Architectural painting (also Architecture painting) is a form of genre painting where the predominant focus lies on architecture, both outdoors views and interiors. While architecture was present in many of the earliest paintings and illuminations, it was mainly used as background or to provide rhythm to a painting. In the Renaissance, architecture was used to emphasize the perspective and create a sence of depth, like in Masaccio's Holy Trinity from the 1420s.
In Western art, architectural painting as an independent genre developed in the 16th century in Flanders and the Netherlands, and reached its peak in 16th and 17th century Dutch painting. Later, it developed in a tool for Romantic paintings, with e.g. views of ruins becoming very popular. Closely related genres are architectural fantasies and trompe-l'oeils, especially illusionistic ceiling painting, and cityscapes .
The 16th century saw the development of …show more content…
Indeed, they were admirably intertwined at various points in history—in the ancient cultures of East and West, and in the European Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. With the rise of the merchant class to power in the 19th century, the plastic arts began to lose their interdependency and to separate. Part of this was due to the general fragmentation of society into competing social units. Part was the fragmentation of knowledge into various specialized fields, of which architecture, sculpture, and painting were, in the arts, prime examples. And no small part was economic. Buildings became real estate that often trades hands for money, as are paintings and sculptures. Today, it is rare to find these three arts united in any but the most tentative