Vindicating Vitruvius on the subject of perspective

Abstract

The definitive history of incipient vanishing point perspective in the antique world has yet to be written. It may be that the fixation on the fully developed centralized ‘Renaissance perspective’ has led scholars to neglect signs of early, still tentative explorations of the principle in Late Classical/Early Hellenistic art. It is my thesis that the evidence is there but has been overlooked in the search for more accomplished manifestations than the nature of the sources would indicate.