Reggie -

There was a fairly recent article in one of my magazines, possibly Smithsonian, Technology Review, or Invention and Technology, by the author in question, I believe. One of the interesting points is that the apparent errors in perspective are key to reaching the conclusion that a "projected image" may have been used.

It has been an "open secret" that some "technological aids" have been used for a very long time. The real questions are "by whom?" and "to what extent?" As pointed out in the summary article I saw, it is fairly easy to make a credible argument that some sort of "projection" was (likely) used in a particular work, but there remains the problem of how it was done - pinholes, lenses, and concave mirrors were offered as "possible methods" but the argument that one or the other was "the" method is, perhaps, less certain than was implied by that particular article (agreed by the author in a follow-up note, I believe).

Albrecht Dürer (Late Woodcuts) (click on the 8th pic down*, "Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent Woman" from 1525) shows a method of "projected image" drawing sometimes still used today that requires no lenses or mirrors, but can produce an "inverted" or "reversed" image as sometimes used. This method was certainly not something "discovered" by A.D.

* many "art" sites request no links directly to individual pictures, so the link is to an index page.

Some people seem to find great joy in believing that the artist somehow "cheated" in making his work. I suppose that the first artist who made a "brush" by hammering his "paint stick" between two rocks to fray the end a little probably faced the same charge. Try a "paint-by-numbers" job sometime - and see if it makes you really feel like a great artist. Even if some graphical aid was used, there's a lot more to producing a decent artwork.

John