Host James Burke relates the visual effects created by modern filmmakers to the use of perspective in Renaissance art. Uses state-of-the-art computer graphics to demonstrate how scientific linear perspective was used by Renaissance artists to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. Shows the empirical illusion of space in paintings by Giotto, then traces the development of scientific perspective in the inlaid wood veneer panels of the Studiolo in Urbino, and in drawings and paintings by Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Andrea Mantegna, and Albrecht Dürer. Explains Leonardo's use of atmospheric perspective and the use of wide-angle perspective in anamorphic art by Leonardo, Erhard Schön, and Hans Holbein the younger.