Of the many distinctive characteristics of the extraordinary paintings of Michelangelo Merisi (1571 -1610), better known as Caravaggioto stand out more than all is his masterful ability to paint the chiaroscurothat is, that emphasis given to the figures through the definition of light and shadow. This allowed him to create great works with a dramatic and theatrical taste that gave particular importance to the spiritual metaphorical role of light, which is why often this “elective” bundle is directed on significant details, such as the dirty feet of the pilgrims in the Madonna di Loreto.
The subjects of the most famous Caravaggio oil paintings – From “Giuditta and Oloferne” to the “Vocation of San Matteo”, passing through “Davide with the Goliath head” and the “Madonna di Loreto” – in fact emerge as apparitions from the darknessilluminated by a beam of light that extracts their faces and bodies from the darkness. As in the theater, the bodies stand out against the darknessclearly outlining also thanks to the compositional “weight” of the black that surrounds them.
But as the Lombard painter did to create this effectabove all considered that he worked with models from the right? According to many scholars, but also artists such as David Hockney (who participated in an important conference on his techniques in 2008), Caravaggio had created a optical chamber so that you can transpose with the help of the sunlight On his canvases the proportions and colors of an original image, to be used as a base on which he then working: the technique is not unusual, and before and after him they used great painters such as Leonardo (for his anatomical studies) and Canaletto (for its views).
In practice, channeling light from a small hole on its models and then directing it through lenses and convex mirrors (who also appear in some canvases such as “Marta and Maria Maddalena”), Caravaggio managed to project the image of the models themselves on the canvas.
But not only that: the study of the Italian researcher Roberta Lapucci indicates that Caravaggio combined this technique to those of the modern photograph. In the second half of the 16th century, actually, a great specific interest in optical tools and for projection procedures is evidenced. According to this study, the artist would have employed Some chemicals – to be precise, mercury rooms, a photosensitive material – to transform the canvases into a kind of photographic film on which “Impress” the images of the subjects for a reduced time And then go sketch and paint them with traditional techniques. According to Hockney, then, the great precision with which Caravaggio managed to reproduce more figures in one fell swoop would have been possible thanks to a technological improvement, specifically one biconvess lens, Maybe provided to him by a Roman patron.
