Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer
But it always amazes me how artists of the time actually thought people looked the way they were depicted. The history of art forms always makes me wonder, what were they actually seeing? How can they do a 3d sculpture so incredibly realistic, and not portray accurately an image on a flat surface.

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer

Truly amazing.

But it always amazes me how artists of the time actually thought people looked the way they were depicted. The history of art forms always makes me wonder, what were they actually seeing? How can they do a 3d sculpture so incredibly realistic, and not portray accurately an image on a flat surface.

quote:

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69

quote:

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer

Truly amazing.

But it always amazes me how artists of the time actually thought people looked the way they were depicted. The history of art forms always makes me wonder, what were they actually seeing? How can they do a 3d sculpture so incredibly realistic, and not portray accurately an image on a flat surface.

Until the works of Paolo Uccello, in the XV Century, the West didn't really understand the concept of "perspective", much less how to give a 3D "vista" on a 2D surface (whereas when sculpting or building you already started with tridimensional blocks which guided you in obtaining a tridimensional portrayal).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Uccello

Paolo Uccello was a mathematician obsessed by the concepts of "perspective" and "vanishing points". Today they are considered a given but, if you think about it, they are neither intuitive nor easy to grasp. His works, thus, become groundbreaking, even if the portrayals of people, things and landscapes still show a mix of 2D and 3D (often 2/2.5D figures in a 3D landscape). It took the works of his successors, like Piero della Francesca and Leonardo, to fully flesh the portrayal of the World in 3D.

All of the above in the West. I don't know if Middle-Eastern and Oriental artists reached the same results by themselves or if imported them from Europe.

quote:

ORIGINAL: z1812
No love for Filippo Brunelleschi?................thank goodness for the Italians. Without them we would all be walking through a 2d world.....