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Arts & Culture

The Development of Perspective in Italian Renaissance Painting

Quick fact

Filippo Brunelleschi, a Renaissance architect, demonstrated linear perspective around 1413 with a painted panel of the Florence Baptistery that, when viewed through a small hole, perfectly aligned with the real building across the piazza.

Why this is interesting

Have you ever noticed how a road appears to narrow in the distance until it meets at a point? In the early 1400s, Italian artists figured out how to mimic this effect on a flat canvas, fundamentally changing the course of art.