John,

Yeah, it seems that one of the aims in developing early forms of perspective in painting stemmed from the effort to, since a lot of Italian Renaissance paintings were frescoes (so they were on walls of course) the artists were trying to realistically create the illusion (walking the old Oxymoron Hiway there) of space receding into the wall. And since a lot of these frescoes were viewed from below, the perspective was often a bit fudged (especially with later masters Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo, but even long before them)to make it seem a continuation of the ceiling lines of the room. I've never been to Florence or Venice, so I can't attest to it personally, but one of my instructors was and he assured me that it was so, if you stood in the right spot.

Sculpters Michelangelo and Donatello (who came earlier and was in fact credited with being one of the first one to really try this) even performed some of this viewer-below fudging on their statues. Explains the extra heavy brow ridge on Micheangelo's David.
Perhaps it also explains David's foreshortened penis, poor bugger. ;)

The Northern Renaissance however (of which Durer was the golden boy), because of the climate, featured less fresco and more, smaller oil or tempera on panel work. Oil paints were in fact developed in the north, by the Dutch and Germans. When the Italian artists finally got a look at the work of Durer and other northern artists, they were apparently blown away by the heavy use of line in their painting. The southern tradition featured more areas of tone and little line. So goes the story anyway...

Phew! Enough history.

But, incidentally, most of the visual artists I know are also musicians. Or, even if they don't play/sing, they at least are keen music appreciators with large record/CD collections. Visual art and music seem to go hand in hand.