Perspective (graphical)

Perspective is a technique for representing three-dimensional space on a flat surface through systematic changes in the scale and position of depicted forms. It creates visual cues of depth without reproducing actual depth.

Linear perspective: A system for depicting depth through lines that converge toward one or more vanishing points. Its converging lines provide a precise geometric method for constructing spatial depth.
Filippo Brunelleschi: An Italian architect credited with demonstrating a systematic method of linear perspective in early fifteenth-century Florence. His demonstrations helped establish perspective as a deliberate geometric practice.
Axonometric projection: A parallel projection that represents three-dimensional objects with measurable axes and no convergence of parallel lines. It preserves parallelism rather than making receding lines meet at vanishing points.
Trompe-l'œil: An artistic technique that uses realistic imagery to create the illusion that painted objects are real or extend into actual space. Perspective helps trompe-l'œil images convincingly extend beyond their painted surfaces.
Visual realism: An approach to representation that seeks to make images resemble visible appearances or observed experience. Perspective became a powerful convention for making images appear optically plausible.
Vanishing point: A point where parallel lines appear to converge in a perspective image. Convergence organizes the apparent direction and distance of receding forms.
On Painting: Leon Battista Alberti’s 1435 treatise explaining a geometric method for constructing paintings in perspective. It codified practical rules for representing space on a flat picture surface.
Oblique projection: A parallel projection in which one face is shown frontally and depth is drawn along slanted lines. It offers a compact depth convention without perspective’s size reduction with distance.
Anamorphosis: A distorted image that appears correctly proportioned only from a particular viewpoint or through a reflective device. It exploits perspective’s dependence on the viewer’s position to create a striking transformation.
Point of view: The position or standpoint from which a scene is observed or represented. A perspective image organizes space around a defined viewing position.

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