Did Canaletto Use A Camera Obscura?
Purpose of this lesson:
The camera obscura is an integral part to understanding how modern day photography developed and how some artists worked. However, it'due south a pretty confusing concept if you've never really looked into the mechanics of how one works or experienced ane yourself. This lesson is meant to explain the ins and outs of how the camera obscura functions as well as its place in history. We will look at how it adult out of scientific circles into the art world and how artists, both by and present, have used information technology.
This lesson is geared towards secondary or high school level students. Information technology would best fit into a foundations course for either studio classes, particularly those focusing on photography, or an art history course looking at either photography or art particularly from the Netherlands in the 17th century.
Let'due south get started…
ane) Definitions to remember
- Camera Obscura: a darkened enclosure having an aperture usually provided with a lens through which light from external objects enters to form an image of the objects on the opposite surface. (Merriam-Webster)
- Daguerreotype:
- An early photograph produced on a silver or a silver-covered copper plate.
- The process of producing such photographs. (Merriam-Webster)
2) To become students intrigued
Show students this short video created past National Geographic:
Seeing a camera obscura be constructed in a room helps you to empathise that the project of what you're looking at actually does get flipped. It'south something that seems unreal, unless you're a physicist, isn't it?
Enquire students questions nigh the video and camera obscuras to go them thinking. Questions could include the following:
- Did you look the prototype to actually be flipped? Why or why not?
- Why do you think the image is flipped?
- Have you ever worked with a camera obscura? If then, what did y'all find nearly interesting?
- How could you utilise a photographic camera obscura in art?
- Do yous know any artists, by or contemporary, that work with a photographic camera obscura?
Part 3) The Lesson
Part I: The mechanics of the Camera Obscura
Before we dive too far into the history and uses of the camera obscura, it'south good to know how, exactly, i works. Camera obscura is Latin for 'dark chamber,' which is critical in making 1 of your ain.
In its most basic grade, all you lot need is a room fully closed off to light, essentially a darkroom for photography, with one small transparent hole in one wall. On the other side of the wall with the pinhole, you have to have a lot of light. If you lot get it simply right, whatever is on the brilliant side of the wall with the pinhole will project through the hole, upside down, onto the within of the darkroom.
Camera obscuras tin come in all shapes and sizes. They can physically exist the size of a room, yous can make most any room into one, as you've seen in the National Geographic video. Or, what's more common, is having a smaller box camera obscura that tin be transported around with a clear panel at the opposite end of the box as the pinhole. In other cases, they're as small as a cereal box; these are the kind you might acquaintance with using when watching a solar eclipse as not to impairment your eyes.
To right the paradigm, so that it isn't upside down, a mirror tin be added to the camera obscura. At the opposite end of the pinhole. You will unremarkably find this type of camera obscura in the smaller box size ones. The mirror is placed at a 45º bending so when the light passes through the pinhole it hits the mirror, inverting the paradigm it carries. The paradigm then projects onto the roof, if yous will, of the box. For this blazon of camera obscura, there is a transparent portion on the pinnacle, which allows yous to encounter the image projected through the box.
Part Two: The history of the camera obscura
The photographic camera obscura is born of the pinhole camera, whose existence tin can be traced back to 400 BC when Mo-ti, the founder of Mohism, theorized about the concept of a pinhole camera. Shortly later, Aristotle put pinhole cameras to practise using a crude version of one during a fractional solar eclipse. Over the centuries to come, pinhole cameras were tinkered with my philosophers and scientists alike, in various parts of the world. They were also predominately used for scientific purposes in relation to viewing the sun. Leonardo da Vinci detailed his version of a pinhole camera in his 1485 Codex atlanticus but it wouldn't be until 1604 that the term 'photographic camera obscura' was used in relation to the marvel.
