“Mr. Hooke’s Reflecting Box”: Modeling the Projected Image in the Early Royal Society

Abstract

From the early 1660s through the late 1690s, Robert Hooke conducted experiments with the camera obscura and other methods of optical projection, demonstrating how they could be used expressly for the purpose of painting. Then described as “Mr. Hooke’s reflecting box,” the camera obscura is well known in studies of early modern art and visuality, where it has figured as a “model.” Drawing upon recent work in analytic philosophy of science, this essay uses Hooke’s projected-image experiments to rethink the meanings of the camera obscura’s modeling and their broader implications for artistic practice in the long eighteenth century.