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Secret Knowledge
Secret Knowledge in painting
What is ‘Secret Knowledge’ and how does it impact 3D
rendering
• 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.
A diagram of the camera
obscura from 1772.
According to the Hockney–
Falco thesis, such devices
were central to much of the
great art from the
Renaissance period to the
dawn of modern art.
Secret Knowledge in painting
Reasons for suspecting the use of optical devices by the Great
Masters
•
Sudden jump in realism in the early 15th century
– Patterns on robes
– Faces improve
– Very small but very accurate drawings Sudden stylistic differences
– Strong lighting
– Still lives with planar compositions
“Hockney’s Great Wall”
Secret Knowledge in painting
Reasons for suspecting the use of optical devices by the Great
Masters
•
Fillipino Lippi, The Crucifixion of St. Peter, Brancacci chapel, 1484-5 (Left).
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Crucifixion of St. Peter, 1601 (Right).
Secret Knowledge in painting
Improvements in detail
Improvements in rendering metal
Secret Knowledge in painting
Improvements in detail
• Improvements with faces
• More individual
• Begin to capture fleeting
expressions
Secret Knowledge in painting
The Camera Obscura
•
The camera obscura (Latin; "camera" is a "vaulted chamber/room" + "obscura" means "dark"=
"darkened chamber/room") is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a
screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of the inventions that led to
photography. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an
external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced,
upside-down, but with colour and perspective preserved. The image can be projected onto
paper, and can then be traced to produce a highly accurate representation.
Secret Knowledge in painting
The Camera Obscura
The Hockney-Falco Thesis Advancements in realism after the
Renaissance were (at least partly) due to optical devices. The camera
obscura, camera lucida, and concave mirror projection devices.
Visual evidence
• Details are “too good,” “impossible” to eyeball
• Errors caused by optics in the paintings
• Style shows evidence of optics (lighting, staging). Historical evidence
• Claim they have sources describing technology
• Images of lenses, mirrors in the paintings themselves
Secret Knowledge in painting
• What does a camera obscura projection look like?
Abelardo Morell’s photograph of a camera obscura
projection of St. Mark’s Cathedral (published in the
May 2011 National Geographic)
Abelardo Morell’s photograph of a camera obscura
projection of Central Park(published in the May 2011
National Geographic)
Secret Knowledge in painting
Hans Holbein the Younger, The French Ambassadors, 1533
•
•
Skull has to be drawn using some kind of optics.
Objects on shelf are “too perfect” to have been drawn by eyeballing them
The most notable and famous of Holbein's symbols
in the work, however, is the skewed skull which is
placed in the bottom centre of the composition. The
skull, rendered in anamorphic perspective, another
invention of the Early Renaissance, is meant to be
a visual puzzle as the viewer must approach the
painting nearly from the side to see the form morph
into an accurate rendering of a human skull.
Secret Knowledge in painting
Hans Holbein the Younger, The French Ambassadors, 1533
Secret Knowledge in painting
Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434
Secret Knowledge in painting
Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434
•
Chandelier “perfect” but there is no underdrawing or
corrections which is amazing for such a complicated
foreshortened object. (it is the only object in the painting to be
painted this way)
•
Also, it is seen head-on, not from below as you would expect.
(If you use a mirror-lens you need to be level with the objects
you want to paint)
•
Irregularities in perspective because of irregularities in
manufacturing.
•
The convex mirror in the background if you reversed the
silvering and turned it around, is all that would be needed to
use as an optical device.
Secret Knowledge in painting
Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434
Secret Knowledge in painting
Vermeer, The Milkmaid, 1656-58
Optical “errors” that get
included:
•
circles of confusion” – blurry blobs on
highlights, only seen in optical
projections
Secret Knowledge in painting
Vermeer’s Room
•
Most of the literature of the camera
obscura available when Vermeer was
working, in the third quarter of the 17th
century, describes instruments that took
the form of closed rooms, tents or
cubicles (like Kircher's design), which the
user worked inside. It has sometimes
been suggested that Vermeer might have
used a camera of a rather different kind,
which certainly existed in his time, but
which was only manufactured in large
numbers in the 18th and 19th centuries,
and which took the form of a closed box,
with an external translucent screen. The
observer is now outside the box, not
inside it. Both Canaletto's and
Reynolds's cameras were of this type.
One problem compared with the roomtype camera is that the image is viewed
under ambient light and so seems
subjectively less bright. Fox Talbot and
the French pioneers of photography,
Niépce and Daguerre, built the first
photographic cameras by modifying
commercially produced camera obscuras
of this general type. - BBC History
Secret Knowledge in painting
Vermeer’s Room re-created in 3D
Secret Knowledge in painting
Vermeer’s Room
The fact that it is possible
to accurately re-create
Vermeer's room’s from his
paintings. To discern an
original viewpoint, is
evidence that optical
devices where used.
Secret Knowledge in painting
How is this important to 3D Rendering
Did seeing projected images cause a “paradigm
shift” in the way 3D objects were translated to
2D?
Did the way optical projections look lead to a
style change, without using the optics at every
instance?
Extra: “Caravaggio was early 'photographer‘”
It was already known he worked in a "darkroom" and illuminated his models through a hole in
the ceiling.
But Ms Lapucci believes the image was also projected on a canvas and "fixed".
Light-sensitive substances applied to the canvas would have "fixed" the image for around 30
minutes, allowing Caravaggio to paint the image with broad strokes using white lead mixed
with chemicals and minerals that were visible in the dark.
"There is lots of proof, notably the fact that Caravaggio never made preliminary sketches. So
it is plausible that he used these 'projections' to paint," she said.
Noting that "an abnormal number of his subjects were left-handed," Lapucci said: "That could
be explained by the fact that the image projected on the canvas was backwards."
She added: "This anomaly disappears in the artist's later works, a sign that the instruments
he used were improving. Also thanks to technical progress, his paintings gain a lot in depth
of field over the years.“
Link to BBC
Secret Knowledge
Secret Knowledge in painting
Visit the National Gallery take a look at the following Paintings &
Artists?
Hans Holbein the Younger, The French Ambassadors
The paintings of Vermeer
Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait
Still Life with Oranges and Walnuts 1772, Luis Meléndez