Obsession with optics: Caravaggio's The Entombment of Christ (1602-1603). The Renaissance-era painter is famed for his use of light and shade.
Credit: Wikimedia
FLORENCE: Italian Renaissance painter Caravaggio used optical instruments to 'photograph' his models more than 200 years before the camera was invented, according to new research.
The 16th century artist celebrated for his dramatic chiaroscuro (light and shadow) paintings mastered "a whole set of techniques that are the basis of photography," said academic Roberta Lapucci.
Caravaggio worked in a 'darkroom' and illuminated his models through a hole in the ceiling, said Lapucci, who teaches at the prestigious Studio Art Centres International in the Tuscan capital.
Light and shadow
The image was then projected onto a canvas using a lens and a mirror, she said.
Caravaggio 'fixed' the image, using light-sensitive substances, for around half an hour – during which he used white lead mixed with chemicals and minerals that were visible in the dark to paint the image with broad strokes, Lapucci said.
She has hypothesised that Caravaggio used a photoluminescent powder from crushed fireflies, which was used at the time to create special effects in theatre productions.
One of the main elements of these mixtures was mercury – to which prolonged exposure can affect the central nervous system causing irritability and other symptoms – which Lapucci said would help explain Caravaggio's notorious temper.
Optical sciences
"The entire set-up was suggested to him by his friend Giovanni Battista Della Porta, a physicist," Lapucci said. "Caravaggio was very tied to a community of scholars interested in optics."
While Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) had earlier described the 'camera obscura' or darkroom, Caravaggio was the first painter to use it, Lapucci said.
The Italian researcher has collaborated with British artist David Hockney. He wrote in his 2001 book Secret Knowledge that Caravaggio and later the Flemish Baroque artist Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) and French neoclassical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) used optical instruments to compose their paintings.
Art historians say the assertions have not been proven and complain that they devalue the artists' genius.
