The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (366 page)

 
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Perov , Vasily
.

See
WANDERERS
.

 
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(
c.
1455–1530).
French painter, architect, sculptor, and decorator of very considerable reputation in his day. He was in the service of Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I and visited Italy on three occasions, with Charles VIII in 1494 and with Louis XII on his campaigns of 1502 and 1509 (on one of these journeys he met
Leonardo
, who mentions Perréal in his notebooks). His activities were manifold, but little work survives that can confidently be attributed to his own hand—a portrait of Louis XII (1514) at Windsor Castle and a few
miniatures
. They show him as a master of a scrupulously observed
naturalism
. It has been suggested that he is to be identified with the
Master of Moulins
.

 
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(1590?–1650).
French history painter and engraver. He visited Rome on two occasions and his style was formed on the example of
Lanfranco
(in whose studio he worked), Pietro da
Cortona
and the
Carracci
. His decorative work helped to introduce the grand
Baroque
style to France, but almost all of it has been destroyed or altered. His influence, however, can be seen in the work of Charles
Lebrun
, who was briefly his pupil.

 
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(1715?–83).
French painter and engraver. He worked mainly as a portraitist and mainly in
pastel
. In this medium he was overshadowed in his lifetime by Maurice Quentin de
La Tour
, whose style was more vivacious, but posterity has judged the more sober but more penetrating Perronneau to be at least his equal. From about 1755 he led a wandering life, visiting England, the Netherlands several times (he died in Amsterdam), Italy, Poland, and Russia. He was a prolific artist and is represented in many galleries in France and elsewhere.

 
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perspective
.

Method of representing spatial extension into depth on a flat or shallow surface, utilizing such optical phenomena as the apparent convergence of parallel lines and diminution in size of objects as they recede from the spectator. Perspective is by no means common to the art of all epochs and all peoples. For example, the pictorial art of the ancient Egyptians, although a richly developed tradition, did not take account of the optical effects of recession. Systematic, mathematically founded perspective, based initially on a fixed central viewpoint, was developed in Italy in the early 15th cent., when it was invented by
Brunelleschi
, described by
Alberti
in his treatise
De Pictura
, and put into majestic practice by
Masaccio
. Various names are given to this type of perspective—geometric, linear, mathematical, optical,
Renaissance
or scientific perspective—which remained one of the foundations of European painting until the late 19th cent. In pre-Renaissance Europe and in the East more intuitive systems of representing spatial recession were used. In medieval paintings, for example, lines that would in strict perspective converge are often shown diverging (this ‘inverted perspective’ can look much more convincing in practice than it sounds in theory); and in Chinese art ‘parallel perspective’ was a common convention in the depiction of buildings. See also
AERIAL PERSPECTIVE
.

 
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