Response to "Masters of Illusion"

“Masters of Illusion”

         In the documentary Masters of Illusion, we look back on early techniques used to show 3D in a 2D space, primarily through linear perspective.

         Prior to the Renaissance, many paintings were particularly flat and lacked the depth that could make anyone see it as anything more than a painting. Linear perspective describes everything you see to merge at a single point, called the vanishing point, to show 3D space. As things move closer toward the vanishing point, the object appears to shrink and shorten. This is known as foreshortening. During the Renaissance, painters began to take advantage of linear perspective to add depth to their paintings.

         One of the earliest examples of linear perspective comes from the painting by Massacio, The Trinity. You can perceive the space behind Christ and the saints. Other painters took advantage of linear perspective to paint strange figures that, when viewed at a particular angle, took on a more recognizable form.

For this project, the class is expected to arrange multiple views of a location of our choice to show depth and space. By piecing these different photographs together, we get a product that shows the object as a whole rather than a simple view.