Philip
Steadman. 27.3.2002
In
March 2001 I published Vermeer's Camera, a book exploring the
proposition that the Dutch master used the camera obscura as an aid
to painting.1 The book has provoked a gratifyingly large correspondence,
from painters, photographers, architects and experts in computer graphics
as well as art historians. The critical reception has been generally
kind; but there have been a few dubious notices by Vermeer scholars
and curators of 17th century Dutch painting. In this article I report
some of the most interesting suggestions made by correspondents, and
offer counter-arguments to the book's critics.
1.
The book's argument
It
may be helpful to begin with a short resume of the main findings reported
in Vermeer's Camera. The book shows how it is possible to reconstruct
the three-dimensional spaces seen in ten of Vermeer' s paintings of
domestic interiors, using a method of 'inverse perspective' (roughly
speaking, a reversal of the normal procedures of perspective drawing).2
It is further possible to find a common scale for all these spaces,
such that three conditions are satisfied. First, the dimensions of the
various architectural features - the floor tiles, the windows and their
spacing in the wall, the ceiling joists, and the overall floor-to-ceiling
height - are closely similar throughout. Second, the shapes and sizes
of those recognisable pieces of furniture that appear repeatedly remain
the same from one picture to the next. Third, items shown by Vermeer
of which the originals, or copies, survive in museum collections today
have their actual dimensions as measured from the real objects. These
objects include two designs of chair, the virginals in 'The Music Lesson',
several paintings by other artists that Vermeer shows hanging on the
walls of the rooms, the Delftware tiles used as skirtings, and a series
of printed wall maps and globes. I will say more about these shortly.
It
is very hard to resist the conclusion that all ten paintings depict
one and the same real room, with furniture and models rearranged for
the different compositions. One very distinctive feature of the architecture,
visible in eight pictures - and whose repetition supports this thesis
- is an elaborate design of leaded panes in the casement windows, forming
a pattern of interlocking circles, semi-circles and squares. Eight paintings
(not the same eight) also share the characteristic black and white marble
floor tiles. (The precise arrangement of these tiles varies however,
and two pictures show a quite different design of smaller ceramic tiles.
I will come back to this point.) The position of the back wall of the
room, behind Vermeer's vantage point and behind us, the viewers, is
just visible in the mirror seen hanging on the far wall in 'The Music
Lesson'.
Here
is the book's key finding. For each of the ten paintings, it is possible
to determine the theoretical perspective viewpoint: that point within
the room at which Vermeer would have had to put his eye to see the precise
view in question. The entire extent of this view - everything that is
visible in the painting - is contained within a 'visual pyramid' whose
apex is at the viewpoint. If the lines forming the edges of this pyramid
are carried back to meet the back wall of the room, they define a rectangle
on that wall. For at least six paintings this rectangle is the size
of Vermeer's canvas. 3 Figure 1 shows a plan of the room.
The small circles mark the viewpoints of the six paintings in question;
the diagonal lines show the visual pyramids in top view, and the short
heavy lines show the widths of the paintings at the back wall.4
|
Figure
1: Plan of Vermeer's room with viewpoints (small circles) marked
for six paintings: (a) 'The Girl with a Wineglass', (b) 'The Glass
of Wine', (c) 'Lady Writing a Letter, with Her Maid', (d) 'Lady
Standing at the Virginals', (e) 'The Music Lesson', (f) 'The Concert'.
The diagonal lines mark the extent of what is visible in each picture.
The heavy lines at the back wall mark the widths of the six projected
images: each is the width of the respective painting. |
This
result can hardly be due to chance.5 It must be a product of
Vermeer's working methods. Paul Taylor of the Warburg Institute made
some calculations of the probability of the phenomenon occurring at
random.6 He also consulted Tim Gowers, Rouse-Ball Professor of
Mathematics at Cambridge. It is perhaps not very meaningful to cite
a precise value for the probability, since any numerical result depends,
among other considerations, on the assumptions made about accuracies
of measurement. But on reasonable assumptions, Taylor and Gowers calculate
that the odds are hundreds or even thousands-to-one against.
The
explanation I offer in the book for this very curious geometrical property
of Vermeer's perspectives, considered collectively, is that it is a
consequence of him using a camera obscura in the form of a booth or
cubicle. He would have worked in semi-darkness inside this cubicle.
The camera lens would have been positioned at the theoretical viewpoint
of the picture for each composition, and the back wall of the room would
have served as the projection screen. The projected images of the
room are the same sizes as Vermeer's canvases, because he has traced
them. I have tested this hypothesis both with a 1: 6 scale model
and a photographic plate camera taking the place of the camera obscura;
and in a full-size reconstruction of the room complete with booth-type
camera.
I
have not been able, despite much thought, to come up with any plausible
alternative explanation, by reference to other methods that Vermeer
might conceivably have used to set up his compositions - standard mathematical
perspective procedures, the tracing of reflections in plane mirrors,
or the use of some kind of grid-frame after the manner of Alberti's
'veil' or Dürer's various perspective machines - nor have the book's
sceptical critics.7 The phenomenon is very simply and directly
accounted for, meanwhile, by reference to the geometrical optics of
the camera obscura. In the I book review the many other forms of evidence
that have been adduced by writers in the past for Vermeer having used
the instrument. These include the painter's sometimes 'photographic'
perspective effects, his reproduction in paint of certain artefacts
of slightly unfocussed lenses, and above all his uncanny accuracy -
remarked on by Lawrence Gowing and several other critics - in the rendering
of tone. My own original contribution is in the analysis of the perspective
geometry of the pictures.
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