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Italy of the Renaissance dominates magic shadow development—Leonardo da Vinci describes in detail the camera obscura—Inventions are by Alberti, Maurolico, Cesariano and Cardano.

To the giant of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, must go the credit for being the first to determine and record the principles of the camera obscura, or “dark room”, basic instrument of all photography. Da Vinci lived in a wondrous age. Michelangelo was painting and sculpturing his unparalleled creations. Raphael was at work. The Italians of the Renaissance led the world in a new culture. The torch of learning and art once held high in Greece, then at ancient Rome, later by the Arabs, was carried high in Italy of the late Middle Ages.

Together with the general Renaissance in Italy there was a rebirth of interest in optics and especially light and shadow demonstrations and devices. The new activity had come after a second “dark age” of nearly two centuries, from the time of Roger Bacon to da Vinci. After this “dark age” the room box-camera was “rediscovered” in Italy. Of course, as noted above, since the camera had never been invented in the usual sense of the term, it was not actually “rediscovered” either. It is likely that da Vinci and others received their stimulus in this general subject from Bacon and perhaps Alhazen or Witelo.

The renewed interest in scenic beauty in the Renaissance suggested work with a portable camera, as it was found to be an excellent aid in painting and drawing the beauties of nature.

Leone Battista Alberti (1404–1472), a Florentine ecclesiastic and artist, was the first Italian to make a notable contribution to the magic shadow story. Alberti, like the greater da Vinci, had many talents. A native of Florence, he grew up in an atmosphere of artistic culture. He was a priest, poet, musician, painter and sculptor, but most noted as an architect. He wrote De Re Aedificatoria, “Concerning architecture or building”, published after his death in 1485 and many other works, including Della Famiglia, “The Family”.

Alberti completed work on the Pitti Palace in Florence but his best design is said to be the St. Francis Church at Rimini. He also designed the new facade of St. Maria Novella Church at Florence and is believed to be the architect of the unfinished courtyard at the Palazzo Venezia which nearly 500 years later was the office of the late and unlamented Benito Mussolini. His painting, “La Visitazione”, is in the Uffizi gallery. As an ecclesiastic, Alberti was Canon of the Metropolitan Church of Florence in 1447 and later was Abbot of the San Sovino monastery, Pisa.

But it was as an artist that Alberti made his contribution to the art and science of light and shadows. He invented the camera lucida, a machine which aided artists and painters by reflecting images and scenes to be painted or drawn. The device, a modification of the “dark room”, could also be used to make it easy to copy a design. In a sense, the camera lucida was the forerunner of the modern blue-print duplicator. After Alberti had made his original drawings, an assistant, with the aid of the device, could rapidly copy them and give duplicates to the builders for use on the construction job.

Vasari’s Lives of Painters, Sculptors and Architects is the chief source of information about Alberti. That writer said Alberti was more anxious for invention than for fame and had more interest in experimenting than in publishing his results. This is an attempt to explain why Alberti’s own words of description of his camera lucida are not preserved.

Alberti was said to have written on the art of representation, explaining his “depictive showings” which “spectators found unbelievable”. According to Vasari’s description it would appear that Alberti used a form of the camera obscura or room box-camera but introduced special scenes such as paintings of mountains and the seas and the stars. In this way Alberti sought to introduce a touch of showmanship into the performances of the room camera which up to this time was used chiefly for observation of eclipses and other scientific purposes.

Though Alberti died when Leonardo da Vinci was a young man, it is certain that Leonardo knew of him, as they were natives of the same city. Perhaps da Vinci had even attended some of Alberti’s magic shadows exhibitions.

Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci was born near Florence in 1452 and died near Amboise, France, in 1519. In 1939, 420 years after his death, a great exhibition of the master’s works was held at Milan and parts of it were shown in the next year at the Museum of Science and Industry in Rockefeller Center, New York. The Milan exhibit included works in the following fields: studies and drawings in mathematics, astronomy, geology, geodesy, cosmography, map-making, hydraulics, botany, anatomy, optics (including proof of Alhazen’s problem of measuring the angle of reflection of light), acoustics, mechanics, and flying; not to mention sculpture, painting, drawing, sketches, architecture, town planning and military arts and sciences.

Da Vinci is best known today for his paintings, such as the renowned “Last Supper”, beloved everywhere, and the “Mona Lisa”. He was one of the truly universal geniuses. There was little indeed that he could not do.

Leonardo’s study of optics and perspective was reported in his Treatise on Painting, written about 1515 and first published at Paris in 1651, but well known prior to that time through manuscript copies. Da Vinci has been a great trial to the students and historians, for he wrote in his own special form of shorthand which was found to be extremely hard to decipher.

Da Vinci experimented with the camera obscura and wrote an accurate scientific description of it, preparing the way for the men who were to make the machine a practical medium. Vasari in his famous Life of Leonardo points out that he gave his attention to mirrors and learned how they operated and how images were formed. But more important than this, he studied the human eye and was the first to explain it accurately, using the camera as his model, and in this way he really learned the fundamentals of its functional principles. To this day the camera is explained in simplest terms as a mechanical eye and the human eye is explained as a marvelous, natural camera. Da Vinci also noted the effects of visible impressions on the eye.

Roger Bacon was undoubtedly Leonardo’s master in optics and this is a definite link in the chain of the growing knowledge of light and shadow and of devices which would create illusions for instruction and entertainment. It has been pointed out that Leonardo and Roger Bacon had much in common—both being so far ahead of their own times that they were not understood until centuries later. And both men believed passionately in scientific research and investigation. As an example, Leonardo would spend hours, days or even weeks studying a muscle of an animal appearing in the background of a painting so that it could be drawn perfectly. As a concrete link with Bacon, Leonardo described a mirror camera device which made it possible for people on the inside to see the passerby in the street outside. Bacon, you may recall, achieved and described a similar effect.

Within two years after da Vinci’s death two other Italians, Maurolico and Cesariano, advanced the magic shadow art-science by writing scientific and experimental discussions of the subject. Somewhat later another Italian, Cardano, made another contribution.

Francesco Maurolico (Maurolycus), 1494–1575, a mathematician of Messina, and the great astronomer of his day, wrote De Subtilitate, about 1520, in which Pliny, Albertus Magnus, and Leonardo da Vinci are mentioned. The material included a mathematical, rather than experimental, discussion of light, mirrors and light theatres. This last subject shows that the use of light and shadow for theatrical purposes was being rapidly advanced. In 1521, Maurolico was said to have finished Theoremata de lumine et umbra ad perspectivam et radiorum incidentiam facientia, which was published in 1611 at Naples and in 1613 at Leyden. This book explained how a compound microscope could be fashioned. Men were now learning how to use lenses and how to make better ones so necessary for satisfactory projection of images.

Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, 1646

BURNING GLASSES of Archimedes were ancient optical devices. They were used in the defense of Syracuse in 212 B.C. Some type of glass or lens is required in every camera or projector.

Proposition 20 of the book was entitled “An object’s shadow can be converted and projected.” The author pointed out that if an object between a light and an opening is moved one way its shadow appears to move the other. He then went on to explain the reasons for Aristotle’s square hole and round sun. He also showed accurately the relation of images and objects which was fundamental for understanding how to focus lenses and mirrors.

Self portrait. Royal Palace, Turin

LEONARDO DA VINCI, famed Renaissance painter and sculptor, explained how to use the camera and described its relationship to the human eye.

