Johannes Vermeer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaCropped version of Jan Vermeer van Delft 002.jpg

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer (Dutch: [joˈɦɑnəs jɑn vərˈmeːr]; 1632 – December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.[3]

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for lapis lazuli and Indian yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.[4]

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. “Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women.”[5]

Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death; he was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken‘s major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries.[6][7] In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing sixty-six pictures to him, although only thirty-four paintings are universally attributed to him today.[2] Since that time, Vermeer’s reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Theories of mechanical aid

Vermeer’s painting techniques have long been a source of debate, given their almost photorealistic attention to detail, despite Vermeer having had no formal training, and despite only limited evidence that Vermeer had created any preparatory sketches or traces for his paintings.

In 2001, British artist David Hockney published the book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, in which he argued that Vermeer – among other Renaissance artists including Hans Holbein and Diego Velázquez – used optics, and specifically some combination of curved mirrors, camera obscura and camera lucida, to achieve precise positioning in their compositions. This became known as the Hockney–Falco thesis, named after Hockney and Charles M. Falco, another proponent of the theory.

Working independently, in 2001 British architecture professor Philip Steadman published the book Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces, which specifically claimed that Vermeer had used a camera obscura to create his paintings. Noting that many of Vermeer’s paintings had been painted in the same room, Steadman found six of his paintings that are precisely the right size if they had been painted from inside a camera obscura in the room’s back wall.[22]

Supporters of these theories have pointed to evidence in some of Vermeer’s paintings, such as the often-discussed sparkling pearly highlights in Vermeer’s paintings, which they argue are the result of the primitive lens of a camera obscura producing halation. It was also postulated that a camera obscura was the mechanical cause of the “exaggerated” perspective seen in Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman (London, Royal Collection).

In 2008, American entrepreneur and inventor Tim Jenison developed the theory that Vermeer had used a camera obscura along with a “comparator mirror”, which is similar in concept to a camera lucida but much simpler, and allows for easily matching color values. He later modified the theory to simply involve a concave mirror and a comparator mirror. He spent the next five years testing his theory by attempting to re-create The Music Lesson himself using these tools, a process captured in the 2013 documentary film Tim’s Vermeer.[23]

Several points were brought out by Jenison in support of this technique: First was Vermeer’s hyper-accurate rendition of light falloff along the wall. Another was the addition of several highlights and outlines consistent with matching the effects of chromatic aberration, particularly noticeable in primitive optics. Last, and perhaps most telling, is a noticeable curvature in the original painting’s rendition of the scrollwork on the piano. This effect, caused by exactly duplicating the view as seen from a curved mirror, matched Jenison’s technique precisely.

This theory remains disputed. Aside from the accurately observed mirror reflection above the lady at the virginals, there is no historical evidence regarding Vermeer’s interest in optics. The detailed inventory of the artist’s belongings drawn up after his death does not include a camera obscura or any similar device.

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