Photos by Leonardo da Vinci

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Let's look at this whole incredible story gradually and rigorously. In any case, the reader at any time will be able to refuse further immersion in the technique of the visual arts of the Renaissance. If you feel that it is not clean here - put it aside, do not read it. You will be able to continue listening with delight and confidence to the nonsense that art critics are saying.

1. Amazing realism of paintings of the Renaissance

Europeans are very meticulous people. And then one day the British artist David Hockneylooking at the drawings Ingres (19th century), I decided to see them under magnification. He was amazed at how realistic these works are. And yet, Hockney noticed a clear resemblance to the works of a modern artist. Warhol, which projected the photo onto the canvas and outlined it.

Hockney decided that Ingres was using Camera Lucida, a device that is the simplest optical instrument. The prism is mounted on a stand to the tablet and the artist, looking at his drawing with one eye, sees the real image, and with the other - the drawing itself and his hand. This contributes to the realism of the image.

It occurred to him to try to explore many paintings from different countries and times. This is understandable. It is not easy to paint a truly realistic picture. Didn't artists use all sorts of optical tricks in ancient times? Here many interesting discoveries awaited him. It turned out that the artists of the Renaissance (14th … 15th centuries) painted with such realism, which is simply unattainable without the use of optics. Here is a wonderful example - a painting by Jan Van Eyck, which is called "Portrait of the Arnolfini Couple".

The painting has an image of a metal chandelier-candlestick. To confirm his guess, Hockney even ordered a completely identical metal chandelier. It was made, and then, having chosen the correct light source, he received exactly the same glare as in the picture.

Why is it necessary to optics? - the inquisitive reader will ask. Maybe the artist just very carefully and carefully traced what he sees. But the fact of the matter is that glare on metal is not just chiaroscuro. It is enough to change the position of the observer's eye relative to the object by a fraction of a degree, and the glare disappears. This means that in order to achieve such a result, the Artist had to fix his head in a clamp and work with a brush at a breakneck speed. After all, the light source is the sun, and it moves. Without this, all the glare cannot be remembered, and not reproduced with your imagination. It will be beautiful, but with reality will not match.

2. Artists have used optics for a long time

Once again, we note that these conclusions were made by a professional artist who is not by hearsay familiar with painting. In addition, Hockney noticed distortions characteristic of the use of optics in many paintings of that time. For example, universal left-handedness, as in a painting from the Frans Hals Museum (17th century), where a pair of left-handed people are dancing, a left-handed old man threatens them with a finger, and a left-handed monkey looks under a woman's dress. This is obtained by outlining the reflected image.

If the optics are not perfect, then in the process of projecting the original image, you have to move the canvas to focus on one or another part of the image. In this case, proportional errors are obtained. And here is an example: the huge shoulder of "Anthea" Parmigianino (about 1537), the small head of "Lady Genovese" by Anthony Van Dyck (1626), the huge legs of a peasant in the painting by Georges de La Tour.

Finally, the famous sfumato effect … This is the blur (not sharpness) of some objects in the picture. For example, the artist managed to project the image onto the canvas quite well with the optics. The main thing is to be in focus. In this case, you can donate small objects around the edges and they are drawn in a blurred form.

Thus, Hockney irrefutably and professionally proved that some artists of the Renaissance used optics to depict reality as realistic as possible. Simply put, they did not paint, but circled and decorated.

(More details about David Hockney's research can be found in the article "The Myth of the Renaissance Artists" on our website - ed.)

3. Leonardo da Vinci creator of unknown technology

But it is Leonardo who is credited with the discovery of technology sfumato … That is, he not only dabbled in optics, but it went from him. However, there is one more feature of his paintings that Hockney did not explore. For example, on the famous masterpiece "Mona Lisa" there is not a single brush stroke, and not a single fingerprint. That is, he did not even just outline and decorate, but did it in some unthinkable way.

