Arts Tonight's 'Omnibus' focused upon David Hockney's obsession with discovering why the perspective on that are perceived to be greatest portraits and landscape in art history have a skewed perspective and inconsistencies. As this article from 'The Observer' describes, he came to the conclusion that Caravagio and his contemoraries were using Camera Obscura to project the image of their subject onto canvas, which they would then fill in with oils or make a drawing from. Some were done in stages -- no need to have you subject there for days, paint his head, then set up a model (alive or wooden) to fill in the rest. In other words they were extremely good tracers. The programme was a devastatingly good debunking of many of the myths which surround the great masters, although Hockey did point out that even with the projections, these artists would still have to be great technician to bring out the details, is arguement being that all they were actually doing was a photographic process without chemicals.
Posted on Saturday, October 13, 2001