Art Chowder November | December 2017, Issue 12 | Page 37

DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN: “VERMEER’S CAMERA”
By Melville Holmes
T
he notion that Velazquez
could have required a camera
obscura to develop his great
compositions nevertheless does
seem a stretch, and the title of
the Planck Institute’s colloqui-
um may have a kernel of truth
when it refers to “…the Spell
of the Projected Image.” The
idea has proven to be captivat-
ing.
But now there arises yet an-
other version of the mystery of
Vermeer. A book just out this
year, which will hit Amazon
last month (October), is enti-
tled Traces of Vermeer by Jane
Jelley, published by Oxford
University Press. She is billed
as a still life painter, though
none of her paintings can be
found so far online. Yet unlike
many others, she not only
shows a significant knowledge
of the Vermeer literature, but
offers the first plausible way
by which Vermeer could have
transferred an upside down
and backwards image sketched
with paint onto the real canvas.
And she does this in keeping
with the most recent scientific
findings.
Spoiler alert!
Johannes Vermeer
The Milkmaid
c. 1657–1661
Oil on canvas
17 7/8 x 16 1/8”
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
It was startling to stand before this painting when in Amsterdam in 1985,
to observe how confident and un-labored is the brushwork. Vermeer
scholar Arthur Wheelock described how Vermeer emphasized the
three-dimensionality of the young woman’s head in this way, “Brush-
strokes are boldly juxtaposed, with little or no effort to blend the colors
together. The buildup of paint is so pronounced that one has the feeling
that Vermeer was trying to sculpt the woman’s form with it.”
Shush…it isn’t done with the usual methods employed by the traditional means of
transferring or enlarging images from drawing to the real canvas, panel, or wall. It’s done with printing. 4
And yet this is by no means “proof positive.” The evidence is plausible but circumstantial and, so far, the mystery of Johannes
Vermeer remains: the “Sphinx of Delft.”
A comment by a reader in this review offers an interesting observation. “Tim and his team apparently didn’t use artificial light. I’m incredibly skeptical about this. Light conditions obviously can change in a second. If the sun
disappeared behind a cloud would Vermeer be forced to drop his brush? Well if he was using a mirror, then yes. It’s simply impractical! Had Vermeer used a mirror, he would have had to be able to control the sun, the seasons and
the clouds.”

[http://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/2614_Tims_notVermeer]

It may not matter in Tim’s case because his setup was in San Antonio, one of the sunniest spots in the country. But Vermeer lived in Delft, The Netherlands, where the weather changes frequently throughout most
of the year.
1.
2.

Arthur K Wheelock. Vermeer and the Art of Painting. Yale University Press; 1995.
Arthur K. Wheelock (ed.) et al. Johannes Vermeer. Yale University Press; 1995.
3. https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P333.PDF
4. http://tracesofvermeer.com/uploads/3/4/1/3/34136447/perception_to_paint__1_.pdf
November | December 2017
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