How did Italian Renaissance artist Pietro Perugino use perspective in his painting "Jesus Handing the Keys to Peter"?

Leonid Kolker, Ph.D.

Pietro Peruginos fresco Jesus Handing the Keys to Peter (1481€“1483) is a balanced
and rhythmically-articulated composition. The author emphasizes the central event, which is
placed on the foreground and is in the focus. The act of the handing of the keys is depicted
according to strict rules of the perspective, with figures being located on the planes that are
parallel to the background. Less important figures are relegated to the middle ground.

On the left and on the right of Christ and Peter, there are groups of the apostles
whose postures and movements direct the beholders attention to the center. But there is another
focus in the painting, and that is the dark doorway of the baptistery, which is where the rays
of the perspective converge. The orthogonal rays help to unfold the theme from the forefront to
the background by symbolically linking the keys in Christs hand to the idea of the Church, which
is embodied here in the particular edifice.

Perugino was able to
put...

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