grasp how to put it into physical work. In order to solve this issue, there required more extensive knowledge of why things got smaller as they got farther and a standard way of determining the rate at which they shrank when applied to a two-dimensional plane. Leon Alberti, who met Brunelleschi after being allowed to return to Florence in 1434 after his family’s exile, developed common interest with Brunelleschi in the works of Renaissance humanism and classical art. He began to further develop his acquaintance’s theory into something more …show more content…
According to this theory, an artist created a two-dimensional floor where primary objects would be placed on which he would draw a dwindling grid. This grid served as a guide to other objects, relative to other elements in the picture. Specifically, Alberti mentioned comparing the tile size to the viewer’s—not the artist’s—height upon observation to make the picture more realistic. From there, the artist would then use straight lines connecting to a single vanishing point, allowing all objects to have a base to go off of in size, with the floor being the largest seen objects and the vanishing point, which would be placed on the horizon, being where the objects are infinitesimally