Читать книгу Magic Shadows. The Story of the Origin of Motion Pictures онлайн

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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.