In an age where many fear the automation of art, physicist Charles Falco reminds us that the intersection of technology and art is anything but new. On the afternoon of Nov. 14 at Pomona College’s Benton Museum of Art, Falco presented the Hockney-Falco thesis, regarded as having “shak[en] the foundations of art history.” According to the thesis, Renaissance masters like Lorenzo Lotto and Hans Holbein didn’t just rely on raw talent — they used optics.
“Once you’ve seen the optical projection, you can’t unsee it,” Falco told the audience.
An expert on condensed matter, Falco’s legacy stretches far beyond the Hockney-Falco thesis: His research has reshaped our understanding of optics, visual perception and their intersection with historical art practices.
The story began with a chance encounter. As Pomona physics and astronomy professor Dwight Whitaker notes, it was Falco’s expertise in motorcycle history that first led him to curate “The Art of the Motorcycle” show at the Guggenheim in 1998, eventually connecting him to Hockney.
In 2000, Falco read a New Yorker article by the renowned artist, who speculated that Renaissance painters might have used optical aids. While most art historians dismissed the idea, believing these artists’ mastery was due to skill alone, Falco saw an opportunity to apply scientific rigor to an art history question.
What followed was an unconventional collaboration between an artist and a scientist that challenged centuries of conventional wisdom about art history.
“He wasn’t afraid to challenge some of David’s ideas and engaged him like another scientist,” Whitaker said. “Through this open and honest dialogue, they were able to fully form their remarkable theory.”
Together, Hockney and Falco discovered that artists were using sophisticated optical techniques nearly 200 years earlier than previously thought possible.
“We’re not saying optics is the only way to get perspective right,” Falco said. “Optics is the only way to get perspective wrong.”
This paradoxical statement cuts to the heart of his research: While skilled artists could achieve perfect perspective through technique alone, optical devices introduced distinctive distortions. When they used lenses or mirrors to project images onto their canvases, misaligned vanishing points were off by exactly three degrees or sections of carpets didn’t quite match up. These weren’t random mistakes, but rather the metaphorical “fingerprints” of optical tools, ones as unique and identifiable as a signature hidden in the geometry of the paintings themselves.
Falco demonstrated this idea through Lorenzo Lotto’s “Husband and Wife.” First, he established a crucial reference point: The woman’s shoulders measured just 10 inches across in the painting, while a typical woman’s shoulders span about 18 inches.
“I know this because I have a wife and two daughters,” Falco chuckled, drawing laughs from the audience.
“We’re not saying optics is the only way to get perspective right. Optics is the only way to get perspective wrong.”
Using this scale discrepancy, Falco calculated the exact magnification of the optical projection Lotto likely used. Traveling to St. Petersburg, Russia, he photographed the painting in infrared and optical wavelengths. The analysis revealed something remarkable: The ornate carpet in the painting had been traced in three separate sections, and the artist moved the lens to keep each area in focus as he worked.
These discoveries suggested a profound connection between art and science in the Renaissance, challenging the common tendency to separate the two disciplines, Falco explained.
“It’s remarkable that the instruments that made the photorealistic paintings possible themselves left subtle, quantifiable, clues of their use in the images themselves, which enabled us to know nearly all the properties of the instruments they used,” Whitaker said.
Falco further illustrated this in the case of Holbein’s “The Ambassadors.” When the National Gallery in London restored the famous distorted skull at the bottom of the painting, they assumed Holbein had used an anamorphic projection technique — a technique that distorts an image so it can only be viewed correctly from a specific angle. However, Falco’s analysis, based on high-resolution images from the restoration, suggested otherwise. The skull’s distortions bore the hallmarks of optical projection. He even informed the Gallery that their restoration assumption was flawed.
Falco moved effortlessly between discussing optical physics and sharing anecdotes about art.
“As someone interested in physics and art, I loved seeing how Dr. Falco used both to completely change how we view older paintings,” attendee Elsa Van Dyke PO ’28 said. “All the visuals he presented left me amazed.”
When asked how he balanced his physics career with this art-historical research, Falco smiled as he recounted nights spent poring over art books while watching TV.
“This was a hobby,” Falco said. “If I had done this earlier in my career, I probably would have gotten tenure earlier!”
Falco’s “hobby” has earned him accolades like the Ziegfield Lecture Award from the National Art Education Association and the Dwight Nicholson Medal from the American Physical Society.
Falco’s research doesn’t diminish the achievement of Renaissance masters. Rather, it reveals them as more sophisticated than previously imagined: They combined technical innovation with aesthetic genius.
As the afternoon sun slanted through the museum windows, Falco’s message was clear: The divide between art and science is more permeable than we think. Sometimes, all it takes is a new way of seeing.
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