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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:02] According to Filippo Brunelleschi’s biographer, he stood just inside the main doors of the Cathedral of Florence when he conducted his first perspectival experiment. That’s where we’re standing right now.

Dr. Beth Harris: [0:15] Or very close to it. Brunelleschi’s experiment demonstrated that linear perspective could produce an incredibly realistic illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface.

Dr. Zucker: [0:28] So this notion that we can actually develop a system that would be relatively easy to follow, but highly accurate, that could translate the volumetric world that we move [in] through time onto a frozen two-dimensional surface is really an extraordinary achievement.

[0:42] There’s some discussion among scholars as to whether or not there was linear perspective in the ancient world. But if there was, it was lost. Linear perspective was created, at least for us in the modern world, by Brunelleschi in the 15th century, around 1420.

Dr. Harris: [0:59] Right, and so some people say that Brunelleschi “rediscovered” linear perspective in case the ancient Greeks and Romans had had it before him.

Dr. Zucker: [1:07] Brunelleschi had gone to Rome, and had studied antiquity, and some have hypothesized that he developed the basis for linear perspective in an attempt to be able to accurately portray the buildings that he was looking at, that he was sketching, that he was drawing.

Dr. Harris: [1:20] It’s certainly something that artists beginning really in the 1300s, they were creating forms. They were creating human figures that were three-dimensional by using modeling, making the figures bulky and monumental. Then you had the challenge of putting those figures within a believable space.

[1:38] Giotto and Duccio had approximated that space and began to create a kind of earthly setting for their figures, but had not achieved perfect illusion of space for their figures to inhabit.

Dr. Zucker: [1:52] As the culture becomes increasingly analytical, mathematical, it’s a trade-based culture, this is a culture that in some ways may have demanded of its artists a precision, a mathematical accuracy in its representation. Brunelleschi delivers that. So what does he do?

Dr. Harris: [2:09] Brunelleschi creates a perspectively accurate image of the Baptistry and its surround.

Dr. Zucker: [2:18] Right. So Brunelleschi develops a system with just a few essential elements. Through these elements, he’s able to construct accurate scientific one-point perspective. They include a vanishing point, which is at the viewer’s horizon line, as well as a series of orthogonals or illusionistically receding diagonals.

[2:34] What Brunelleschi then does is he paints or draws an image of the Baptistry with linear perspective and puts a small hole in the center of it. He takes that small drawing or painting, puts a handle on it, and holds it in front of his face, but facing away from him. He then takes a mirror and holds it in back of that.

[2:54] Remember, his painting has a small hole in it so he can see through it straight to the vanishing point.

Dr. Beth: [3:00] He’s holding the mirror at arm’s length, and the actual painting with the hole in it right in front of him for his eye to look through.

Dr. Zucker: [3:08] Right. So, he can see the painting’s reflection in the mirror. And if he pulls the mirror away, he can see the actual baptistry. He can bring the mirror back to see the painting, move the mirror away to see the actual Baptistry, and see if in fact those lines are well coordinated. It was a very convincing experiment.

Dr. Harris: [3:26] What Brunelleschi saw in the reflection of the painting looked exactly like the reality that was in front of him.

Dr. Zucker: [3:32] This would have the most profound effect on the history of Western art. Virtually every painting in the Western tradition after the 15th century is responding to linear perspective, either adopting it or very consciously rejecting it for some reason.

Dr. Harris: [3:45] And within a couple of decades after Brunelleschi’s discovery, Alberti, the brilliant architect and theoretician, writes a book called “On Painting,” in which he codifies Brunelleschi’s discovery and creates a manual for artists of how to use linear perspective, and how to make great paintings.

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