Albrecht Durer
It is my conviction that something has been lost compared to the discoveries made during the
Renaissance and the assocaited quality of work
From Wikipedia:
My father recently put me on to the Hockney-Falco thesis. In a nutshell, the claim is that circa 1420, artists began to take advantage of lense technology, utilizing optical technology for achieving the stunning realism in their portraits. The British artist David Hockney has made an incredible contribution to art history with his research.
He made a BBC documentary "David Hockney's Secret Knowledge" regarding his findings.
From Youtube channel documentaryondemand with Spanish subtitles:
This is an excellent departure in studying Art History that is too often overlooked by many that have been led to believe that this brilliance only came "ex nihilo" from the minds of the artists. The fact that these optical advantages for painting helped to produce such great work quickly turns into a story of trade secrets. Hockney's book "The Secret Knowledge" goes into this in further detail with copius documentation going back centuries that shows the artists and opticians of the time eager to conceal what they have uncovered.
As far as the optical principles are concerned, the best illustration is that of the methods of:
Camera Lucida
Camera Obscura
descriptions of these two methods of ealry projection are below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura
Please use Hockney's research as a departure for your own investigations. All sorts of connections begin to emerge when one goes down the rabbit hole. I have found many myself and am looking forward to sharing more and more of them. Much more to follow!