Johannes Kepler, a German language astronomer, mathematician, and astronomer, is often credited with having coined the term and in 1685, Johann Zahn drew diagrams of the camera obscura in his O culus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium. The camera obscura became popular amongst artists, particularly for Dutch artists. Then, in 1827, Joseph Nicephore Niepce used a camera obscura and a bitumen-coated metal plate to really capture the image projected past the apparatus. Effectively, Niepce fabricated the showtime rudimentary photograph, which was dubbed the Heliograph, thus changing the course of history, in terms of technology.
The Heliograph and utilize of the camera obscura evolved until Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre improved Niepce's invention to create the Daguerreotype. The use of the photographic camera obscura peaked in the late 1800s and as the decades went on, tweaks and new technologies meant that mod mean solar day cameras were developed and the Daguerreotype, like the Heliograph and camera obscura, fell out of fashion only to be used by artists and photography enthusiasts.
The Daguerreotype, which is what comes to mind when you think of photos from the early 1900s, would evolve into the modern camera, equally we know information technology today. While information technology is however used in some circles of artists and photographers, Daguerreotypes, like the Heliograph and camera obscura, are relatively disused today.
Part Three: The photographic camera obscura and artists who have embraced it
Even earlier the camera obscura gave birth to photography, it had its own identify in the fine art world. For some artists, the full glory of the photographic camera obscura is present, creating breathtaking images. In other cases, scholars and enthusiasts, akin, accept speculated, debated, and gone back and along as to if the photographic camera obscura had whatever bearing on an artist'south works.
Cuban-born artist Abelardo Morell is one such creative person whose use of the photographic camera obscura fully shows the beauty of what a photographic camera obscura tin can do, only perhaps in a manner that you wouldn't except. When he first began working with a photographic camera obscura in 1991, Morell started making rooms in his home into rudimentary cameras, much like the ane shown in the National Geographic video we watched earlier. To sharpen the images they produced, he toyed around with lenses making the outside earth reverberate onto the interior of the rooms in his firm.
In one case he was familiar with creating an at-home camera obscura, Morell tackled the kind of long-exposure photography necessary to capture the prototype he wanted. Since then, Morell has continued working with photographic camera obscura images transposed over relatively ordinary living spaces. Almost equally if a room has replaced the silver screen for a movie projector, Morell'southward works enter into the 'territory of dreams,' to use his own expression. Over the years, his projects using camera obscuras have taken him around the earth juxtaposing the intimate and public parts of life in 1 scene.
Canaletto, the 18thursday century Venetian painter, on the other hand, is someone whose use of a camera obscura has been speculated over the years. His precise drawings led many to believe that the artist utilized the photographic camera obscura to create his works and eventually, it became generally accepted that this was how Canaletto worked. Still, in 2017, extensive infrared testing proved that Canaletto in fact did not use a photographic camera obscura to accomplish his drawings. Instead, the testing showed that he relied on his own pencil underdrawings, thus putting to rest the theories of using a camera obscura.
Finally, in that location is one instance study that nonetheless baffles some while others are steadfast in their belief: Vermeer. The 17th century Dutch Old Master has created some of the world's most loved, photo-realistic paintings, yet, very little is known almost him. Sometimes called the 'Principal of Light,' Vermeer left no drawings or messages after his death and we still don't know who he studied with, leaving lots of unanswered questions about his career. Vermeer's works have stunned artists and art historians, alike, for their utilise of light and their stunningly life-like appearance. These intricacies and the impressive nature of his works have led many to believe that he worked from a photographic camera obscura.
Those who are of the conventionalities that he created his masterpieces with a camera obscura indicate out that many of his paintings have a similar setting, they are small-scale in size, and the soft focus that can exist institute within the paintings reflect the focus y'all achieve with a camera obscura. A 2014 documentary chosen Tim's Vermeer, produced by Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller fame, chronicles 1 inventor and Vermeer lover's journey to recreating a painting by Vermeer. The documentary cites a number of reasons why Tim Jenison believes Vermeer may have worked from a camera obscura and in the cease, he makes a painting that is very similar in look to Vermeer's The Music Lesson.
