How an architect, two great masters of painting, and the author of an early textbook on painting applied geometric optics to change painting.
Masolino
From the shadowed silhouette painted by the legendary Dibutades to paintings of families involved in shadow play.
For over a century, Italian painters had strived to achieve coherent perspective projection, but it was until about 1420 that this was achieved. How essential was it?
Four masterly paintings telling stories. Painted by 3 different hands, each works in 4 dimensions thanks to narrative devices, as explained here.
Was painting ‘invented’ by the maid of Corinth? What is ‘shadow play’, and how have painters extended it to religious works? A short history of shadows in painting.
I have several times written that early western painting, until the late Renaissance, not uncommonly incorporated multiple copies […]
Looking at the stories shown in the main paintings of the Brancacci Chapel, Florence.
His final frescoes were an inspiration to Michelangelo and others in the Renaissance, and include one of the greatest paintings in Europe.
The first few years of his short career, in which he modelled faces and clothes to bring volume, and started perspective projection.
The Eclectic Light Company 