I must admit that for me the words of a wonderful woman-art critic, who once appeared on the Kultura channel in the Academy program, became a revelation. She said that today, artists are simply not able to repeat the achievements of the masters of past centuries … They can't draw it like that - the “secrets of mastery” are lost. The question immediately came up in the audience: "What about the fakes?" But she said that most often only the signatures of famous authors in the paintings of unknown people are forged. BUT! The same time and the same skill level.

So that's why these paintings are considered priceless masterpieces! They simply cannot be repeated and they do not understand how they are made! And in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, the technology is generally prohibitive for artistic technique. Therefore, studies of such paintings continue today.

For example, the laboratory of the Center for the Study and Restoration of Museums and the European Laboratory of Synchrotron Radiation have recently joined forces to reveal the secrets of Leonardo's skill. This is written in an article published in the scientific journal Angewandle Chemie. The study was led by Dr. Philip Wagner … The scientists used a technique called X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. In this way, you can study the structure of layers without taking samples, i.e. do not disturb the canvas. A powerful X-ray beam was sent to the canvas, the structure of the layers and the composition were determined. Found the following:

“… Each layer of glaze has a thickness 2 microns, which is 50 times thinner than a human hair. In some places of the painting, the total thickness of all layers of glaze is equal to 55 microns, this means that the master repeatedly applied layer by layer to achieve the desired effect … " cannot be measured "In the usual way." It turns out that even if the pigment was applied so thinly and evenly that its particles are located exactly in one layer, then they should not be larger than 2 microns (micrometer, μm). Not more, but maybe even much less.

I must say right away that these results do not fit at all not only in the framework of modern ideas about the technologies of that time, but also in the "optical" ideas of David Hockney. It's not at all into any gate …

4. How to make steam from a stone, our doctor Gaspar knows …

An ordinary person does not have in his mental baggage clear images and concepts of super-large and super-small. That kiloparsecs, that micrometers mean little to him. This is natural, he does not use them every day. Therefore, it is necessary to outline what a pigment particle with a size of 2 microns.

What do you think, have you met such small substances in real life? As a rule, no. The smallest thing you could deal with is talc … For example, baby powders are made from it. The particle size of talcum powder has a spread of just from 2 to 10 microns … I must say that absolutely all paints are now and earlier made on the basis of pigments. For this, stones are not always used. Sometimes the pigments are extracted from plants or even insects, but the particles of the dye are invariably present. And our master simply had no other option with his paints.

So, if even Leonardo took it into his head to paint his paintings with talcum powder diluted in a binder, then even then he would not be able to get the thickness of one paint layer in 2 micron, since a significant part of the particles are larger than this size. But after drying, it is the size of the pigment particles that determines the thickness of the layer.

How do you get such small particles?

Interestingly, talcum powder is used mainly because of the softness of this mineral. It is the easiest to grind. For painting, other minerals were always used, which had characteristic colors. But they are all much harder than talc. This means that it is even more difficult to grind them to such fineness. Today it is done in modern mills and pigment particle sizes are from 15 before 55 microns … This is a mass and fairly cheap production of pigments for oil, alkyd and other similar paints. This size is considered appropriate. On the one hand, the finer the particles, the better the paint properties; on the other hand, the grinding process also requires a lot of time and is associated with various technological difficulties.

So it turns out that the modern level of mass technology allows us to apply one layer of paint with a thickness of about 30 microns … Well, our cars, painted in several layers, generally have a coating thickness 80 … 100 microns … How then did Leonardo da Vinci make his paints? It's completely incomprehensible!

Everything that is frayed (or obtained by other progressive methods) even finer is called micropowders, and this is the subject of other areas - micropolishing, optics, science, nanotechnology and printing.

Printing ink is a special trend. Pigments for them are obtained in a very difficult chemical way. With these methods, the particles are grown (crystallized) in a certain environment at once by very small crystals. Then, of course, the compressed sediment is still dried and ground, but this is not at all like crushing a whole stone. As a result of such modern and expensive chemical processes, for example, the following pigments are obtained:

Now this is the very little thing that would be useful to our artist for his "sfumato effect". But among these pigments, not all sizes are used for printing inks either. As a result, letterpress and offset inks form an ink layer on the finished print. less than 2 microns … How did Leonardo da Vinci manage to technologically outstrip our modern chemical plants with his medieval mortar?

