Perspective has been used since the 1400's to show distance and depth in Western art. Perspective was a really big deal when it was invented. Some even say it helped jumpstart the Renaissance!

Other schools of art, such as Asian, most modern art or the gorgeous ancient cave paintings of Chauvet, will either not use relative distance and perspective at all or will change proportions. In Western art, the proportion between distance and size always remains the same. Perspective is used in both sculpture and painting.

Remember all the checkerboard floors on every other painting and sculture during the 1500's? That's because perspective had just been invented and artists were showing they were on the cutting edge of science and math!

Perspective sounds very complicated and you can find long mathematical formulas explaining how it works, but it's simple, just 2 parts:

1. Things get smaller as they get further away.

2. Things get smaller in equal proportion to each other.