As an artist, there are aspects of Vermeer’s work which have been called into question as anachronistic compared to other artists of the period. It has been observed that various aspects of Vermeer's paintings exhibit evidence of having employed the use of the camera obscura as an artistic tool. Not only is this possible, but is most likely true, given the camera obscura’s historical precedent within traditional art, observable features of optical phenomena within the paintings themselves, and certain epistemological ideas which were common in Vermeer’s time. But to what degree was the camera obscura employed? Can it be as simple as Vermeer merely copying the images the camera obscura sets forth? Would this diminish his place as a great master? While I do agree that Vermeer was aware of the camera obscura and it had informed his way of seeing the world, I believe the final compositions of the images to still be the unique work of the artist.
It is not clear how early the camera obscura was first known by humans. There are reasons to believe that even in the paleolithic period, the principle of the camera obscura was already understood, or at least was being employed for various reasons: symbolic, ritual, entertainment, etc. A significant portion of the research being done in the field of Archaeo-optics is devoted to the awareness of camera obscura principle by early humans and what effect this may have had on paleolithic art. A more formal introduction of the camera obscura into art history may be attributed to Leonardo DaVinci. DaVinci had become obsessed with the camera obscura as a model of the human eye which he called “the most important part of the body.” Even closer to Vermeer, we can look at Constantijn Huygens, a Dutch poet and musician who famously wrote:
“I have at home Drebbel's other instrument, which certainly makes admirable effects in painting from reflection in a dark room; it is not possible for me to reveal the beauty to you in words; all painting is dead by comparison, for here is life itself or something more elevated if one could articulate it. The figure and the contour and the movements come together naturally therein and in a grandly pleasing fashion.”
There is no question, then, that Dutch painters were already using the camera obscura even before Vermeer’s time, and that art generally has been influenced by the projected image for a very long time. The question, then is to what degree can it be said that Vermeer employed camera obscura within his own oeuvre? For that, we must turn to the paintings themselves.
Daniel Fink, in his essay, “Vermeer’s Use of the Camera Obscura--A Comparative Study,” tells us, “certain formal elements of [Vermeer’s] paintings are seldom, if ever, seen in the work of other artists.” He suggests that these are “optical phenomena” which are the direct result of having used the camera obscura as a tool to produce the images found in his paintings. Fink has come to this conclusion because of experimentation with various types of lenses in different sizes, and has identified ten specific points of observation within Vermeer’s oeuvre which might be evidence of the camera obscura having been used. The first two, and the fourth deal with phenomena which absolutely can not be perceived without optical mechanism.
The first and second observations Fink presents have to do with the existence of “circles of confusion” within Vermeer’s work. As they move further away from the primary plane of focus, these circles of confusion grow bigger, as they would in a photographic image. This can easily be observed in The Milkmaid. The image seems to become softer and more diffuse as the eye moves away from the back and towards the objects in the foreground. Fink tells us, “Painters who do not base their images on an optical system create highlights according to the way their eyes perceive these highlights.” Circles of confusion are not a part of the way our eye perceives reality because of how quickly our eyes can change focus--much more quickly than a camera lens can. We have become accustomed to seeing these photographic artifacts as natural because the photographic image is a very ubiquitous object in our culture, and photographic ways of seeing have been integrated into our view of the world-- but would these not have been seen as strange by the casual viewer in Vermeer’s time?
Fink’s fourth observation is one of the most compelling. He looks at the way Vermeer treats reflected images within the paintings. He observes that the reflected images are shown in a deeper plane of focus than the mirror frame itself-- something that is very difficult for the human eye to observe, but which is readily apparent in the photographic image. This can be very easily observed in the images Lady and Gentleman at the Virginals, and Lady Reading a Letter at an Open Window.
