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Looking at art
Browse this content
Why art matters
Why art matters (why look at art?)
Must art be beautiful? Picasso’s Old Guitarist
How art can help you analyze
The Power to Look
Alejandro Cesarco, What does looking mean?
What work of art inspired you?
Elements of Art
Line
Shape and Form
Color
Space
Texture
Surface and Depth
Light and shadow
Principles of composition
Balance, symmetry, and emphasis
Movement
Proportion and scale
Pattern, repetition and rhythm, variety and unity
Describing what you see
Introduction to art historical analysis
How to do visual (formal) analysis
Art historical analysis with Goya’s Third of May, 1808
Describing what you see: sculpture
Approaches to art history
Browse this content
An introduction to art history
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What is art history and where is it going?
Art history and world art history
Ever wondered… why people become art historians?
Ever wondered…why study art of the past?
Art and empathy
A brief history of the representation of the body in Western painting
A brief history of the representation of the body in Western sculpture
The language of art history
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Naturalism, realism, abstraction and idealization
Contrapposto explained
Foreshortening explained
Chiaroscuro explained
Linear perspective explained
Atmospheric perspective explained
Classical orders of architecture explained
Methods of art history
An introduction to iconographic analysis
Brief histories of art and culture
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Common questions about dates
What maps tell us
A brief history of the cultures of Asia
A brief history of Western culture
About chronological periods in the Islamic world
Africa historical overview: to 1600
Africa historical overview: from the 1600s to the present
Questions in art history
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What is cultural heritage?
Where are the women artists?
Must art be beautiful?
Is there a difference between art and craft?
What's the point of realism?
What made art valuable: then and now?
What does it mean to be an “old master” and to make a “masterpiece”?
Current issues in art history
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Why you don’t like art history
Cultural heritage “in crisis”
How Climate Changes Art
The $150,000 Banana
Art about Migration
What does art tell us about gender?
Should Art Be Publicly Funded?
Why Do Corporations Buy Art?
What does resistance look like?
The Case for Copying
The case for nudity
Trending artists
Behind the Banksy Stunt
Tools for understanding museums
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The case for museums
A brief history of the art museum
Museums and politics: the Louvre, Paris
Art Museums and (Art) Objects
Artists in and against the Museum
The changing social functions of art museums
Looking at Art Museums
Local art appropriation in France—a study of the loot in the Louvre Museum
Remake the Met
How museums shape meaning
An interview with Fred Wilson about the conventions of museums and race
Tools for understanding religion in art
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Beginner's guide
The five major world religions
A brief history of religion in art
Christianity
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Christianity, an introduction
The Christian Bible
A new pictorial language: the image in Early Medieval art
The life of Christ in medieval and Renaissance art
The lives of Christ and the Virgin in Byzantine art
Who’s who? How to recognize saints…
Architecture and liturgy
The audacity of Christian art
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The problem with Christ
Christ is not like a snail: Signs and symbols
Putting God in his place: here, everywhere, and nowhere
Time and eternity: Yesterday, today, and always
This world and the next: Christ on earth; Christ in heaven
So near and yet so far: visions and thresholds
Unspeakable images: when words fail
Islam
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Introduction to Islam
The Qur’an
The Five Pillars of Islam
Islamic pilgrimages and sacred spaces
Hajj
The Kaaba
Stories of the modern pilgrimage
The complex geometry of Islamic design
Introduction to mosque architecture
Hinduism
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Hinduism and Buddhism, an introduction
Discovering Sacred Texts: Hinduism
Sacred texts in Hinduism
Hindu deities
Beliefs made visible: Hindu art in South Asia
Hindu temples
Varanasi: sacred city
Buddhism
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Introduction to Buddhism
The historical Buddha
The Buddha and Buddhist sacred texts
The stupa
Images of Enlightenment: Aniconic vs. Iconic Depictions of the Buddha in India
Four Buddhas at the American Museum of Natural History
Buddhist meditation and chant
Bodh Gaya: center of the Buddhist world
Bodh Gaya: The Site of the Buddha’s Enlightenment
Beliefs made visible: Buddhist art in South Asia
Bodhisattvas, an introduction
Buddhist Monasteries
Judaism
Judaism, an introduction
Jewish history to the middle ages
Jewish history 1750 to WW II
Jewish history in the post-war period
For the very beginner
Browse this content
Ancient Near Eastern and ancient Egyptian art
Ancient Greek and Roman art
Medieval and Byzantine art
Renaissance art
Baroque and Rococo
Nineteenth-century art
Introduction to Twentieth-Century Art
Introduction to Contemporary Art

Linear perspective explained

by Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris
Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
Architectural Veduta, c. 1490Architectural Veduta, center detailArchitectural Veduta, detail at rightArchitectural Veduta (gallery view), c. 1490Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise, Jacob and Esau panelGhiberti, Gates of Paradise, Solomon panel detailGhiberti, Gates of Paradise, Joseph panel detailDonatello, Feast of Herod on FontDetail of Table and Floor, Donatello, Feast of Herod

More Smarthistory images…

Cite this page as: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris, "Linear perspective explained," in Smarthistory, November 30, 2016, accessed July 31, 2021, https://smarthistory.org/linear-perspective-explained/.

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A young (and ambitious) Rembrandt

Rembrandt's Self-Portrait, Age 23

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait

Learn more about Bank of America’s Masterpiece Moment program

Watch the video with Peggy Fogelman
Norma Jean Calderwood Director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
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