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Art & Art History vocabulary · Visual Elements & Composition

Perspective

Meaning in art & art history, with examples

/pərˈspektɪv/nounCore term

In art & art history, perspective means: A method of showing depth and distance on a flat surface, for example by making parallel lines meet at a point and painting distant things smaller.

In Turkish: perspektif

How it is used

Art historians discuss linear perspective, developed in early fifteenth-century Florence, and atmospheric (aerial) perspective, in which distant things look paler and bluer. A drawing can be in perspective or out of perspective.

Example sentences

  1. Brunelleschi is usually credited with the first experiments in linear perspective.

  2. The table looks strange because its perspective doesn't match the floor.

Common collocations

  • linear perspective
  • one-point perspective
  • atmospheric perspective
  • in perspective
  • vanishing pointThe point in a picture, usually on the horizon line, where parallel lines moving away from the viewer seem to meet.
  • foreshorteningA drawing technique that makes an object or a part of the body pointing towards the viewer look shorter, so that it seems to come out of the picture in depth.
  • RenaissanceThe period in European history, roughly from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, when art and learning were renewed by a strong interest in ancient Greek and Roman culture.
  • foregroundThe part of a picture that seems closest to the viewer, usually at the bottom; the areas behind it are the middle ground and the background.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Visual Elements & Composition

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