Fink discusses examples from Vermeer’s contemporaries where reflected images are shown over-saturated and in too precise of focus. Although these arguments are convincing enough when it comes to the idea of Vermeer having an awareness or familiarity with the camera obscura, this can already be inferred by historical precedent. Is it enough evidence to assert that Vermeer was employing the camera obscura to directly transfer the images onto the surface which would become the final painting? This is a pretty big leap from the simple suggestion that he was merely familiar with the device.
Fink seems to believe the evidence is sufficient, Allan Mills, author of Vermeer and the Camera Obscura: Some Practical Considerations disagrees. Like Fink, Mills also set up some practical experiments to test the validity of such claims. While he does not disagree with Fink in rendering some of the optical phenomena, where his disagreement lies is in the feasibility of directly transferring an image onto the painting surface. He rules out pinhole images right off the bat, saying: “...pinhole images of interior scenes are impractically dim, even if very small in area.” He goes on to test various lenses and focal lengths, but ultimately comes to the conclusion that, “...it would not have been possible for Vermeer to have painted his interior scenes directly, at full size, from images produced by a room-type camera obscura incorporating the lenses of his time. Such images would have been much too dim and in any case would have been mirror images of the real scene.”
In his essay, “Allegory, Realism and Vermeer’s Use of the Camera Obscura,” Phillip Steadman directly contradicts Mills and asserts that it is quite feasible to reconstruct a small booth within a room that would allow Vermeer to paint images of a live tableau directly onto the canvas. Although Steadman seems quite convinced of this, his argument seems to mostly rely on reconstructing the makers of the virginals, and the furniture. It is important to note that he sources the painters, mapmakers and globemakers whose work is faithfully represented within some of the paintings, and yet doesn’t seem to account for how the artist remained so faithful to the originals, when surely the camera obscura would have flipped and mirrored these images. He seems to ignore these problems, instead focusing on historical sources for period furniture and complex computer mapping of the physical spaces represented in his paintings.
I’m not sure I’m willing to follow Steadman as far as his thesis would take me, but I think he gets at something very profound when he says: “...Vermeer used the camera...only in part to achieve correct geometrical outlines-- the primary purpose that it served for Vanvitelli. Vermeer, I think was much more fascinated by the luminous qualities of the camera image itself, and with the opportunities it offered for achieving, by imitation in paint, the uncanny truth to tone on which so many critics have remarked.” There is no doubt that Vermeer was aware of the camera obscura and had employed it to some degree. As Christoph Lothy puts it: “The question is no longer whether or not means of optical projection existed, but whether and how painters used them.” Much of the discussion seems to revolve around the use of the camera obscura as a technical device, but what Steadman is suggesting here is much more interesting: that the camera obscura may have been employed as a stylistic device for helping Vermeer create captivating images.
Yoriko Kobayashi-Sato in, “Vermeer and His Thematic Use of Perspective” comments on Vermeer’s use of focus. While certainly informed by an awareness of the way a lens would render a scene, Vermeer has also deliberately altered elements of them for the sake of composition. Kobayashi-Sato shows how if Vermeer had merely traced the image as the camera obscura would have rendered it, the points of focus, the shadows and the vanishing points would not be consistent with the way he has chosen to paint the scene. Kobayashi-Sato shows that Vermeer manipulated these elements of the composition to draw the eye to specific points of the image. In The Milkmaid, for example, the bread on the table should be larger and more out of focus, unless the table were impossibly small. Vermeer has, “consciously chosen to deviate from the laws of perspective.” This shows an awareness by the artist of how these elements can change the way the viewer perceives the image for what Kobayashi-Sato calls “psychological effect.”
Kobayashi-Sato goes on to discuss other apparati which were used by the artist, even the simplistic technique of making lines using pins and string, which can certainly be evidenced by the presence of actual pinholes in the canvases. “The image projected by the camera obscura should be considered only one of the many devices used by so multi-faceted an artist as Vermeer.”
