10.

We know that the 13th century painter Giotto (Giotto di Bondone) created the impression of depth using horizon lines at eye-level.  However, his understanding of perspective came more from his own special intuition rather than from a precise mathematical formulation.  See, for example, Giotto’s ‘Jesus Before the Caïf’, (1305). The ceiling rafters show the Giotto’s introduction of convergent perspective, but they are not accurately drawn. 

We also know that the Florentine sculptor, architect and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi experimented with peep holes and mirrors to understand the technique of perspective through vanishing points.  He may have understood the rules of perspective, but didn’t write them down in any systemized way.

However, the biggest influence on future painters was a treatise, On painting (1435), which gave specific rules on perspective together with mathematical descriptions through principles of geometry to determine the apparent size of an object relative to actual size relative to distance from the observer.  "To make clear my exposition in writing this brief commentary on painting," he wrote, "I will take first from the mathematicians those things with which my subject is concerned." 

Who wrote the treatise?

Author: Joseph Mazur

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Leone Battista Alberti Although all three men (Alberti, Ghiberti and Piero) wrote treatises on art, Alberti was the first to write about the methods of perspective to a general audience.   Ghiberti wrote I Commentarii in 1447, a work relating optics and painting.  Piero, who was both a painter and mathematician, wrote On Perspective for Painting sometime after 1465.  His work was highly technical for the time and concentrated on mathematical principles, complete with theorems and numerical examples.