Art Chowder November | December 2017, Issue 12 | Page 33

O
xford University Press published
a similarly controversial book in 2001:
Vermeer’s Camera by British architect
Philip Steadman. The idea that Vermeer
(1632-1685) may have somehow used a
camera obscura in some way to achieve the
“photographic” look of his work, was first
suggested by an American photographer
in 1891. Over the years the view that Ver-
meer’s vision was at least “informed” by
images he had seen in a camera obscura,
had increasingly come to settle in among
Vermeer scholars. But it was Steadman
who first developed a conceivable and
detailed theory of how Vermeer might have
really used one. The author carefully stud-
ied six paintings by Vermeer that appear to
depict the same room, deriving the room’s
dimensions by perspective analysis and
locating the exact viewpoint from which
the artist produced his remarkably perfect
perspective constructions. Steadman
constructed a scale model of the room as
it appears in Vermeer’s Music Lesson, and
then proceeded to build a case that Vermeer
not only used a camera obscura but also
possibly had set one up in the very room in
which he posed his subjects. According to
a supposition proposed by Steadman, “…
Vermeer’s main use for the camera obscura
was to obtain precise outlines for the vari-
ous shapes in the composition.”
There is a snag here, though. “Vermeer’s
camera” (if he had one—there is no record
of one in the inventory of his estate after
his death), as described by Steadman,
would have had a single lens to project
the image onto a vertical surface at the
back wall of the room, in which case the
image would have been upside down and
backwards. But Steadman never settled on
a clear solution for how the artist would
have corrected the reversed image, and
this sticking point is one appeal for a more
straightforward approach to painting, espe-
cially for an artist so obviously intelligent
as Vermeer.
While scholars and researchers have
largely been unable to come to con-
sensus either on the degree to which
optical devices account for the realism
among the old masters or how Vermeer
achieved his exceptional visual effects,
in the intervening years since 2001 a
whole new level of complicatedness
emerged with the appearance in 2013
of Tim’s Vermeer, a documentary film
written and directed by Las Vegas-based
magician duo Penn and Teller.
While the bottom lens of this old twin lens reflex cam-
era is the film lens, the top lens is, in effect, a camera
obscura. There is a mirror that reflects the image onto
the 2 by 2” ground glass viewing and focusing screen.
Illustration of the camera obscura principle.
Photo taken from the ground glass viewer on a reflex film camera : A camera obscura works on the same principle as the
pinhole cameras, which many people used to observe the 2017 solar eclipse, as well as with a photographic camera. Light
from outside the camera passes through a small aperture into the “room” and an image of what it outside is reflected onto the
opposite wall. With photo cameras the “wall” is the film emulsion (or now digital sensor).
With the pre-WWII German twin lens reflex camera used here, the problem of image reversal is corrected by means of two
convex lenses, one of which corrects the reversed image created by the other.
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