
Vermeer’s Secret Tool: Testing Whether The Artist Used Mirrors and Lenses - shawndumas
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/11/vermeer-secret-tool-mirrors-lenses
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shashashasha
There's also this recent Kickstarter, the NeoLucida, that was all about
remaking similar lens / optic devices artists and painters used in the past:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neolucida/neolucida-a-
po...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neolucida/neolucida-a-portable-
camera-lucida-for-the-21st-ce)

~~~
pg
I have an antique camera lucida, and it is startlingly effective.

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selmnoo
You use it to draw/paint? Can you please share something you've done? I'd very
curious in seeing anything you've painted with it.

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CamperBob2
Interesting article (if a bit clumsily written) but I don't understand why
it's so controversial. It should be pretty easy to tell if a photorealistic
painting was made with mechanical or optical aids. There will be small
positional errors in the image either way -- places where the perspective is
almost but not quite perfect. The magnitude and direction of the errors (and
how they accumulate) will be very different compared to those in a freehand
painting, and shouldn't be too hard to analyze.

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wrongc0ntinent
It's not that easy, for a few of reasons. One is the establishment (no better
word for the mixture of subjectivity, entitlement, money, and fashion in the
art world). Rewriting art history is frowned upon unless it makes the genius
artist look like a greater genius artist. Applying a scientific method doesn't
work there.

Another reason proving this is hard is that some artists do have a great
ability to reproduce reality (this was really the most common way to measure
an artist's ability before photography came along), but the economy of an
artist's technique may reproduce some aspects of reality exactly, while other
aspects are just suggested or completely ignored, so you'd need complete
consistency.

One more reason is that simply seeing a camera obscura image or a similar 2d
image may change an artist's technique, they may become aware of things they
hadn't considered before (this was the case with linear perspective, look up
Brunelleschi's experiment - though nothing as elaborate as a camera obscura).
For a camera obscura projection, lighting conditions are very specific, that
alone might shift an artist's (mental) focus from being 100% descriptive to
being very vague about contours. Basically, you can't "unsee it".

Dutch artists from Vermeer's era are perfect candidates to have used lenses,
because they had the technology. If you can find undeniable proof anywhere,
it's probably there. Really the more proof adds up, the more ridiculous the
naysayers appear. Some natural selection would do this field some good.

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blah314
Thanks, in four paragraphs you gave me a whole new perspective on Hockney's
book on this.

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podperson
Hockney does not argue that every painter of realistic paintings used the
techniques he describes. He in fact goes through a series of painters and
discusses who probably did and didn't.

Basic clue: if the painter seems more interested in showing off his command of
perspective details (e.g. the lettering on someone's desktop globe, or
intricate floor patterns) than, say, people, then he's quite probably using
the technique.

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nathanallen
> _I’ve got a file of counterarguments to my own theory_

Thank you for having scientific integrity. Falsifiability for the win.

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pbhjpbhj
>" _But no one understood exactly how such a device might actually have been
used to paint masterpieces._ " //

Seems a stretch.

I vaguely recall seeing a documentary - perhaps many years ago, probably on
the BBC - on Vermeer's "The Music Room" and how it was understood to be
created using an optical system [ _camera obscura_?]. They showed a replica
being used to trace an image.

Related [http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/projects/MC-CL-
Vermeer-a...](http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/projects/MC-CL-Vermeer-
abstract.pdf) uses the assumption of the accuracy of the dimensions to
establish two of Vermeer's painting were likely done in the same room.

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simonh
Thats close, but not exact. The difference is in the technique of using
partial images of the subject overlayed over the painting image, to get the
colours and overall colour and lighting gradients matched exactly, at a
fidelity the unaided eye wouldn't be capable of. The trick of matching the
patch so closely that the edge of the mirror disappears is the real secret. A
straightforward over-painting projection of the whole subject wouldn't help
with that.

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gus_massa
> _The brightness of any surface becomes exponentially less bright the farther
> it is from a light source, [...]_

Is this true? The brightness decays quadratically with the distance, so I
guess that the reflections decay also quadratically not exponentially.

