Volume 49, Number 3 · February 28, 2002
Through a Glass, Darkly
By Ingrid D. Rowland
Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters
by David Hockney
Viking Studio, 296 pp., $60.00
Devices of Wonder:From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen
Catalog of the exhibition by Barbara Maria Stafford and Frances Terpak
an exhibition at the Getty Museum, Santa Monica, November 13, 2001– February 2, 2002. .Getty Research Institute, 405 pp., $39.95 (paper)
Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae
by Athanasius Kircher
Rome, 1646; reprinted Amsterdam, 1671.
Iconismi e Mirabilia da Athanasius Kircher
edited by Eugenio Lo Sardo
Rome: Edizioni dell'Elefante, 280 pp. (out of print)
One day in 1999, as he admired a small pencil portrait by the exquisitely precise hand of Jean-Dominique Ingres, artist David Hockney was suddenly possessed by an idea: that the almost photographic clarity of Ingres's draftsmanship might in fact have derived, like a photograph, from the projection of the sitter's image through a lens. Perhaps, in other words, Ingres may have used a small tool called a camera lucida, basically what Hockney describes as 'a prism on a stick,' to project the figure before him onto paper, allowing him to sketch out his composition's basic lines with nearly photographic precision. Hockney soon found definite confirmation of his eyes' intuition; Ingres, as it turned out, often did carry a camera lucida with him when he drew his little portraits as a useful supplement to his income.
Review, 4137 words
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