Later astronomers credit Maurolico with having described the application of the camera obscura method to an observation of eclipses (but this was done for the first recorded time by Bacon or his contemporaries). Maurolico knew the works of Bacon and John Peckham, another English Franciscan monk of the 13th century, and studied both carefully. In 1535 he wrote Cosmographia and in later life studied the rays of light that make the phenomenon of the images appearing in a camera obscura, or any camera, possible without mentioning the apparatus or device or describing it. Being a mathematician primarily he was interested in that side of the problem and was not a practical demonstrator or showman.

Cesare Cesariano, an architect, painter and writer on art, made a reference to a light and shadow device which curiously has never been adequately explained. Cesariano was born in Milan in 1483 and died there on March 30, 1543. In 1528 he became architect to Carlo V and in 1533 architect to the city of Milan. In 1521 he designed the beautiful cathedral of Como.

While at Como, Cesariano prepared a translation and commentary on the Architectura of Vitruvius, architect to Emperor Augustus, whose classic on the subject was rediscovered in the 15th century. Vitruvius’ book included a chapter on “Acoustic Properties of a Theatre”—a good subject for study even today. Cesariano’s edition was published at Como in 1521 with a note saying that after the sudden departure of the translator and commentator from Como the work was finished by Bruono Mariro and Benedetto Giovio. It was considered a marvelous work, to be in the vernacular and not in Latin. At this period people wanted to have books in their own language and not in Latin.

While commenting on the word, spectaculum, translated as a “sighting tube”, Cesariano described how a Benedictine monk and architect, Don Papnutio or Panuce, made a little sighting tube and fitted it into a small hole made for the purpose in a door. It was so arranged that no light could enter the room except through the small tube. The result was that outside objects were seen, with their own colors, in what really was a natural camera system. Of course, the images were upside down, as in any camera, without a special lens arrangement, but this fact was not noted by Cesariano.

The whole matter is perplexing. What is described is a “dark room” camera which, as has been observed, was never actually invented or discovered and was known for centuries. This Benedictine monk and architect may have made some refinements by carefully fitting the small opening to admit the light but that is all. At about this time, or a little earlier, the principles of the camera were set down by Leonardo da Vinci. The writer and other researchers have not been able to discover any trace of Benedettano Don Papnutio or Panuce. He certainly did not write any books or his name would be known to history and it would be possible to find more information about him and his work. There is no record of him in the Benedictine bibliography. Guillaume Libri, Italian writer, who worked in Paris in the 19th century and, incidentally, was charged with stealing da Vinci’s manuscripts, said, “I have not so far been able to ascertain who Don Panuce was, or when he lived.” Libri asserted that at any rate Leonardo’s observation of the camera obscura must have been made before Cesariano saw or heard about this monk. However, Cesariano seems to have the record for the first published account of how to make a workable camera obscura.

Girolamo or Hieronimo Cardano (1501–1576) was an Italian physician and mathematician who has been described by Cajori, the mathematical historian, as “a singular mixture of genius, folly, self-conceit and mysticism.” He lectured in medicine at the Universities of Milan, Paris and Bologna. In 1571, after having been, according to some, jailed for debt the year before, he was pensioned by the Pope and went to Rome to continue special work in medicine.

Cardano’s contribution to motion picture pre-history was made in his De Subtilitate, published at Nuremberg in 1550. He showed how a concave mirror could be used to produce quite a wonderful show:—“If you wish to see what is happening on the street, put a small round glass at the window when the sun is bright and after the window has been shut one can see dim images on the opposite wall.” He went on to explain how the images could be doubled, then quadrupled and how other strange appearances of things and one’s self could be devised with a concave mirror. He remarked that the images appeared upside down. This, of course, is another description of the camera obscura, with a few additional points for recreational and instructional purposes. It will be noted that Cardano’s description is very like those of Bacon, Leonardo and Cesariano.

Now da Vinci’s camera, the original “dark room” camera and progenitor of the modern pin-hole box camera, was ready for showmen to turn it to successful uses. Just after the middle of the 16th century, a young Neapolitan was prepared to spread the knowledge of the sporting use of the device throughout the world.