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applecore
Visual _perception_ of luminance decays exponentially, according to the
strongest distinction.

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jmount
I think it may be more accurate to say perceptual description of luminance may
be exponential (that humans report the difference from 1 to 1/2 as being the
same as 1/2 to 1/4). But I think this is all irrelevant if you are trying to
reproduce tones correctly (other than it says the error-model is relative
error on tones). So I would say it takes a very labored reading to think of
the article statement as correct (as light falls of 1/R^2 not exponentially).
But that also makes the article's point: if you are painting what is there you
are more immune to wrong assumptions.

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maaku
Not necessarily. If you are making a painting, you don't have the ability to
make some sections literally brighter (higher luminescence) because you don't
really have control over the lighting conditions, and oil paints only give you
so much ability to adjust reflectance. So what you do is subtly adjust things
like tone, texture, detail or technique to 'trick' the human perceptual system
into thinking the difference is there. These tricks are what imparts that
life-like quality into the old master's works.

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jere
That was fascinating. I would have preferred some more details on the evidence
found during this that a camera obscura actually _was_ used. I suppose not
having it makes this article a pretty good teaser for the documentary.

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anonymousDan
There's a wonderful book by David Hockney called "Secret knowledge: recovering
the lost techniques of the Old masters" where he lays out some pretty
compelling evidence for this idea. It's also beautifully designed, as you
might expect from Hockney. I keep meaning to try out some of the techniques
mentioned to see how well they work but haven't got round to it yet.

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podperson
The book is great and I'd say the case he makes is pretty water tight (and I
say that as someone who wasn't much of a Hockney fan going in, and was very
resistant to the idea that some of my favorite artists "cheated" ... but of
course artists always "cheat" \-- their goal is produce their artwork, not
follow some arbitrary set of rules on how to get there).

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SilasX
I have a hard time understanding the dilemma here. Could someone please break
it down? What difference would it have made to use mirrors and lenses, and how
would that have improved his paintings?

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egypturnash
Artist here.

Okay. Working out perspective by hand is hard. It's a lot of work, that takes
a lot of arcane knowledge.

So's doing a photorealistic painting of a thing. You have to look at the
thing, consider a bunch of relationships of the particular feature you're
interested in at this very moment, and transfer those relationships to your
canvas. That's a pretty complicated set of habits and brain circuitry you have
to build up over a period of years.

Tracing an image is immensely easier. There's all the perspective, there's all
the proportion relationships. There's all the colors. Right there in front of
you. You can spend an hour or two essentially doing manual edge-detection, and
then start filling in areas.

There's still stuff to learn - how to mix the paint to get the colors you
want, how to apply it to the canvas, stuff like that. And if you trace organic
stuff _too_ closely, it starts to look stiff and dead. But compared to the
amount of skill you have to learn to draw this kind of stuff out of your head?
It's nothing.

I mean, hell. Take a photo, print it out. Tape it to a sunny window, tape
another piece of paper over it, and trace it. Then take that same photo and
try to draw a copy of it, without tracing. There will be a huge difference
between the two drawings you just made. The one made without tracing will
probably have taken a lot longer, and have many more bits erased and redrawn.

A lot of modern artists have this weird thing going on with respect to
tracing. It's the worst thing ever, they'll say. Tracing another person's work
to learn from, or tracing off of a photo, they're different kinds of art
crimes, but they're still art crimes. Leaping around learning to break a scene
down in your head and reconstruct it from scratch - essentially building a
wetware 3D modeller in your brain, really - is considered CHEATING by some
people.

So Hockney's book on Vermeer's work is essentially saying "dude Vermeer was
totally a tracer". Which in many artist's eyes is like calling him Not An
Artist. Artists get weird about what is Art and what is Not Art, it's this
whole thing that's about as inexplicable to a layperson as a programmer's
choice of text editor.