But all this, of course, does not baffle art critics and science skeptics. "So what?" They say. - "I took my mortar and pounded it thoroughly." That's why he is a genius, let him try. So I had to figure out what it means to "crush thoroughly in a mortar"? And what is such a tool capable of?

It turns out there are methodologies and guidelines for the mortar grinding process. Today this process has been preserved in the pharmacy business. There is a peculiarity - the finer the active substance is ground, the stronger its effect on the body. Therefore, the pharmacists are trying to crush the conscience. But there is a limit to everything. Here the limit is such - if you can distinguish individual particles by eye - work further. And if you get a kind of completely homogeneous powder, then that's it - drop the pestle. You no longer have a criterion that you have to achieve. Then you can poke into the mortar for at least a whole year - nothing will visually change. Are you a bad guy? Is it good? How many microns have you reached? Can't define it in any way. The technique claims that the human eye is able to distinguish individual particles with a size of 70 microns … Therefore, when today pigments are rubbed to 15…55 microns, they no longer rely on the eye, but use a control sieving on microsieves.

What am I to think that Leonardo had the permission of the eye 40 times higherthan all other people? This is too much even for a genius. And if we assume that Leonardo da Vinci also woven a micro-sieve for himself before making his paints, then the Mona Lisa itself should not be surprised. Because there and further everything is precision and micro.

Too many absurd and impossible things are stacked on top of each other. Maybe this picture, like many others of that time, was simply done in a different way? Moreover, it fits well with the wording "The secret is lost" … And what else is there to lose if not a different manufacturing technology? How to trim the brush? What is the composition of the grout cloth?

Enough of fooling us already. Modern people are not so stupid that in several centuries of drawing with the same tools and materials (as art critics claim) they cannot repeat the achievements of one person.

5. Or maybe a seal?

Art experts claim that Leonardo da Vinci's method of creating paintings was as follows:

• At first, he used an impossible (as we found out) method to prepare paints in a mortar. Apparently, using his genetically modified eyes, in which a modernized lens of increased transparency supplemented the fundus of the eye with a forty-fold increase in the number of light-sensitive cones. It would probably be creepy to look into such eyes (and they are unlikely to fit in a human head), but they just give the necessary image resolution to control the production of micropowders in a mortar.
• Then he applied the paint of one single tone to the right places in different parts of the picture with "wide strokes" (with borders and transitions that are not visible to the eye). Without being mistaken in the location and contrast. Apparently, he had previously drawn up layer-by-layer tracing paper, and complex color schemes, and also used amazing nano brushes, which allow not only to apply paint exactly to the right place along the contours, but also not to leave traces of a smear, while adjusting the tone density. Such a tool would ideally combine the properties of a spray gun and an art brush, which no one has yet invented.
• Then he took nano-paint of a different tone, and applied it with the next layer, exactly on the right places. Again, all over the picture and with the desired density. And so about 20 translucent layers, each of which is unique in configuration, is heterogeneous in density, and only when all layers are superimposed, the final look is obtained.

At the same time (as we have already defined), Leonardo da Vinci was supposed to make about 20 flawlessly accurate crippling schemes for each paint layer. Moreover, he could only impose all these layers and check the final result virtually (in his mind). They say there were no computers then. In a head that is capable of such speculative operations, perhaps, it would be possible to insert those very modernized eyes.

Well done art critics! Dreamers! Against the background of such realities, any fairy tale will seem believable. I can also add that this technology strikingly resembles modern multicolor printing … There, the color image is also decomposed into monochrome layers. Then they are applied to the paper in layers just less than 2 microns each. Overlapping each other, these layers create a multi-colored image. Only the number of these layers today from 2 to 6 … A larger number is not justified for modern technology. Difficult and cumbersome. And Leonardo has up to 20 layers.

