• Remember that Brunelleschi is thought to have developed perspective between 1410 and 1420 (some say, in 1415). Leon Battista Alberti first put the theory of perspective into writing (so far as we know), in his book on painting Della Pittura, published around 1435.

• Donatello:

  Donatello made two marble statues, St. Mark and St. George, for exterior niches of Or San Michele, the church of Florentine guilds. Below the main sculpture of Saint George is a marble relief showing him slaying the dragon. It is this panel which is of particular interest to us:

  
  Donatello, St. George and the Dragon, c. 1412

  In this relief, it seems as if Donatello may have used linear perspective (that is, before Brunelleschi's experiment). However the orthogonals are not so clearly defined that we can decide for certain that he used perspective, or to let us locate a precise vanishing point.

  There is no uncertainty, however, about Donatello's use of perspective in his bronze Feast of Herod, shown below.

  

  Donatello, Feast of Herod, 1423-27

  This was the first of several bronze panels he made for the baptismal font of the Siena cathedral, and is widely recognized as the first relief scultpure to use linear perspective. This was done after Brunelleschi's experiment, but before Alberti's treatise on perspective was published.

Back to Perspective | Back to In Class