Leonardo & Sfumato

{and furthermore v2}

And being that I originally started this direction based on the half-baked notion of some historians, academics and a certain F. Ross { artrenewal.org}, which is to say, the Masters of Old never ever stooped as low as to use the camera at all. I will expand upon this covering briefly the times after Leonardo da Vinci, up to the 1800’s. And of course, I will more than likely be getting back later to Leonardo a Vinci and Sfumato, as this appears to be growing into an ongoing mini-series. And by the way, I do plenty of quoting of others, because otherwise, the numbskulls and naysayers would just derail my writings as mere speculatory nonsense or some such concoction. From Van Buren Coke… “in addition to View of Delft, a number of other compositions by Vermeer may owe there extremely wide angle of view to optical phenomenon associated with the camera obscura, as the these effects are

not experienced in normal vision.

Among the Baroque and Rococo Italian painters who used the Camera Obscura for rendering panoramic views of cities and countryside were Crespi, Guardi, Canaletto, Canelli, Bellotto, Zuccarelli, Vanvitelli. Such factors as compressed perspective, exaggeratedly widened foregrounds, somewhat limited sense of depth and selective focus indicate that their paintings were prepared in a number of instances with the aid of the Camera Obscura”.

And just to let you know, Vermeer’s work dates from the mid 1600s and the Baroque and Rococo time period covers the 1500s to the 1700s.

In more recent times, Charles Seymour { b.1912} {pg. 3, the Painter and the Photograph} on observing Vermeer’s View of Delft, we read, “the highlights spread into small circles, and in such images to solidity of the form of a barge for example is disintegrated in a way that is very close to the well-known effect of circles or discs of confusion in optical or photographic terms. This effect results when a pencil of light reflected as a point from an object in nature passes through a lens and is not resolved or brought into focus on a plane set up on the image side of the lens. In order to paint this optical phenomena Vermeer must have seen it, and it must be assumed that he could not have seen it with direct vision, for this is a phenomenon of reflected light”.

What I am coming to understand in doing this research is that there is ample amount of research, inquiry, articles and documentaries and books etc. covering Vermeer and the Camera Obscura and pretty much not a single word about Leonardo da Vinci and the Pinhole Camera or Camera Obscura. This idea of Leonardo da Vinci using the Camera may be extremely disturbing to certain academic types, whose heads have become cemented into a theoretical timeline of events, but really, I am just moving the use of the camera back 150 years or so,

which is not that Earth Shaking.

And to continue on with this time period

{1500s to the 1800s}.

And to quote Gravesande {b.1688} “several Flemish painters {according to what has been said about them} have studied and copied in their paintings, the effects of the Camera Obscura and the way in which it presents nature. It cannot be denied that certain lessons can in fact be drawn from {the Camera Obscura} chiaroscuro and light, and yet too exact an imitation would be a distortion, because the way in which we see natural objects in the Camera Obscura is different from the way in which we see them naturally. The glass lens interposed between objects and their representation on the paper {or screen} intercepts the rays of the reflected light which render shadows darker by it than would be in the case in nature”.

 And from the Painter and the Photograph, page 5, we read…”throughout the 18th century, artists used Camera Obscuras. Confirmation of this is found in Count Francesco Algarotti’s “Essay on Painting”, published in 1764. He wrote…”the best modern painters among the Italians have availed themselves greatly of this contrivance, nor is it possible they should have otherwise represented things so much to life. Everyone knows of what service it has been to Spagnoletto of Bologna some of whose pictures have a grand and most wonderful effect”.

And furthermore from the same book we read…”despite the widespread use of the Camera Obscura by artists, it’s use to make Daguerreotypes stirred up a storm of controversy among illustrators and graphic artists. They feared Daguerreotypes would compete with their work, for through the new use of the Camera very accurate pictures could be made by operators having little or no training. “Will the artist not be driven to starvation when a machine ursurps his functions?” A Viennese reporter asked in September 1839 and at once furnished his own reply…”The Daguerreotype does not deprive the landscape painter of his bread-and-butter, on the contrary he can make it yield profitable returns. He can photograph a locality with the Daguerreotype in a few minutes, to serve a sketch for a painting in

any desired proportions at home”.

