Was the post-antique depiction of cast shadows really a Florentine innovation of the 1420s, as Giorgio Vasari and subsequent scholarship have led us to believe? In this study, Gerd Mathias Micheluzzi undertakes the first comprehensive examination of this question, combining art-historical inquiry with an interdisciplinary approach. Through detailed analyses of Early Christian mosaics, medieval knowledge traditions, and Italian illuminated manuscripts, wall and panel paintings from the 14th and early 15th centuries, he demonstrates that the cast shadow occupied a more substantial role in pre-Renaissance visual culture than has hitherto been acknowledged. His study uncovers a rich history of visual experimentation, in which developments were intertwined yet neither constant nor teleologically directed towards the imitation of nature. First systematic study of the cast shadow in Italian painting, literature, and natural philosophy of the Middle Ages Revises a long-standing topos in art history