Which Renaissance technique made distant objects appear smaller in a painting?

Linear perspective made distant objects appear smaller in an Italian Renaissance painting. The technique represents three-dimensional space on a flat surface by organizing lines toward vanishing points.

In a typical one-point perspective composition, parallel lines that recede from the viewer appear to meet at a single vanishing point on the horizon. This system helped artists create convincing architectural interiors, streets, and landscapes.

Filippo Brunelleschi is traditionally credited with demonstrating a systematic method of perspective in Florence in the early fifteenth century. Leon Battista Alberti later described a practical approach in his treatise On Painting, written in 1435.

Linear perspective is different from sfumato, which softens transitions between tones, and chiaroscuro, which uses contrasts of light and dark. Those techniques affect edges and lighting, while linear perspective primarily organizes depth and spatial recession.