When David Hockney compares the relative accuracy of tracing from mirrors or lenses with what he calls“ eyeballing” the subject, he seems to be unaware of the full nature of classical drawing and sets up a false dichotomy. Renaissance and Baroque masters did not merely“ eyeball” the model, nor was it drawing from“ memory,” as has also been brought into the debate. Master draughtsmen could draw from their spacial and anatomical understanding of structure, the three-dimensional forms of their subjects— whether with a model in front of them, out of their head, or a combination— such as when Rubens depicted a lion hunt.
But the Hockney-Falco and Steadman theories also raised reasonable questions that had to be addressed. One major attempt to take this bull by the horns was a series of papers collected under the auspices of the prestigious Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in 2007, with the compelling title Inside the Camera Obscura – Optics and Art under the Spell of the Projected Image. 3 The sixteen papers include such titles as Alhazen’ s Optics in Europe: Some Notes on What It Said and What It Did Not Say, The Optical Quality of Seventeenth-Century Lenses, and Neutron-Autoradiography of two Paintings by Jan Vermeer in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin.
Pieter de Hooch( 1629-1684) Man reading a letter to a woman 1674-1676 oil on canvas 27.5 x 30.3” The Kremer Collection
One of present interest is,“ The Camera Obscura as a Model of a New Concept of Mimesis in Seventeenth-Century Painting.” Now“ mimesis” here means the“ imitation of nature,” central to classical and Renaissance art. The author starts out by saying that he does“ not wish to discuss the question as to whether artists of the seventeenth century actually implemented the camera obscura in a painting process or not,” but to“ investigate how concrete contemporary applications of this instrument might have looked, what problems were associated with it and what such an application would mean for the creative process, practically and conceptually.” He selects two artists to compare and contrast from our general period here— Vermeer and the Spanish painter Diego Velazquez. It’ s a long article.
There is no historical documentation that either artist really used the camera and, while there’ s not much at all for Vermeer, there is much for Velazquez, through his father-in-law Pacheco … no mention of any optical devices. Of course it may have been a closely held secret, which even the father of the great artist’ s wife was sworn not to divulge, as the title of Mr. Hockney’ s book implies: Secret Knowledge. Hmmmm …
Johannes Vermeer Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid c. 1670 – 1671 Oil on canvas 28 x 23” National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
In 1993 Jorgen Wadum, chief restorer at the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague, discovered a tiny pinprick in the left eye of the lady writing, which is the exact location of the vanishing point for the picture’ s perspective.
36 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE