Resumen de Raphael's 'Annunciation' predella panel and a perspective drawing
A perspective drawing by Raphael (British Museum, London) would appear to visually testify to the artist's perspectival methods at the beginning of his career. The drawing consists of a diagram drawn entirely in stylus, which makes it very difficult to see with the naked eye. With the exception of scale, the diagram closely matches the floor pattern in a full-scale, pricked cartoon in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, which served as a study for the Annunciation predella panel created by the artist for the altarpiece Coronation of the Virgin (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome); both works also include two vanishing points. The diagram also shows that Raphael apparently used a method of perspective that was different from that used by Leon Battista Alberti in his manual De Pictura, from that of Piero della Francesca, or from any other method based on ratios, suggesting that it was based on practical geometry tailored specifically to the artist's needs.
