Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527-c.1607), was a Dutch Renaissance architect, painter, engineer, and engraver. Generally acknowledged as the ‘father of architectural painting’ or the progenitor of the art of perspective, a designer who utilized the tradition of Vitruvius and Serlio as raw material for architectural and ornamental inventions. Vredeman de Vries was active in Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Prague, where he designed a body of architectural prints, works which by the seventeenth century had influenced buildings from Tallinn to Peru. His publications were among the most widely-distributed “Renaissance” books on building and vision, shipped to England, Spain and even Mexico by 1600.

 From review of The City Rehearsed: Object, Architecture, and Print in the Worlds of Hans Vredeman de Vries (The Classical Tradition in Architecture).