Perspective

We all know that things close to us look bigger than things far away. If you look down a railway track or a road it seems to get narrower until it disappears in the distance. How do artists show objects and spaces on a flat surface? Perspective is a set of techniques to help them.

Artists started to invent the techniques of perspective in Italy in the Renaissance. Their ideas were interesting for mathematicians, who went on to think in new ways about geometry and projection.