ONE POINT VS TWO POINT PERSPECTIVE

Is there a big difference between a one point and two point perspective?

Before answering that, it is important to understand that at the beginning of the Renaissance, the only perspective that they were talking about and developing was the one point. So one historical question is, when Brunelleschi was doing his one point perspective experiments, did it occur to him that there could be a two point system?

When we use the linear perspective now, we do not make any distinction between the one point and the two point. They are basically interchangeable. Yet at one time in history, there had to have been a huge intellectual jump to spring from the one point to the two point.

Lockard, for one, objects to the one point perspective. He states that while possible, it is mostly artificial as one rarely is looking directly down the center of a space. Or one might say that the experience of standing in a gothic cathedral, and looking towards the apse, is very rare. Or the experience of standing on a train bridge and looking thru it is not common.  The foreshortening is more severe.  Thus the one point perspective is less accurate.

Brunelleschi was performing his optical experiments around 1420. There is the common understanding that these experiments introduced the one point perspective to the artistic world.

Raphael’s best known perspective is the ‘School of Athens’ , shown below, painted in 1510.  So from 1420 to 1510, this is the culmination of the human effort.  Raphael used the one point perspective in his paintings to raise the level of his work to almost unimaginable artistic heights.

The first known diagram of the two-point perspective is this graphic drawn by Pélérin in 1505, shown below.

If this historical understanding is correct, did it really take almost 100 years for the two point perspective to become accepted?  What was life like without a two point perspective?  And how could it have taken that long?

The central point here is that we should reconsider the differences between the one point and two point perspective. The one point perspective is more artificial and therefore less accurate than the two point. This difference should be considered when you make your projection system selection for your Transparent Drawing.