
Art broke away from being two dimensional caricatures with the invention of the camera obscura which had the painter sit in a dark room, with the window blocked out with a small hole in it. Doing so would cause the image outside the window to be projected into the room of the painter and onto the canvas, which could then be traced. The image, as with cameras and the human brain is brought in upside down, so the painter would be forced to trace upside down. During the Tudor period, lenses were developed for the first time which allowed artists to learn to paint with realism because after tracing and creating the minute details of each face correctly, they could focus on light and shadow. The camera obscura acted as a starting point to stencil a face. Boards were put down the back of the person sitting so that they would sit perfectly still allowing the painter to sketch them in perfect render. This technology acted effectively the first camera and in that, the first glimmer of Renaissance artwork