Of course, in that location are those that just don't buy what Tim's Vermeer is selling and strongly stand behind Vermeer having created his works without the assistance of a photographic camera. Those in this house of thinking meet Vermeer'south works as the production of his ain genius. Their reasoning is that to accept created the paintings with a camera, he would have had to paint with colour in a dark space, something that would take been about impossible, and that in a number of Vermeer's paintings, there is a pinhole at the location of the vanishing betoken showing where Vermeer used a pivot and chalk lines to create linear perspective. Thus, a photographic camera obscura would not have been necessary to create his scenes.
**In a higher place is a clip from Tim'south Vermeer showing a class of a photographic camera obscura that Tim Jenison created to acquire to paint.**
While there is no existent definitive proof that Vermeer did or did not use a camera obscura, it seems that he at least drew inspiration from them. In Vermeer: Chief of Light, a 2001 documentary, you can see how the soft focus of the photographic camera obscura is mimicked in Vermeer'south works. The king of beasts head finial constitute on a chair that makes a recurring advent in his paintings, makes for a smashing instance in point. Through the camera, the highlights and shadows are very obscure, much similar those painted by Vermeer giving an even more than realistic effect.
Part IV: Theconclusion
Though it is uncertain how much of a part the camera obscura played in Vermeer's works, nosotros practice know that the appliance was highly influential to artists, scientists, and everyday people, alike. The camera played a large role in the evolution of the modern-day photographic camera and also shed light onto the physics of light.
Retrieve of how unlike today would exist without the camera as we know it – information technology's impacted technology, our lives, and how we portray our lives (retrieve of Instagram and Tik Tok without the evolution of the photographic camera!) in diverse ways.
Without the camera obscura'due south rudimentary beginnings, things might look a picayune unlike, today.
4) Wrap Up/Activity:
To wrap up this lesson, no matter if you're working with a studio or fine art history class, make a camera obscura. Whether information technology is making your classroom into a big camera obscura or making one in a cereal sized box, as though to look at an eclipse. This helps students to fully empathise how the photographic camera obscura works and the images information technology produces. If you lot have them (or if a scientific discipline or physics teacher has them and you're able to borrow them), toy effectually with different lenses at the pinhole to see how those affect the paradigm produced.
With a studio class, have them create a project using a photographic camera obscura. This could exist done with whatever medium you make up one's mind for your students, or, you could requite your grade gratuitous reign over which medium they'd like to apply. As further research, perchance have them expect into artists that have used a camera obscura, or have them do studies that bear witness how a photographic camera obscura was used in the procedure of making their artwork if it is not obvious with the finished product. It would exist up to your discretion if taking photographs with a modern camera would be permissible.
For an art history class, work with students to delve deeper into an attribute of the camera obscura. You could take them research how artists have used the camera obscura, the fence over if Vermeer (or another Old Principal) used the camera obscura, or the impact the camera obscura has had on a particular part of art history. Too, you could have students clarify a painting by an artist who used a camera obscura and discuss the similarities and differences when compared to a painting that was definitely non painted using 1. The photographic camera obscura allows for a lot of flexibility in assignment hither.
Resource
Abelardo Morell and the magic of the camera obscura
Camera Obscura
The Photographic camera Obscura
The Camera Obscura, The National Gallery of Art
The Camera Obscura in History
How to Spot a Daguerreotype (1840s-1850s)
Room with a view camera obscura by Abelardo Morell
Secrets of Canaletto'due south Drawings Revealed Alee of New Exhibition
Tim's Vermeer, 2013 documentary
Vermeer and the Camera Obscura
Vermeer: Chief of Low-cal, 2001 documentary
For more than Art Critique Fine art Lessons…
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Art Lesson: The history of Art Deco
Source: https://www.art-critique.com/en/2020/03/a-lesson-on-the-camera-obscura/
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