Art: The work of Leonardo da Vinci on perspective, light, shadows, and color in painting What was the motivation that led to the discovery? The Renaissance art movement was to represent realism. Instead of the classical paintings of portraits which represented posed scenes and artificial light, they essentially wanted to create a photograph of the scene exactly as it was in real life. What questions were asked? “In his treatise Leonardo states that the objective of painters is to represent mainly two things: man and his mind.4 The nature of man becomes visible, and therefore, accessible to the eye in the different movements, and in the proportions of his body parts. In order to represent man and his mind the artist must first create a pictorial