This video explains linear perspective using an image of an Ideal City believed to have been created by the 15th-century Italian painter Fra Carnevale.

Developed in fifteenth-century Italy, artists used this mathematical system to create convincing three-dimensional scenes on two-dimensional surfaces. It was one of the most artificial ways of making space seem real. Created for the powerful ruler of Urbino, Duke Federico da Montefeltro, this image reflects the height of orderly magnificence.

Main object: The Ideal City, attributed to Fra Carnevale after a design by Giuliano da Sangallo, c. 1480–84 CE, oil and tempera on panel. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

CHAPTERS

0:14 Linear perspective in visual art

0:54 A mathematical system developed in fifteenth-century Italy

1:35 Converging Orthogonals lead us to a Vanishing Point

1:58 Systematic recession

2:06 A world that is orderly and clear

2:21 Linear perspective is artificial

2:48 The palace of Duke Federico da Montefeltro

3:00 The benefits of sponsoring art and scholarship

3:20 Orderly magnificence