We have come to expect perspective and depth in figurative art, meaning art that clearly depicts something real. Whether it's an illustration on a cereal box, a mural on a building or an 18th-century painting on a gallery wall, we expect the image to look at least a little three-dimensional. We live in 3D, and an image without depth can be startling. Even cartoons, usually thought of as flat, use the tricks of perspective to build depth, as this 1928 still from a Mickey Mouse film shows.
It wasn't always so. Before the 14th century artists didn't much concern themselves with perspective and depth. Only when painters such as Giotto and Duccio began to experiment did figurative art start to resemble the paintings we know today.
Before perspective
In the Byzantine, Medieval and Gothic periods, art was not about creating a realistic scene with depth and space. It depicted characters from religious or historic stories and legends, often against plain or decorative backgrounds. The figures were the focus, and the surrounding details mattered less. Look at the Bayeux Tapestry, for instance: decorative details are included, but the figures and the text are the point. It was made for a specific purpose, to record a story in detail.
Perspective and depth crept in as the stories and scenes began to carry more human emotion. Recording the event still mattered, but so did conveying how it felt to be there.
Giotto and Duccio
At the end of the 13th century and into the 14th, Giotto and Duccio began to toy with perspective and depth. In this fresco, attributed to Giotto, the figures are shaped with light and shade and arranged in front of one another to suggest a crowd.
There is a similar attempt in this painting by Duccio, where shading and arrangement suggest that some figures sit in the foreground, lower and further forward than the others. Notably, though, none of them casts a shadow on the ground, and the lack of a background flattens the image.
Brunelleschi and Masaccio
If Giotto and Duccio laid the groundwork, Brunelleschi made the decisive step. In 1415 he painted the Baptistry in Florence using linear perspective and "vanishing points" to convey space and depth. The approach quickly caught on and was taken up by artists such as Masaccio, who became known for establishing Florentine Realism.
In this painting by Masaccio we see a huge leap forward. The figures all cast shadows, which grounds them in the scene, and the trees, mountains and clouds suggest deep space behind. Most striking of all, the building on the right recedes at a realistic angle, so it looks like somewhere the figures could turn and walk into.
The Renaissance
Over the next two centuries perspective became a vital element of painting. Renaissance artists such as Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli and Titian drew on the techniques pioneered by Giotto, Brunelleschi and Masaccio to ground their scenes, in effect tricking the eye into seeing flat images as three-dimensional.
Trompe-l'oeil painting became popular in this period. It works as an optical illusion, forcing the perspective so that, seen from the right angle, the image looks fully three-dimensional. In the San Pantalon church in Venice, a vast trompe-l'oeil ceiling by Gian Antonio Fumiani makes the building seem to rear up into the sky.
The loss of perspective
The art world is always changing, and in the 19th and 20th centuries perspective slid down the painter's list of priorities. Artists such as Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso moved away from it and focused on how the human eye and brain actually perceive the world. They were the first to suggest that linear, realistic paintings do not necessarily match human experience. By distorting perspective, depth and space they hoped to capture what is fragmented, shifting and mercurial in the way we sense the world.
This led to full abstraction, in which realistic shapes and figures gave way to blocks, lines, splashes of colour and, in the case of Kazimir Malevich, black squares.
Your perspective on art
Whether or not you favour traditional linear perspective, it's interesting to notice how your opinion of a work changes with the depth and space on display. To explore the idea, look at some Byzantine or Medieval art from the 13th and 14th centuries, before shading and vanishing points existed.
If any of these paintings has inspired you to bring some art home, head to our Picture Frames & Mounts page. Enter the exact dimensions of your image, whether it's by Giotto or Picasso, select a mount and order your frame.