Thank You
A link to
"Optics & Old Masters"
has been emailed to your friends.Most E-mailed articles:
To the Editor:
As one of the first independent scientists invited to evaluate the artist David Hockney’s controversial theory that early Renaissance masters used optical devices in the course of painting to project images and then trace them, I was heartened to read Steven C. Munson’s withering critique of this flawed theory [“Rembrandt & the Artist’s Touch,” March].
Hockney indeed adduces little credible evidence for his claim in his beautiful book, Secret Knowledge (2001), but in the six years since its publication he and his colleagues have advanced new arguments for it. To date, however, at least seven scientists, seven historians of optics or art, and one curator have published peer-reviewed scholarly rebuttals with compelling new evidence of their own. A four-day symposium in Ghent in 2003 (which I did not attend) rejected Hockney’s theory in no uncertain terms; to my knowledge, no one has published peer-reviewed research supporting it.
But even as we may close the book on the controversy itself, it is worth noting the fruit it has borne in the discovery of a number of new techniques in scientific image analysis. These are shedding new light on such matters as the authentication of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, attribution in paintings by Perugino and Robert Campin, and the dating of old prints and etchings, including those of Rembrandt. Hockney’s legacy in this regard, then, will include his having served as a catalyst for the development of valuable tools informed by the scientist’s rigor and the humanist’s connoisseurship.
David G. Stork
Stanford University
Stanford, California
_____________
Steven C. Munson writes:
I thank David Stork for his letter and his kind words about my article. It is always nice to find out that there is an impressive scientific consensus supporting one’s own conclusions.
Optics & Old Masters
Thank You
Your email has been sent.
Footnotes
© 2010 Commentary Inc.
