The Los Angeles Times
Frederic Raphael 
Review of the Book 
"Secret Knowledge"
Rediscovering the Lost Techniquesof the Old Masters
By David Hockney
Vicking:296 pp,.,$60. 
Sunday, December 9, 2001

....Until now, Hockney argues, it has been generally assumed that Raphael and 
company had such rare coordination that they could somehow transcribe reality 
freehand. Given the veneration to which genius was entitled, it was heresy to 
suggest that artists could possibly have reproduced intricately patterned 
brocades-...with the help of optical machinery.

Hockney claims to have discovered that, in fact, Renaissance genius was 
systematically crutched by "mechanical aids" : the new science of optics 
enabled many of the, even the greatest, such as Velazquez, Van Dyck and 
Vermeer, to use lenses and other means to project their "set-ups" onto flat 
surfaces. 

By such "artificial" methods, they could render three dimensions in unprecedented
"realistic", and innovative two-demension paintings. This accounts for why 
faces were suddenly being reproduced, by a whole slew of painters, with a 
precision not found in earlier, unassisted art.

[RAA Comment: One wonders what effect the following had on Italian Artists]

..For centuries, the Catholic Church was at once the greatest patron of the 
arts, and of innovation in them, and the most vigilant custodian of dogmatic 
orthodoxy. The inquisition did not hesitate to threaten Galileo with the 
instruments of torture if he did not retract the heretical view-confirmed by 
his use of telescopic lenses- that the Earth moved around the sun. The 
artists' use of lenses was a form of commerce with the devil, which it was 
prudent not to advertise.

..Hockney concludes that (Renaissance Artists) had quiet access to the 
optical aids which came for the most part, from Holland, where the 
Inquisition's writ did not run with the same repressive force that it had in 
Italy?  

..."Secret Knowledge" is a fascinating, if arguable, revision of great 
Western art.

HOW THE CAMERA OBSCURA WORKS:
1. In one approach, the image of a subject passes through a small opening in 
the wall of a darkened room onto a mirror.
2. The image is reflected off the mirror onto a canvas or piece of paper hung 
on the opposite wall. The image is now traced. Then the canvas can be turned 
right side up and the work finished from real life.