Why did Renaissance painters use linear perspective?

Renaissance painters adopted linear perspective primarily to create a convincing illusion of depth and volume on a two-dimensional surface.

Before this development, many artists utilized conceptual methods that depicted objects as they were known to be rather than as they were visually perceived, often resulting in a flattened appearance. By employing the mathematical laws of perspective—first devised by Filippo Brunelleschi and later codified by Leon Battista Alberti in his treatise On Painting—painters could simulate how the human eye perceives space.

This system relies on the observation that parallel lines appear to converge at a vanishing point as they recede into the distance, while objects appear to shrink. By integrating these principles, Renaissance artists were able to transform their compositions, particularly in religious paintings, by providing architectural backgrounds that possessed a sense of great spatial depth and realism.12