By using mirrors and lenses to project an image onto his camera to trace,
Vermeer only had to learn the basic painting technique stuff. If he did, if he
traced all this stuff, then some people will start saying that his work is no
longer Art. It's just Illustration. Which, in the eyes of people who care
about this, means that it is a lower, less respectable thing. Now it's just a
filter applied to an image, albiet manually instead of via Photoshop or
whatever.

The truth of the matter (IMHO) is that a lot of the people who will scream
bloody murder when someone is tracing are amateurs. Real pros can and will
project images and work over them, build reference models in the real world or
in 3D programs, and do any damn thing they can to make the hard parts of their
work easier, to get all those little details they'd never make up out of whole
cloth.

I am pretty sure I've repeated myself a couple times here, thanks to the tiny
window HN allows to type in. But hopefully this helps.

tl;dr: If Vermeer used these techniques then he's a dirty cheating TRACER and
is thus not a REAL ARTIST in some people's eyes.

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mtts
Occasional amateur painter here.

Yes, tracing images is immensely easier. Problem is it yields lousy paintings.
Photographs have different perspective and lighting than what you see with
your own eyes and paintings that have been made by tracing or even merely
copying photographs almost always look, well, like someone smeared paint all
over a photograph.

If you look at a Vermeer painting, you'll find it does not look photographic
at all. The objects in the picture are almost tangible and seem to jump off
the canvas. This is an effect that is only achievable by having very strong 3D
skills: you basically have to be able to paint even more realistically than
mere realism. So it might very well be that Vermeer used some tools to get a
feel for what it was he was going to paint and maybe even to study the
fleeting effects of lighting, but the final paintings themselves are without a
doubt made by someone with exceptional skill.

TL;DR;Vermeer did not use these techniques because his paintings are way
better than what can be achieved using only these techniques.

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eludwig
Another artist chiming in.

I disagree with you. I believe that Vermeer used photographic techniques to
aid him. It is very obvious to me (imho) that Vermeer's works is of a wholly
different character than any other Dutch masters working at the time. His
paintings are incredibly flat and tonal, and very, very photographic.

I also think that his compositions are his true genius. His compositions are
beyond masterful. They are brilliant. This is hard to describe to a non-
artist, but the way that he uses tight negative spacing along with his use of
large spacious gradations is magic. He had the eye of a master photographer.
This is where the question comes in for me. Did he set up his scenes and then
limit himself to what he was able to manage there, just tracing what he saw?
Or did he allow himself the freedom to change and modify the spaces and
proportions to what looked right to him. I personally believe the latter.

To me, Vermeer is one of the greatest photographers thats ever lived. Every 2D
design class should devote long study to his compositions.

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mtts
Oh, I'm not disputing Vermeer may have used photographic techniques to aid
him. There is definitely a very photographic look to his work that is unlike
that of most of his contemporaries. What I _am_ disputing, however, is that
they were merely used as a shortcut and that the use of these aids is the be
all and end all of Vermeer's talent. Even without his alleged use of
photographic techniques Vermeer was a masterful painter: his handling of paint
is otherworldly and that is something no photographic aid can help you with.

It's also true that his work is much flatter than that of his contemporaries,
but to my eyes there's still a lot of 3D construction lurking behind those
dazzling light effects that is completely missing in paintings that we know
for sure have been made as copies of photographs. Like I said, to me Vermeer
is a much better painter than the grandparent gives him credit for.

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001sky
The 2006 monograph by the british artist David Hockney (for anyone
interested).

 _Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters_ [1]

[1] ISBN-10: 0142005126> [http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Knowledge-Expanded-
Edition-Redi...](http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Knowledge-Expanded-Edition-
Rediscovering/dp/0142005126)

~~~
peter_l_downs
This work is referenced many times in the article.

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discreteevent
On Caravaggio:
[http://www.webexhibits.org/hockneyoptics/post/grundy7.html](http://www.webexhibits.org/hockneyoptics/post/grundy7.html)

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wrongc0ntinent
Hockney's book is great, but for a quick and entertaining look at the theory,
there was a (BBC I think) documentary with the same title. Probably on iPlayer
and YouTube by now, covers more than just Vermeer (no links since I'm not sure
about the copyright status.)

