Perspective (graphical)

External videos
External videos
	Linear Perspective: Brunelleschi's Experiment, Khan Academy
	How One-Point Linear Perspective Works, Smarthistory
	Empire of the Eye: The Magic of Illusion: The Trinity-Masaccio, Part 2, National Gallery of Art

Perspectives (right column) are a subclass of graphical projections.

How linear or point-projection perspective works: Rays of light travel from the object (cube), through the picture plane, and to the viewer's eye (O). Vanishing points emitting straightly lines coincident with the edges the cube drawn on the picture plane are located at the left and right of the plane.

This illustration shows how the eye naturally sees objects, which are described by the lines heading to each red dot

Perspective (from Latin perspicere 'to see through') is the representation of objects on the basis of how they may appear in real-life. Perspective is an approximate representation, generally on a flat surface, of an object as it is seen by the eye. Perspective is useful for representing a three-dimensional scene in a two-dimensional medium, like paper. It is based on the optical fact that for a person an object looks N times smaller if it has been moved N times further from the eye than the original distance was.

The most characteristic features of linear perspective are that objects appear smaller as their distance from the observer increases, and that they are subject to foreshortening, meaning that an object's dimensions parallel to the line of sight appear shorter than its dimensions perpendicular to the line of sight. All objects will recede to points in the distance, usually along the horizon line, but also above and below the horizon line depending on the view used.

Italian Renaissance painters and architects including Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Luca Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci, studied linear perspective, wrote treatises on it, and incorporated it into their artworks.

A figure explaining point-projection prospective. S is the distance between an observer's eye and an observation point on an object that is a long rectangular wall facing to the observer at a tilted angle. If the observation distance becomes N times longer, then the apparent height of the wall at the observation point is roughly N times smaller. As a result, the apparent shape of the wall over a wide angle roughly becomes a triangle which right vertex is located to the far right.