I went through art history at college three times. Three times I was taught about the art periods and three times we leapt from medieval art to the renaissance without a single explanation as to why there was such a radical change.
Now, while the renaissance lasted for about 300 years, it is the first 15 years that is the real period where we need the help of someone with the little grey cells of Hercule Poirot.
During that small period of time, small single light source portrait studies began to appear and all sized about 300 by 400 mm - but why and why all the same size? The answer is simple and it is all to do with the size of lenses being developed at the time.
This is only conjecture by the wonderful Mr David Hockney, first put forward in his 2001 book Secret Knowledge and it is a controversial theory, but his thinking is that while there was a renaissance in art over here, there was a renaissance in science over there in Europe.
In the words of Hockney and his collaborator, thin-film physicist Charles Falco: "Our thesis is that certain elements in certain paintings made as early as c1430 were produced as a result of the artist using either concave mirrors or refractive lenses to project the images of objects illuminated by sunlight onto his board/canvas. The artist then traced some portions of the projected images, made sufficient marks to capture only the optical perspective of other portions, and altered or completely ignored yet other portions where the projections did not suit his artistic vision. As a result, these paintings are composites containing elements that are "eyeballed" along with ones that are "optics-based." Further, starting at the same time, the unique look of the projected image began to exert a strong influence on the appearance of other works even where optical projections had not been directly used as an aid."
But Hockney’s theory is contentious among both art historians and physicists. It implies that from around 1420 artists were using sophisticated optics to project images onto the surfaces they were painting. Yet it was not until hundreds of years later, in the early 18th century, that artists like the Venetian Canaletto are generally acknowledged to have used such projectors.
But if he is right, through that simple process of image distillation, artists like Jan Van Eyck were able to create the wonderful Arnolfino Portrait. And perhaps Van Eyck even gave a nod to how he did it by placing a convex mirror in the background.
But there is no such thing as a pure image as it’s always, always, always being adapted.
Take Dieric Bouts' collage of perspective images of The Last Supper in his Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, creating the perspective from the room you’re in as opposed to Leonardo Da Vinci’s version of the Last Supper, where you’re a view from outside. An uninvited interloper.
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