Did Renaissance painters use optical aids for their famous portraits?
Assembly Series speaker Charles Falco explores the question By Barbara Rea Feb. 6, 2004 — Charles Falco, physicist and optical science professor at the University of Arizona, contends that the great master painters of earlier centuries used optical aids to help them paint. In his Assembly Series presentation, “The Science of Optics; The History of Art, he will detail his findings about this controversial theory. The lecture will be held at 3 p.m. Monday, Feb. 16 in Steinberg Hall Auditorium, located at the southeast section of Washington University. It is free and open to the public. If Falco’s theory is true, then artists were using optical aids centuries before they were widely developed. He got the idea from reading artist David Hockney’s article in the New Yorker. Hockney came up with the original theory that artists as early as the 15th Century were using lenses and other optical aids to create realistic renderings. Falco and Hockney began collaborating, studying hundreds of pain
