Locating illumination sources from lighting on planar surfaces in paintings: An application to Georges de la Tour and Caravaggio
David G. Stork · Frontiers in Optics 2008/Laser Science XXIV/Plasmonics and Metamaterials/Optical Fabrication and Testing · 2008
We used shape-from-shading algorithms from computer vision and maximum-likelihood methods to estimate the location of the illuminants from the distribution of illuminance measured from planar Lambertian surfaces in Baroque paintings by Georges de la Tour and Caravaggio. In key paintings we found the light source to be local (rather than distant solar) or otherwise in positions incompatible with a recent theory these artists used optical projections during the execution of these works.