In Perspective

Technical online lecture from the National Gallery looking at how perspective works.

Nick Pace took us though what perspective is, basically a visual trick to show space in a painting which is just a flat surface with paint on it. He showed us works from before it was invented, like the one shown here,  to show how artists dealt with these issues without the theory. 

He talked about how artists learned to place the horizon to give an indication of where we are looking from by showing us a series of National Gallery pictures with the horizon moving down them from one where the horizon is above the work to one where it is below.

He them had good illustrations to explain what a vanishing point it is, how it works and how it can be used to show the relationship between images in a composition. I must admit I understood it at the time but I am not sure it has stayed with me.

He finally took us through various pictures, painted after the discovery of mathematical perspective, which chose not to use it and discussed why and how some artists, such as Hogarth in a picture of a man fishing, played with the rules to fool the eye even further.

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