...so. we start our journey with this guy: the prophet elisha. at first glance you may think that he's not as realistic looking as compared to, say, the cool 3d effects in the matrix or star wars. well of course he doesn't! this guy was painted at a time when artists were still figuring out all the tricks on how to accurately paint three dimensional space. one of the first techniques they tried was to apply believable shading. you know, adding shadows in places that naturally occur depending on where the sun was shining. in our example, that bright light source appears to be shining downwards from somewhere on top of the figure. therefore, the shadows on the guy's cloak are all underneath the folds of cloth. it's a simple but difficult technique to execute. one shadow out of place would entirely throw off the believablity of the figure's mass and weight.

...speaking of which, simply adding shadows in the right places is not all that needs to be done to achieve that ultimate 3d look. the way the shadows are actually painted in matters too. if the line between light and shadow is too sharp, the realism will still be lost. the artist of this piece avoided that technical foul by blurring bright colors gradually into dark to eventually achieve the look of a rounded human body beneath all that cloth. a lot of subtle shading work went into our prophet's clothes.

...finally, one of the neatest characteristics of early renaissance art is how elements of the old two-dimensional style of painting (aka byzantine) are still prevalent, despite the renaissance idea of depicting things as naturally, and as realistically, as possible. that gold leaf background behind our guy? totally a byzantine effect. it's sort of a decorative element but its monotone flatness really takes away quite a bit of the three dimensionality of the figure. still, hey, the artists were learning. as you shall see in the next image.