Color and perspective in Late Classical painting

Abstract

The concept of a central perspective, as invented in the Early Renaissance, is unknown in ancient Greek painting. There is no visualization of space either in archaic images, where the figures stand on a continuous ground line, or in early classical ones, when a specific art of perspective (body perspective) is invented and the figures, in contrapposto postures, may stand on ground lines placed at various heights but are still not coordinated in size. Shortly after the middle of the 4th century, there appear new pictorial means: enhanced body perspective, often combined with a ground surface, viewed-from-below body perspective and color perspective. Even with these revolutionary innovations, no space as such comes into being in Greek painting; perspective appears only as applied to bodies.