Bird's-eye

From a bird's-eye view, Los Angeles looks like a chequered carpet.

At first read every chapter quickly to get a bird's-eye view of it.

A bird's-eye view of a large city in Japan presents an appearance quite unlike that presented by any large assemblage of buildings at home. A view of Tokio, for example, from some elevated point reveals a vast sea of roofs, the gray of the shingles and dark slate-color of the tiles, with dull reflections from their surfaces, giving a sombre effect to the whole. The even expanse is broken here and there by the fire-proof buildings, with their ponderous tiled roofs and ridges and pure white or jet-black walls. These, though in color adding to the sombre appearance, form, with the exception of the temples, one of the most conspicuous features in the general monotony. The temples are indeed conspicuous, as they tower far above the pigmy dwellings which surround them. Their great black roofs, with massive ridges and ribs, and grand sweeps and white or red gables, render them striking objects from whatever point they are viewed. Green masses of tree-foliage springing from the numerous gardens add some life to this gray sea of domiciles.

I have a better bird's-eye view.

There is also one of the woodblocks used to print Jacopo de’ Barbari’s revolutionary bird’s-eye panorama of Venice and the lagoon, from 1500.

In the 1970s Thiebaud became increasingly interested in landscapes and cityscapes that he painted from a bird’s-eye perspective. In “Potrero Hill” a painting from the mid-1970s, he jammed freeways, hills and buildings together in a steep vertical of color and light.