Photography in the 1400s

Photography in the 1400s

Part 1

 

Part 2

 

As described in Secret Knowledge, in January 1999 during a visit to the National Gallery, London, Hockney conceived of the idea that optical aids were the key factor in the development of artistic realism. He was struck by the accuracy of portraits by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and became convinced that Ingres had used a camera lucida or similar device. From there, Hockney began looking for signs of the use of optical aids in earlier paintings, creating what he called the Great Wall in his studio by organizing images of great realistic art by time period. What he saw as a sudden rise of realism around 1420, combined with Charles Falco’s suggestion that concave mirrors could have been used in that period to project images, was the germ of the Hockney–Falco thesis.

The Hockney–Falco thesis is a controversial theory of art history, advanced by artist David Hockney and physicist Charles M. Falco, suggesting that advances in realism and accuracy in the history of Western art since the Renaissance were primarily the result of optical aids such as the camera obscura, camera lucida, and curved mirrors, rather than solely due the development of artistic technique and skill. In a 2001 book, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, Hockney analyzed the work of the Old Masters and argued that the level of accuracy represented in their work is impossible to create by “eyeballing it”. Since then, Hockney and Falco have produced a number of publications on positive evidence of the use of optical aids, and the historical plausibility of such methods.

The Debate
Hockney-Falco_thesis
website The Debate

Part of Hockney’s work involved collaboration with Charles Falco, a condensed matter physicist and an expert in optics. While the use of optical aids would generally enhance accuracy, Falco calculated the types of distortion that would result from specific optical devices; Hockney and Falco argued that such errors could in fact be found in the work of some of the Old Masters.[1]

 

Sections
Use of lenses by Master painters .. David Hockneys Secret 1440 Photography part 1of8
Use of lenses Sunlight …………….. David Hockneys Secret 1440 Photography part 2of8
Use of lenses/Camera Vemeer…… David Hockneys Secret 1440 Photography part 3of8
Use of lenses Color Movie 1440s .. David Hockneys Secret 1440 Photography part 4of8
From Concave Mirror  to Lens …… David Hockneys Secret 1440 Photography part 5of8
Optical distortions Focus of Lens . David Hockneys Secret 1440 Photography part 6of8
Eye line and Scale …………………. David Hockneys Secret 1440 Photography 7of8
1839 invention of Photography …. David Hockneys Secret 1440 Photography 8of8