Video Abstract
The construction of the perspective method of graphically representing three-dimensional reality is the triggering moment of the parable of Renaissance art, emblematic of the convergence of art and science. Florentine painting of the Renaissance is one of the highest episodes in the history of universal art, and it includes a series of masters of absolute level, united by a unified line of research that stems from the perspective representation of reality, but develops with a series of acquisitions in a process that art historian Ernst Gombrich calls “the conquest of reality.” Renaissance man, thanks to perspective, sees the world as he had never perceived it before. And he is able to design three-dimensional worlds traceable to scientific laws. In fifteenth-century Italy, a true revolution in art was unleashed: Italian artists, inspired by the new paradigm of perspective technique, competed to represent nature truthfully. Together with Brunelleschi, Masaccio creates the perspective hole of the Trinity to provoke the Florentines in the church of Santa Maria Novella. Donatello applies perspective to sculpture, devising the astonishing technique of stiacciato. Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca develop geometric narratives. Francesco di Giorgio Martini envisions ideal cities. Bramante applies perspective to architecture, anticipating the Baroque. Leonardo invents aerial perspective, incorporating the vibrant opacity of atmosphere. Brunelleschi by bringing his perspective machine to the piazza had caused an extraordinary intellectual shock, giving humanity a new way of seeing the world. He had extended human vision.
Italiano