Art Investigator
David Hockney Says The Masters Used a Secret Weapon: Optics

Listen to Liane Hansen talk with David Hockney

View a photo gallery featuring audio commentary by Hockney.

Jan Van Eyck, Arnolfini Wedding, 1434. The National Gallery, London.

Dec. 9, 2001 -- One day in 1999, as he ambled through London's National Gallery examining the meticulous art of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, David Hockney was struck by something. How, he wondered, could the 19th century French neoclassical artist create such vivid detail at such a small scale?

His conclusion: Ingres and other great masters must have made use of optical technology -- mirrors and lenses -- as tools in their work. "It was just a hunch, really," he tells Liane Hansen for Weekend Edition Sunday.

That hunch led the British painter and photographer to several years of gumshoe work -- examining the documentary and artistic evidence that supported his theory. His discoveries, which have created a stir throughout the art world, are collected in his new book, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters.

The "secret" in the title is no play on words. Most of the artists he discusses had no wish for their use of optics to be revealed. "Remember, you're seeing a three-dimensional world projected on a two-dimensional plane, in color…" he says. The average person in, say, the 15th century would be awed by anyone possessing the skill to create such works. Best to keep the techniques to yourself. If they appeared too pedestrian, people would be less impressed.

Should art lovers be disappointed in these revelations? Not at all, says Hockney. The mere fact that artists used tools other than a brush shouldn't by itself diminish the greatness of their handiwork. "You have to be a very good artist to make it work," he says. The paintings "were still made by hand, and they were made by very skillful, imaginative artists."