Sunday, March 15, 2009

Caravaggio may have been the first master of photographic technique


Revered as the baroque master of lifelike portraits and light and shadow, the 16th-century painter Caravaggio is now being touted as the first master of photographic technique, two centuries before the formal invention of the camera.

The Italian artist has long been suspected of turning his studio into a giant camera obscura, punching a hole in the ceiling to help project images on to his canvas. But new research claims that Caravaggio also used chemicals to turn his canvases into primitive photographic film, 'burning' images he then sketched on to for works such as St Matthew and the Angel. Read more at The Guardian

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