Seeing Into Art
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A high-tech peek at the underpinnings of masterpieces.
Mona Lisa, what are you hiding behind that smile?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with The Loh Down on Science.
Portrait artists often sketch guide lines before they paint. In fact, artist David Hockney thinks 15th-century artists often "cheated." That is, they used lenses or concave mirrors to project their subjects directly onto canvases - tracing the images in graphite or silverpoint - then painting over them.
Specialized infrared cameras can peer through many oil and tempera pigments, revealing those underlying sketches. But that equipment's expensive.
So Charles Falco, an optical scientist at the University of Arizona, has a cheaper idea. He popped an infrared filter into an ordinary digital camera, then pointed it at a 500-year-old painting featuring an intricate tablecloth pattern. Out jumped the artist's original sketched lines - precise, overlapped - suggesting that the tablecloth was traced from not one but three different optical projections.
Falco's inexpensive art-analyzing IR camera isn't as sensitive as the super-pricy version. But it's good enough to reveal what lies beneath.
But relax, Ms. Mona. It can't see through clothing. So keep smilin'.
The Loh Down on Science, online, at lohdown.org. Produced by 89.3 KPCC and the California Institute of Technology, and made possible by TIAA-CREF.
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