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Did The Old Masters Cheat?
By Frederic Raphael, Los Angeles Times

Book Review
Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters
By David Hockney (Vicking: 296 pages, $60)

Sunday, December 9, 2001 - - Until now, Hockney argues, it has been generally assumed that Raphael and company had such rare coordination that they could somehow transcribe reality freehand. Given the veneration to which genius was entitled, it was heresy to suggest that artists could possibly have reproduced intricately patterned brocades-...with the help of optical machinery.
Hockney claims to have discovered that, in fact, Renaissance genius was systematically crutched by "mechanical aids" : the new science of optics enabled many of the, even the greatest, such as Velazquez, Van Dyck and Vermeer, to use lenses and other means to project their "set-ups" onto flat surfaces.
By such "artificial" methods, they could render three dimensions in unprecedented "realistic", and innovative two-demension paintings. This accounts for why faces were suddenly being reproduced, by a whole slew of painters, with a precision not found in earlier, unassisted art.
For centuries, the Catholic Church was at once the greatest patron of the arts, and of innovation in them, and the most vigilant custodian of dogmatic orthodoxy. The inquisition did not hesitate to threaten Galileo with the instruments of torture if he did not retract the heretical view-confirmed by his use of telescopic lenses- that the Earth moved around the sun. The artists' use of lenses was a form of commerce with the devil, which it was prudent not to advertise.
Hockney concludes that (Renaissance Artists) had quiet access to the optical aids which came for the most part, from Holland, where the Inquisition's writ did not run with the same repressive force that it had in Italy?
"Secret Knowledge" is a fascinating, if arguable, revision of great Western art.
HOW THE CAMERA OBSCURA WORKS:
1. In one approach, the image of a subject passes through a small opening in the wall of a darkened room onto a mirror.
2. The image is reflected off the mirror onto a canvas or piece of paper hung on the opposite wall. The image is now traced. Then the canvas can be turned right side up and the work finished from real life.

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