The secret of "realistic" Renaissance painting

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When looking at pictures renaissance, one cannot but admire the clarity of the lines, the excellent color palette and, most importantly, the incredible realism of the transmitted images. Modern scientists have long puzzled how the masters of that time managed to create such masterpieces, because there was no written evidence of the intricacies and secrets of the performance technique left. English artist and photographer David Hockney claims to have solved the mystery of the Renaissance artists who could paint "living" paintings. If we compare different time periods in the history of painting, it becomes clear that in the Renaissance (the turn of the XIV-XV centuries) the paintings "suddenly" became much more realistic than before. Looking at them, it seems that the characters are about to sigh, and sunbeams will play on the objects.

The question suggests itself: did the Renaissance artists suddenly learn to draw better, and the paintings began to turn out more voluminous? The famous artist, graphic artist and photographer David Hockney (David hockney).

In this study, he was helped by a painting by Jan van Eyck "Portrait of the Arnolfini couple" … Many interesting details can be found on the canvas, and it was painted in 1434. Particular attention is drawn to the mirror on the wall and the candlestick on the ceiling, which looks amazingly realistic. David Hockney managed to get hold of a similar candlestick and tried to draw it. Much to the artist's surprise, it turned out to be quite difficult to depict this object in perspective, and even the glare of light must be conveyed so that it was clear that it was a shine of metal. By the way, before the Renaissance, no one took up the image of glare on a metal surface.

When the three-dimensional model of the candlestick was recreated, Hockney made sure that Van Eyck's painting depicted it in perspective with one vanishing point. But the catch was that there was no camera obscura with a lens (an optical device with which you can create a projection) in the 15th century.

David Hockney wondered how Van Eyck managed to achieve such realism in his paintings. But one day he drew attention to the image of the mirror in the picture. It was convex. It should be noted that in those days the mirrors were concave, since the craftsmen did not yet know how to "glue" the tin lining to the flat surface of the glass. To obtain a mirror in the 15th century, molten tin was poured into a glass flask, and then the top was cut off, leaving a concave shiny bottom. David Hockney realized that Van Eyck used a concave mirror through which he looked to draw objects as realistically as possible.

In the 1500s, craftsmen learned to make great quality lenses. They were inserted into a camera obscura, which made it possible to obtain a projection of any size. This was a real revolution in realistic imaging technology. But most of the people in the paintings "became" left-handed. The thing is that the direct projection of the lens when using a pinhole camera is mirrored. In Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraten's "Declaration of Love (Rampant Chef)", written circa 1665-1670, the characters are all left-handed. A man and a woman are holding a glass and a bottle in their left hand, the old man in the background is also shaking them with his left finger. Even the monkey uses its left paw to peek under the woman's dress.

To get a correct, proportional image, it was necessary to accurately position the mirror into which the lens was directed. But not all artists succeeded in doing this perfectly, and there were few high-quality mirrors then. Because of this, in some paintings you can see how the proportions were not respected: small heads, large shoulders or legs.

The use of optical devices by artists in no way diminishes their talent. Thanks to the achieved realism of the paintings of the Renaissance, modern ordinary people now know how people and household items of that time looked like.

Medieval artists tried not only to achieve realism in their paintings, but also to encrypt special symbols in them. So, Titian's magnificent masterpiece “Heavenly Love and Earthly Love” hides in itself many secret signs.