Caravaggio used optical instruments to create his masterpieces

Italian Renaissance painter Caravaggio used revolutionary optical instruments to "photograph" his models more than 200 years before the invention of the camera, Italian researcher Roberta Lapucci told AFP.

The 16th-century artist celebrated for his dramatic chiaroscuro (light and shadow) paintings mastered "a whole set of techniques that are the basis of photography". Caravaggio worked in a "darkroom" and illuminated his models through a hole in the ceiling, who teaches at the prestigious Studio Art Centers International in the Tuscan capital. The image was then projected on a canvas using a lens and a mirror. Caravaggio "fixed" the image, using light-sensitive substances, for around half an hour during which he used white lead mixed with chemicals and minerals that were visible in the dark to paint the image with broad strokes. According to Lapucci, Caravaggio used a photoluminescent powder from crushed fireflies, which was used at the time to create special effects in theatre productions.

"There is lots of proof, notably the fact that Caravaggio never made preliminary sketches," Lapucci insisted. "So it is plausible that he used these 'projections' to paint."

Noting that "an abnormal number of his subjects were left-handed," Lapucci said: "That could be explained by the fact that the image projected on the canvas was backwards. This anomaly disappears in the artist's later works, a sign that the instruments he used were improving. Also thanks to technical progress, his paintings gain a lot in depth of field over the years."