Physics and Art

Running head : DOES THE ART OF SCINCE VITIATE THE SCIENCE OF ART

Does the Art of Science Vitiate the Science of Art

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Does the Art of Science Vitiate the Science of Art

INTRODUCTION

Why there would be ripples in the modern art world , if a 17th century artist is found to have used an instrument to perfect his art

It all started when David Hockney , a British artist , started his research on artists , mainly of the Renaissance Period , when observed some 'suspicious details ' in

the works of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675 an artist of Holland , who , like many of his contemporaries had failed to make his rank in his time and thus struggled all along , before getting recognized and appreciated posthumously . The fact that he could master only 30 paintings indicates about the roadblocks he had before him However , he has been 'rediscovered ' presently and his works are now lauded for its wonderful details , which are found to be one up in his time , mainly for their precision

The Situation

It was that precision , which caught the fancy of David the researcher Stunned by the perfect perspectives and light distortions in Vermeer 's paintings . David delved deep into matter and came out with a conclusion that Vermeer might have used a refracting device , such as a 'Camera Obscura , to achieve that incredible degree of precision in the details in his paintings

Camera Obscura

It is one of the early optical instruments , presumed to have been invented in the late Renaissance period , around the time Galileo , the inventor of Telescope . However , Hockney`s new evidence seems to suggest that the usage of magnifying tools like Camera Obscura were there well before that . That 's a good finding

The Art of Science

Camera Obscura is a light-tight box with a small whole on one side through which an image of an outside object can be projected onto a wall or piece of . The resulting image will be projected upside down This is due to the fact that the reflected rays of light , which enter the box , do not spread out but traverse and reorganize , before reappearing as an upside down reflection . The size of the pinhole determines the sharpness of the reflected image , as well as the degree of diffraction and the level of light sensitivity . The narrower the passage of light , the lesser sensitive is the image . Moreover , narrow holes result in sharper projections and a better image resolution - since the resulting HYPERLINK "http /en .wikipedia .org /wiki /Circle_of_confusion " circle of confusion , the distortion of bright areas caused by the shape of the pinhole will be smaller

This situation also calls to define the resultant diffraction from a particularly small pinhole , which causes a rather unfocused projection of the image . This phenomenon can be explained by the wave theory of light , which states that light behaves like a wave . Diffraction , in this case , refers to the dispersion of waves (light ) when passing through the pinhole , which produces a...