Discovering the Third Dimension

Pre-renaissance artists had trouble with depicting depth in their paintings. Can you find some examples of this? How did their paintings fail to depict depth? What aspects of a painting give it depth?

Das Paradiesgärtlein, dating from the early fifteenth century, is an example of a two-dimensional painting that lacks the illusory power of creating a third dimension that is achieved more successfully in later paintings. What does this colorful, creative work lack that its successors would gain? The answers can be found in monocular cues – that is, visual depth cues that do not depend on the binocular power of stereopsis. They include:

1. Occlusion – better known as overlapping. The painting shown uses this technique well to create a sense of depth: flowers arch in front of the garden wall, a lady holds a book before her, a man hides behind a tree trunk, etc.

2. Size – in the painting, this depth clue is all about relativity and scale. Objects that are normally larger or smaller than other objects must retain that proportional size. Furthermore, variations in size due to depth or distance must also be included. Thus, a man must be shorter than a tree unless he is portrayed as much closer to the viewer than the tree, for example. In the painting, the latter of these size-rules is not followed as well. The flowers in the background, against the garden wall, are almost as tall as the women in the foreground.

3. Perspective – objects lessen in perceived size and rise in perceived horizontal location as they recede into the distance. As already discussed, the size scale is a bit off in this painting; objects don’t really lessen in size in the background, and may even be irregularly large in the first place. The rising-rule is followed a bit better: the garden wall, which is the furthest object in the picture, is near the top of the canvas, while the people are scattered through various latitudes. However, the overall placement is a bit extreme, and the extremeness is accentuated by the objects’ oddly uniform size.

4. Shading – shadows signify the location of a light source and show where light is lacking, thus conveying the three-dimensional shape of objects. There is some light shading in the painting, such as in the ladies’ skirts, but not as much as we would perceive in the natural world.

Overall, the painting relies on overlap, an exaggerated rise toward the horizon, a bit of shading and the brightly colored, clear-cut figures of the objects to convey the idea of separate images that recede in depth. However, while this painting is lacking in some ways, it is much more realistic than its predecessors and would be followed soon by surprisingly real achievements.

Das Paradiesgärtlein (The Paradise Garden), c. 1410