Subject: so-called “Tomb of Theron”
Source of drawings: Thomas Wilkins, The Antiquities of Magna Graecia, 1807
Date: 1st century BC (attributed)
Location: Agrigento, Sicily

Perspective is often described as a Renaissance invention — a codified system for representing space.
Yet long before its formalization, its effects were already understood and deployed.
The monument subtly tapers upward.
This pyramidal distortion — scarcely perceptible in the built object — becomes evident only in measured drawings.
In situ, the deformation operates as optical correction: the structure appears taller, more vertical, more monumental than its actual dimensions.
Here, perspective is not a device of representation but of construction.
Optical adjustment becomes architectural strategy.
Before perspective became theory, it was already practice.