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1sarahhollenbeck
"Caravaggio’s reputation for revolutionary artistic genius has received a further boost following the discovery he may have used fireflies to create primitive “photographs”.
Roberta Lapucci, conservation chief at the Florence-based SACI institute, believes the baroque artist created a firefly powder as an essential tool after converting his entire studio into a kind of camera obscura. Writing in the monthly art journal Stile Arte, Lapucci reports Caravaggio filtered light through a purpose-made hole in his ceiling, using a biconvex lens and a concave mirror to reflect the image he planned to paint directly onto the canvas.
The use of a camera obscura to sketch the subject was not a new technique among artists, having gained prominence thanks to Leonardo da Vinci’s writings. The device works by projecting reverse images of outside objects onto the flat wall of a closed box through a lens in an aperture. By attaching a mirror to the apparatus, artists were able to trace the exact dimensions of the image onto a piece of paper.
Caravaggio spent months refining his technique, adjusting the light and the size of the models. However, by turning his entire room into a camera obscura, Caravaggio found himself working in the dark.
Lapucci believes this led him to create his own version of a distilled and dried firefly powder, first written about by the natural philosopher Giovan Battista della Porta in his 1558 work Magiae Naturalis."
http://artmagazine.arcadja.com/2008/12/01/caravaggio-created-firefly-photos/#hid...
Roberta Lapucci, conservation chief at the Florence-based SACI institute, believes the baroque artist created a firefly powder as an essential tool after converting his entire studio into a kind of camera obscura. Writing in the monthly art journal Stile Arte, Lapucci reports Caravaggio filtered light through a purpose-made hole in his ceiling, using a biconvex lens and a concave mirror to reflect the image he planned to paint directly onto the canvas.
The use of a camera obscura to sketch the subject was not a new technique among artists, having gained prominence thanks to Leonardo da Vinci’s writings. The device works by projecting reverse images of outside objects onto the flat wall of a closed box through a lens in an aperture. By attaching a mirror to the apparatus, artists were able to trace the exact dimensions of the image onto a piece of paper.
Caravaggio spent months refining his technique, adjusting the light and the size of the models. However, by turning his entire room into a camera obscura, Caravaggio found himself working in the dark.
Lapucci believes this led him to create his own version of a distilled and dried firefly powder, first written about by the natural philosopher Giovan Battista della Porta in his 1558 work Magiae Naturalis."
http://artmagazine.arcadja.com/2008/12/01/caravaggio-created-firefly-photos/#hid...
