Rokeby Venus other works by Velázquez and was probably deliberate. The painting was given a major cleaning and restoration in 1965–66, which showed it to be in good condition, and with very little paint added later by other artists, contrary to what some earlier writers had asserted. Paintings of nudes and of Venus by Italian, and especially Venetian, artists were influences on Velázquez. However, Velázquez's version is, according to the art historian Andreas Prater, "a highly independent visual concept that has many precursors, but no direct model; scholars have sought them in vain". Forerunners include Titian's various depictions of Venus, such as
David Rokeby some off-the-shelf, some rare and esoteric, and some cooked up by Rokeby himself. Initially, in 1982, much more of the system was homemade. His circuitry, designed to speed up the response of the sluggish Apple II, was still not fast enough to analyze an image from an ordinary video camera, so he built his own low-res device: a little box with 64 light sensors behind a plastic Fresnel lens. But Very Nervous System has been evolving for 13 years, during which time the world has seen any number of technological revolutions. So Rokeby now has a lot more store-bought components