University of Arizona Professor to Deliver a Lecture Feb. 13 at Pitt on The Technological Advances That Drove Renaissance Arts

PITTSBURGH-The University of Pittsburgh's Department of Physics and Astronomy, together with Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Physics, will present a lecture on how technological development drove artistic changes in the 15th century. Charles Falco, who is Professor of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona (UA) where he holds the UA Chair of Condensed Matter Physics, will give a lecture, titled "The Science of Optics; The History of Art," at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 13 in 343 Alumni Hall, 4227 Fifth Ave., Oakland.

British artist David Hockney has observed that certain drawings and paintings from as early as the Renaissance seem almost photographic in detail. Following an extensive visual investigation of western art of the past thousand years, he made the revolutionary claim that artists of even the prominence of van Eyck and Bellini must have used optical aids. However, many art historians have insisted there was no supporting evidence for such a remarkable assertion.

In his talk, Falco will present optical evidence for this claim, which he and Hockney found during their unusual and "remarkably productive" collaboration. Falco also will discuss the imaging properties of the mirror lens, or concave mirror, and the implications of this work for the histories of both science and art.

"These discoveries convincingly demonstrate optical instruments were in use-by artists, not scientists-nearly 200 years earlier than commonly thought possible, and account for the remarkable transformation in the reality of portraits that occurred early in the 15th century," said Falco.

A Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America, Falco has published more than 250 scientific manuscripts, including five with Hockney; coedited two books; and has seven U.S. patents, most of which are related to various physical properties of thin film materials. In addition to his scientific research, in 1998 he was corecipient of an award from the International Association of Art Critics for his work as cocurator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum's The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition. With more than two million visitors thus far in New York, Chicago, Bilbao, and the Guggenheim Las Vegas, it is by far the most successful industrial design exhibition ever assembled, and the fifth-most attended museum exhibition of any kind. More recently, a collaboration with Hockney has resulted in widespread coverage in the popular media, including an hour-long BBC special and a segment on CBS' "60 Minutes," and more than 50 invited talks and public lectures in nine countries, including the European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop, titled "Optics, Optical Instruments, and Painting: The Hockney-Falco Thesis Revisited," and the International Conference on Measuring Art: A Scientific Revolution in Art History.

For more information on Falco's research, visit www.optics.arizona.edu/ssd/FAQ.html.

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