The projected image has always enchanted us. Theorists working within the field of archaeo-optics have even suggested that paleolithic understandings of pinhole projection may have been the origins of spirituality as well as art. One such scholar tells us: “A randomly projected image stands for a real object; it says bison without being a flesh and blood bison, planting the idea of a referent, the conceptual beginning of art.” Whether or not Vermeer was using the camera obscura to the ends that some have suggested, his awareness of it is without question and the artifacts of the lens’s way of seeing are apparent. What if it was not merely a tool for copying reality, but what if, as Hockney suggests, Vermeer had used the device because he was enamored by the “tonalities, shading and colours found in the optical projection.” Even if few in his era had access to such a device, it is without question that Vermeer had taught himself “to look at the world as a lens sees it… “ What if he saw some mystical secret within the lens’s gaze that was more than utilitarian. As Lawrence Gowen says in his essay “Vermeer:” although many artists have used the camera obscura “Vermeer is alone in putting it to the service of style rather than the accumulation of facts.”
John Locke, the so-called “Father of Liberalism” who, coincidentally, was born the same year as Vermeer, uses the camera obscura as a metaphor for the mind in his “Essay on Human Understanding:”
“For, methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found on some occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.”
Just as DaVinci had identified the camera obscura with the eye, Locke has identified it with the whole mind. The philosophical search for truth is not unlike the artist’s search for truth within the canvas. The difference, of course, is that the artist is working in illusion. It seems that in Vermeer’s time the camera obscura is already firmly established as more than simply a visual device, but perhaps an epistemic device as well. If the camera obscura existed within this philosophical context as a metaphor, it would make sense that a visual artist, in the pursuit of truth might also employ it. Locke’s famous use of the camera obscura as a didactic tool suggests that Vermeer’s interest in it as an artistic tool would have been very much in keeping with the contemporary zeitgeist, and perhaps the philosophical ideas about what art is.
It seems unlikely to me, when considering the evidence set forth, that Vermeer would have simply copied projected images by rote. Taking the thesis this far seems a bit precipitous. Although it is certain that the artist would have been very familiar with the camera obscura, I think he employed it as a means of adopting new ways of seeing and in perfecting his ability to use focus and perspective within the composition to sort of tell a story. I think a lot of the controversy surrounding this question lies in the fact that some critics might feel that to have employed a tool would have devalued Vermeer’s genius. Artists have always employed different tools to aid their perception and composition of images. Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura as a tool should be seen as similar to the use of monoculars and other optical aids that were very normal in his time.
Bibliograpy
Fink, Daniel A. "Vermeer's Use of the Camera Obscura - a Comparative Study." The Art Bulletin 53, no. 4 (1971)
Gatton, M. “First Light: Inside the Palaeolithic camera obscura” in Acts of Seeing: Artists, Scientists and the History of the Visual -- a volume dedicated to Martin Kemp (Kaniari, A. and Wallace, M., eds.) London: Zidane.
Gowing Lawrence , Vermeer (London, 1952; 2nd ed. 1970), 23.
Hockney, David. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old MAsters. (London, 2001).
KOBAYASHI-SATO, YORIKO. "Vermeer and His Thematic Use of Perspective." In In His Milieu: Essays on Netherlandish Art in Memory of John Michael Montias, edited by Golahny A., Mochizuki M.M., and Vergara L., 209-18. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006
Locke, John. An essay concerning human understanding. Ed. P Nidditch. Oxford 1975
Löthy, Christoph . "Hockney's Secret Knowledge, Vanvitelli's Camera Obscura." Early Science and Medicine 10, no. 2 (2005):
Mills, Allan A. "Vermeer and the Camera Obscura: Some Practical Considerations." Leonardo 31, no. 3 (1998)
Steadman, Philip. "Allegory, Realism, and Vermeer's Use of the Camera Obscura." Early Science and Medicine 10, no. 2 (2005)
Wheelock, Jr, Arthur K. Constantijn huygens and early attitudes towards the camera obscura. 2013