True, color printing already existed during the time of Leonardo da Vinci. So Schaeffer (a student of Gutenberg) already in 1457 used colored inks - blue and red - when printing. His Psalter is the earliest example of a multicolored three-run print known to us. Of course, the paints there are not yet what they are today, but still - three layers! However, we must grudgingly admit that the layers are 2 micron and 20-ply, graphically very complex images - this is an infinitely distant technological perspective for the printing house of that time. So let's part with our dream of 20-color typography da Vinci.

Of course, against the background of the official version, one can assume anything - it won't get any worse. But … How is it done somehow?

6. Generalization

Let's think about it. What we have?

1. Lack of smears in the paintings of Leonardo and indeed at that time. We are told that the painters carefully rubbed over the paint layer. But then, in the 18th century, they completely forgot how to do it. And today we also do not know how.

2. The sfumato effect, that is, the blur of objects that are out of focus. We are told that this was done in wide strokes and in layers, but by the 18th century they had forgotten how to do this. We do not know how today.

3. Dark tones in the paintings of that time. We are told that this is precisely the consequence of the application of the sfumato effect. And to view such pictures, brighter lighting is required. But what prevented the artists from choosing lighter colors if they painted it with brushes? By the 18th century, with the tones of the artists, everything was already working out as it should.

4. Extreme realism, not accessible to human vision and intellect with traditional painting techniques. We are told that this is the genius (read genetic modification) of the artists of the time. But it is known that ordinary people were trained in this craft (technology). And by the 18th century, again, everything was gone. But they continued to paint. There were art schools. What, talented people have died out?

And what does all this lead to?

conclusions

Whether I like it or not, I have to admit that lack of smears and prints, a plus layering, speak of alternately applying an emulsion to the canvas.

That optics were used (proven by David Hockney), indicates the possibility of developing the image directly in the layers of the emulsion by the method of photo exposure. This confirms the amazing origin of colors in paint layers. On the one hand: one layer - one color. On the other hand, it is impossible to determine the size of pigment particles by conventional methods. If we assume that each of the emulsion solutions gives its own color, then everything becomes clear.

This is also confirmed by the dark tones of the paintings of that time. They either faded (as a property of the photochemistry of layers), or this is the inevitability of the color tones available at that time, again precisely photochemistry … Because the usual bright colors were.

The loss of the "secrets of skill", as well as the disappearance of all the described features of painting by the 18th century, speaks of loss of equipment and technology, which allows you to make the appropriate photochemistry, apply it to the canvas and optically project the image.

It is likely that the technology of photo exposure was not immediately lost. Surely its elements were used later in parts, along with the usual techniques of painting. For example, the same optics. They never stopped using it. And the first elements of photochemistry began to be used again at the beginning of the 19th century.

Today, the most important solution to the secrets of Leonardo da Vinci must belong chemists … After all, it is the composition and the principle of the manifestation of colors in the thinnest layers of the emulsion that could finally clarify everything. But here my efforts are in vain. I confess, my chemistry is tight. True, I bothered to familiarize myself with some of Leonardo's texts on mixing paints, alchemy, etc. It turns out that his views not only preceded modern scientific ones, but were, as it were, on a slightly different plane. He tied the observed phenomena more to some general philosophical laws. On the other hand, he was very practical. It is all the more difficult to imagine this person pounding powders in a mortar for months, with the full understanding that no one will not only appreciate this, but will not even be able to notice. One way or another, but his notes are generally difficult to compare with the conclusions that were made above.

But there is one big BUT … We have been shod with fakes so many times that it is impossible to vouch for the authenticity of these texts. You cannot be 100% sure that these paintings were painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

The only thing I believe in is a threatening wave of facts, which, over and over again, stubbornly leads us to conclusions about advanced technological background our earthly civilization. After all, someone created these pictures, and in such a way that they simply could not appear with medieval technologies. And it was not so long ago - 15th century.

And we do not know Russian paintings of that time at all. As if they were not. Maybe what was depicted on them, we are not supposed to know? It is worth seriously thinking about it.

Alexey Artemiev, Izhevsk