Caravaggio used 'photography' to create dramatic masterpiece

The 16th century master used modern darkroom techniques to create his masterpieces, more than 200 years before the invention of the camera.

Italian researchers claim the technique explained why many of his subjects were left-handed – the image projected onto the canvas had been reversed.

Art historian Roberta Lapucci said Caravaggio's dramatic 'chiaroscuro' style of light and shadow was based on "a whole set of techniques that are the basis of photography".

Art history scholars have long known that Caravaggio worked in a sort of darkroom, illuminating his subjects through a hole in the ceiling and projecting the image onto a canvas using a lens and a mirror.

But Mrs Lapucci is the first researcher to suggest that he treated the canvas with light-sensitive substances, including a luminescent powder made from crushed fireflies, in order to "fix" the image as 19th century photographers later would.

Read more here.