Digital ACT Reading Practice Question #1581

Which of the following optical tools did Brunelleschi use during his famous 1415 demonstration? Passage Excerpt (Humanities): In 1415, Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi conducted an optical demonstration outside the Baptistery of San Giovanni. Using a painted panel and a mirror with a viewing peephole, he demonstrated the mathematical principles of linear perspective: parallel lines receding toward the horizon appear to converge at a single vanishing point. Codified twenty years later in Leon Battista Alberti's treatise On Painting, this breakthrough shattered medieval artistic conventions. Medieval painters had sized figures hierarchically—depicting holy figures enormous and peasants minuscule regardless of spatial depth. Linear perspective replaced theological hierarchy with geometric humanism, placing the individual viewer at the rational center of the visible universe.