Fascinated by old masters and in particular Caravaggio and Vermeer, David Hockney thought there was something extraordinary about their works that could not be explained in any other way than the artists using optical aids.
Hockney held that both artists could have made extensive use of camera obscura, i.e. the great-great-great-grandmother to our modern-day cameras.
An Artist and a physicist
The famous British artist allied himself with the physicist Charles Falco to test the hypothesis, and while they could not prove the artists used glass optics, there is enough circumstantial evidence to make the Hockney-Falco Thesis highly plausible. Hockney published his thoughts in Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, which also lead to a documentary film on the topic.
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