Let us hope that the tranquillity of the Rijksmuseum galleries, filled with Vermeer’s luminous paintings, is not disturbed by the continuing arguments over his possible use of the camera obscura.
We can see for ourselves direct parallels between Vermeer’s images and those on our own phones, in the distortions of scale, effects of light, and variable focus: optical connections observed as long ago as 1891 by the American artist and printmaker Joseph Pennell.
