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.
However, in his five-star review of the show at the Rijksmuseum (7 February), Adrian Searle, while acknowledging that artists “are always interested in whatever technology they have at hand”, states with certainty that Vermeer “never sat in a camera obscura”.
But Vermeer was not “copying” what he saw, and would not be cheating by using a lens. He was constructing an alternative reality, composed of many elements, one of which could have been a first paint layer made by transferring a tracing from a camera projection directly to his canvas, which was then never entirely covered. Prints I made using this method were slightly blurred, gave an impression of strong illumination, and could provide a tonal compositional plan.
It is hard to believe that Vermeer would want to paint optical effects from memory if, alternatively, he was able to capture them from a lens and utilise them directly. This might strip away some of the mystery that Searle finds so attractive, but I believe that the mastery of a such a technique would only serve to confirm Vermeer’s brilliance.
Jane Jelley
Author, Traces of Vermeer
