Perspective is by no means common to the art of all epochs and all peoples.
For example, the pictorial art of the ancient Egyptians, although a richly developed tradition, did not take account of the optical effects of recession. And the drawing of primitive peoples and of young children tends to ignore perspective phenomena. Systematic, mathematically founded perspective, based initially on a fixed central viewpoint, was developed in Italy in the early 15th cent. In pre-Renaissance Europe and in the East more intuitive systems of representing spatial recession were used. See also aerial perspective .