Tempers blaze over artistic integrity

摘要

Sparks flew when a scientist and a renowned artist joined forces to argue that great Renaissance painters used lenses to create their masterpieces. Five years on, an even fiercer controversy burns, as one of them accuses his chief critic of misconduct. The travail began when painter David Hockney and optics scientist Charles Falco at the University of Arizona, Tucson, published a book and several articles laying out a remarkable theory. They argued that major European masters from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century had used lenses or mirrors to project images on to their canvases, to capture certain details of expression or perspective more accurately (see Nature 412, 860; 2001).