This week’s lecture was centered on the representation of nature in art, specifically in the Renaissance period. The part of the lecture that I found most interesting was the section that discussed the use of geometry and its principles to make paintings appear more realistic. By using boxes, prisms, and lines in certain areas of the piece, more attention can be brought to important subjects, distance and perspective can be brought into play, and a picture can even be made to look 3 dimensional. Alberti was the first to use this technique. As seen in the picture below, he was able to figure out that certain eye lines give different perspectives when looking at an image from a distance. That can then be used to determine the location of subjects within the image to draw the eyes of the viewer into certain locations. As seen in the second image below, the picture plays on three different planes, with the lower two segments working towards the top. In the center of the image, at the highest point of any subject, is the actual focal point. Bu using geometric rules of perspective, the painter was able to ensure that the image of christ on the cross is the biggest thing that people see when they view the image.
