In the late 1300s and early 1400s, artists were attempting to give a sense of depth to their work simply by "eyeballing" , with varying degrees of success:

Robert Campin, the Merode Altarpiece, c. 1425Jan Van Eyck,
Arnolfini Newlyweds,
or Wedding Portrait, 1434

Another contributing factor to the development of perspective was the new interest in mirrors.

The flat lead-backed mirror was introduced in the thirteenth century, and apparently fascinated artists and writers as much as it did those interested in optics!

Mirrors were a standard piece of furniture in the studios of late medieval painters, although these may have been the easier-to-make convex mirrors, shown above in the famous painting of the Arnolfini newlyweds of Jan Van Eyck:

This increased use of mirrors by artists generated interest in geometrical optics and provided a way to see a real scene on a flat plane. The convergence of parallel lines to a vanishing point when seen in a real scene is easily ignored because it is so familiar. But when seen on the unfamiliar flat surface of a mirror is less likely to go unnoticed. This may have caused artists to look for the same phenomenon in the real world.

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