Leonardo and Linear Perspective

What do photographers and Renaissance painters have in common? Both seek to portray the wonder of life in all its three-dimensional vastness, but on a stubbornly flat and decidedly two-dimensional surface. Studying Renaissance masters like Leonardo da Vinci can help focus photographers on the problem and its solution.

Leonardo did not invent linear perspective. That was Filippo Brunelleschi, the architect who designed the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore that stands to this day in the center of Florence. (**Footnote**)

Night view of Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral duomo in Florence Italy, with dome on the right

Brunelleschi showed how one could take a sheet of paper and mark a point on an imaginary horizon, then draw diagonal lines, called orthogonals, converging on that point, which thereafter became known as the vanishing point. Voila, you have three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. The flat world of medieval painting suddenly sprung into glorious three dimensions.

Eighty years after Brunelleschi’s discovery, Leonardo climbed onto a scaffolding at one end of a dining hall of a convent in Milan and hammered a nail high into the wall. From this nail, he stretched strings out in all directions, then incised straight lines onto the wall. Those became the orthogonal lines of the Last Supper.

Here is a sketch of what he did.

Sketch of orthogonal perspective lines in Last Supper painting by Leonardo da Vinci

Now here are the same lines on the finished work. See how they all converge on the head of Jesus, specifically his right temple?

orthogonal perspective lines in Last Supper painting by Leonardo da Vinci, with lines overlaid on a reconstruction of how the Last Supper originally looked

(This is figure 75 from the Walter Isaacson biography of Leonardo.)

When we gaze at the Last Supper without the superimposed lines, most of us non-art historians will not notice the converging lines. Instead, what hits us is the drama of the moment, when Jesus has just announced that one of his apostles will betray him.

Last Supper painting by Leonardo da Vinci without orthogonal line overlay

But if you took away the coffered ceiling and the blank tapestries along the side walls of this painting - not to mention the three windows at the rear with landscape and sky visible behind them – you would be left with a very different painting: something interesting to be sure, yet flat and lacking vitality.

What is the lesson for photographers?

If we want our images to jump off the screen or page into three-dimensional glory, we need to pay attention to linear perspective. That means looking for natural geometric lines that surround what we’re trying to depict, and incorporating them into the image. Here’s an example of a photograph I took of the Pantheon in Rome before dawn on a winter day.

Night view of Pantheon in Rome showing cobblestones in foreground creating leading lines leading viewer's eye to the front of the Pantheon

See how the cobblestones in the foreground take your eye to the steps of the Pantheon? I got this view by putting the camera directly onto the pavement (on a tiny tripod). If I’d had the camera positioned at eye level, the leading lines created by the cobblestones would have disappeared. (See my blog post “Go Low” for more on the advantage for photographers of getting your camera right onto the ground.)

Here’s another example, also featured in my Go Low post.

Winter Sunrise view of Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with Washington Monument in the distance, showing pink and yellow sunrise lights reflected on the ice on the pool, and leading lines from deck of pool on the right side of image.

This is a predawn shot with the camera on the deck of the Lincoln Reflecting Pool looking east toward the Washington Monument (and a tiny Capitol dome behind it). A line starts at the lower right corner of the photo and moves toward the Washington Monument, where it joins the horizontal line of the deck that moves from the middle right edge of the image toward the center. You can see how these converging lines grab the viewer’s eye and push toward the focus of interest in the sunrise. The same happens to a lesser extent with the treetop lines on both sides of the Reflecting Pool, which also guide the eye toward the sunrise.

The converging lines don’t have to be straight. I got this sunrise shot at the flag circle at the base of the Washington Monument. I anchored one end of the curved bench into the lower right corner of the image. The outer and inner edges of the bench converge in the middle of the frame, drawing the viewer’s eye into the heart of the photo.

Sunrise view of U.S. Flags circling base of Washington Monument, showing curved bench leading viewer's eye into the center of the frame

Unlike painters, we photographers don’t have to plot out our linear perspectives with pencil and paper. But we do have to open our eyes to see converging lines and put them into our picture frames.

By the way, that nail hole that Leonardo hammered into the convent wall to start his Last Supper? They say it’s still there.

**Footnote** This night view of Santa Maria del Fiore was taken by me from a hotel rooftop in Florence (Hotel degli Orafi). It’s a 90-second exposure on a tripod. The short horizontal white lines in the sky (click on the photo for a closeup view) are stars that are moving, or actually, it’s the earth rotating.