On these pages you can find  out about the lives and works of both Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci, download complete texts by these Renaissance authors and see introductions to geometrical rules of linear perspective.

 Arguably one of the most discussed subjects in whole history of art is the period of the Italian Renaissance.   Traditionally placed around beginning of the fifteen century in Italy, the Renaissance revealed a different world of painting, architecture, literature and science not seen in Europe since the time of ancient Greeks.

According to first art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), whose famous book “Lives of the Artists” is invaluable source on painters of the Renaissance, it was Giotto (1267-1337) who had opened “…portals of truth” which started a “rinascita” or rebirth in the art of painting. Giotto's paintings marked the end of old, highly rigid, Byzantines style of religious painting. It also marked a return to the “…imitation of nature” and of equal importance, a return to the values and art of  ancient Greeks, long forgotten in the  Middle Age of Europe.

In years that followed the works of Masaccio,Donatello, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Alberti, Verrocchio, Botticelli, da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian , to name just a few, will change the face of  painting and architecture.

However, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) , architect of the famous Dome of the Cathedral in Florence Santa Maria del Fiore (1418-1436), was the first to fully understand the basic principles of linear perspective, although these principles had been explored by scientists before him.

Without establishing any geometrical rule he simply introduced a grid on a flat surface and then traced the image of the real objects according to the placement of object in relation to  lines of the grid. He famously demonstrated his method by creating an accurate depiction of the Baptistery in Florence.

In 1435 Leon Battista Alberti published his treatise “Della Pittura” in which he explained, theoretically, the phenomenon of linear perspective, enabling  artists to define the geometrical rules of perspective and open new chapter in art history.

The change in method of how artists depicted tridimensional objects on two-dimensional surface in Renaissance, an essence of linear perspective, was a geometrical tool allowing artists to make representations of the real world on a flat surface comparable to that of modern photograph.

Alberti's  work, the voice against old methods in painting , was widely used  as a basis in the works of artists that followed: Ucello, Piero della Francesca and Leonardo da Vinci, who further developed geometrical rules of perspective.

There is no doubt Alberti's work is the foundation  of Renaissance. Without Alberti, there would be no Leonardo. Strangely enough, in the year of Alberti's death in 1472, Leonardo da Vinci was registered as a painter  with the Guild of St. Luke in Florence.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leda

Leonardo da Vinci, La Gioconda, 1503-1505, Oil on wood, 77x53 cm Paris, Musee du Louvre, Detail

Leonardo da Vinci

The Virgin and St. Anne, 1499-1501

Drawing on cardboard, 139,4x101,3 cm

London, The National Gallery,

Detail

Very soon on this pages you will be able to download first e-book on perspective Principles of Perspective  by Milan Voinovich.

To learn more click here or on the image below.

Contact : milan@arsdictum.com