This echoed the comments of Francois Argo, the distinguished scientist and member of the French Chamber of Deputies who was the spirited advocate of Daguerre’s process. He said, “the ease and accuracy of the new process, far from damaging the interest of the draughtsman, will procure for him an increase in work. He will certainly work last in the open air,

and more in the studio”.

So as you can see, the use of Cameras was apparently commonplace during this time period 1600s through the 1800s, and when the new light preservation technique came along circa 1839, there was a storm of controversy so much so as to have a wide scale uproar generated from artists who were ALREADY using the Camera as a basis for the creation of their art, that they feared this new fangled light recording device would make their craft obsolete. Well, as you know, that is what happened, techniques using the Camera Obscura were abandoned in favor of the newfangled contraption. Many once-upon-a-time artists took up this new craft of photography and scores and scores of miniaturist and portrait painters abandoned ship and or were steamrolled by this cheaper and more exacting representation of reality, the Daguerreotype, then the Ambrotype, Tintype, CDVs, Cabinet Cards, etc.. I am not positive, but is this where the notion that a photographer IS AN Artist, originated? I mean obviously, a photographer is more or less a pampered button pusher, not an artist at all. However, as you can understand here in this transition point, between 1839 and afterwards, there was a crossover of artisans whose career revolved around portraiture, as in hand-painting likenesses, who then took up the newfangled profession of photography out of monetary necessity who originally called themselves Artist and Photographer. They understood the difference circa mid 1800s, it is just later on into the 1900s somehow photographers through some kind of convoluted quack-ass logic {or is it an inferiority complex?} began to think of themselves and call themselves, artists. What a misnomer. Photographers are light recorders, no different than a sound recorder/engineer who pushes a button on a cassette or reel to reel tape recorder. You think this is a little far-fetched, well take note the first book with original photos in it was entitled “The Pencil of Nature”, meaning of course that nature had created the resulting delineations of light, not the hand of man.

But this is a whole other story.

Back to where I was, from Van Buren Coke, page 7, we read…”one of the earliest examples of Daguerreotypes used by an artist is found in the drawings of L.Marquier who depended on pictures taken by the Daguerre’s process for lithographs he made a Paris in 1839. The details in these prints were rendered so precisely and so objectively that they have the appearance of Daguerreotypes. Such items as advertisements were copied faithfully. And in view such as Notre Dame des Paris, perspective was drawn in a foreshortened fashion that stemmed from lens vision, not eye vision”.

And from the same book Delaoche is quoted…”Daguerre’s process completely satisfies all the demands of art, carrying certain essential principals of art to such perfection that must become a subject of observation and study even to the most accomplished painters”.

And one of the crossover artists, who delved into this newfangled invention, Samuel FB Morse using the camera to make Daguerreotypes….{same book, page 7}…he states, ”to accumulate for my studio, models for my canvas”…

and furthermore from one of his lectures {1840, to the National Academy of Design}…”it will ease the artist’s task by providing him with facsimile sketches of nature, buildings, landscapes, groups of figures, scenes selected in accordance with the peculiarities of his own taste, not copies of nature, but proportions of nature itself, the public would become acquainted through photography with correctness of perspective and proportion, and thus be better qualified to see the difference between professional and less well-trained work”.

And from Edgar Allen Poe, {same book} in1840 who wrote…”the truth is the Daguerreotype is infinitely more accurate in it’s representation than any painting by human hands. If we examine the work of ordinary art, by means of a powerful powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear, but a closer scrutiny of the photographic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, more perfect identity

of aspect with the thing represented”.

And from the American landscapist, Thomas Cole,  we read {same book},…”I suppose you have read a great deal about the Daguerreotype. If you believe everything the newspapers say, which, by the way, would require an enormous bump of marvelousness, you would be led to suppose that the poor craft of painting was knocked in the head by this new machinery for making Nature take her own likeness, and we have nothing to do but give up the ghost. This is the conclusion, that the art of painting is creative, as well as imitative art, and is in no danger of being superseded by any man mechanical contrivance”.