<Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> How One - Point Linear Perspective Works, Smarthistory </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Empire of the Eye: The Magic of Illusion: The Trinity - Masaccio, Part 2, National Gallery of Art </Td> </Tr> <P> In about 1413 a contemporary of Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, demonstrated the geometrical method of perspective, used today by artists, by painting the outlines of various Florentine buildings onto a mirror . When the building's outline was continued, he noticed that all of the lines converged on the horizon line . According to Vasari, he then set up a demonstration of his painting of the Baptistery in the incomplete doorway of the Duomo . He had the viewer look through a small hole on the back of the painting, facing the Baptistery . He would then set up a mirror, facing the viewer, which reflected his painting . To the viewer, the painting of the Baptistery and the building itself were nearly indistinguishable . </P> <P> Soon after, nearly every artist in Florence and in Italy used geometrical perspective in their paintings, notably Paolo Uccello, Masolino da Panicale and Donatello . Donatello started sculpting elaborate checkerboard floors into the simple manger portrayed in the birth of Christ . Although hardly historically accurate, these checkerboard floors obeyed the primary laws of geometrical perspective: the lines converged approximately to a vanishing point, and the rate at which the horizontal lines receded into the distance was graphically determined . This became an integral part of Quattrocento art . Melozzo da Forlì first used the technique of upward foreshortening (in Rome, Loreto, Forlì and others), and was celebrated for that . Not only was perspective a way of showing depth, it was also a new method of composing a painting . Paintings began to show a single, unified scene, rather than a combination of several . </P>

Who is often credited as the first painter to fully utilize the theory of linear perspective