On the Use of Optical Devices by Baroque Painters  And the fascinating relationship between science and art

On the Use of Optical Devices by Baroque Painters  And the fascinating relationship between science and art

Working Art Department, Science Department and Technology Department

Make a small camara obscura to see how light forms images

Construct a booth-type camera obscura existing in Veermer age and trace the image formed from it using a lens

Make a camara obscura out of a dark room and trace a drawing from it

Objetives in Visual Art classes

To know how images are formed out of light.

To compare Vermeer and Caravaggio paintings with other paintings to analize the differences when using optical devices or not.

What we are doing in Visual Art classes

Searching for information about the use of optical devices in art in Baroque times and before.

Searching on the Internet for information about Caravaggio and Vermeer.

Searching for information about the still existing debate in the use of the camara obscura

What we have done

A pinhole camera made from a shoe box or others smaller, exposed on photographic paper. The length of the exposure was about 10 minutes.

Elaborate this presentation

How to make a pinhole Camara to see images

1. Paint the entire box with black paint 2. Make a hole with a needle in one of

the faces. The hole have to be smooth 3. Cut a small rectangle in the opposite

side (1 by 2 cm) to look through it. Place a transparent tracing paper

between both faces. Look through the window: an inverted

image has been formed onto the tracing paper

Short video showing the principles of a camara obscura and a detail from a Vermeer’s painting projected through it

Vermeer Master of Light 45 Camera Obscura.wmv

How to make a Shoebox Pinhole camara

Paint the inside of the box with black paint

Make a hole with a needle. It has to be very smooth. Use the tap of a yoghurt. Cover the hole with black tape. This will be your camara shutter

In a pitch black room place the photograph paper in the oppossite face inside the box. The camara is now loaded and ready to shoot

Stand some metres away from your subject and remove the tape covering the hole

Try exposing the photopaper around 15’ at first

It will take a few tries to figure out the correct exposure time, but once you have it down you’ll be sure to take some amazing pinhole camara photos.

What we have done

What we have done

What we have done

What we have done

Although optical devices were used by European painters from the early 15th century, 1600 was the moment when the look of European painting changed.

The agent of change was Caravaggio in Italy.

And Veermer in Holland.

An illustration of a camera obscura from J. Zahn, Oculusteledioptricus 2nd ed., Nuremberg, 1702. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

the basic camera obscura consists of a

room with a small opening, the images are projected both upside down and reversed

the portable camera obscura uses a lens to focus the image which is reflected from a slanted mirror to a

translucent screen, the image is righted but still reversed

The booth-type camera obscura

It is a sort of closed box fitted with some arrangement of lenses or mirrors large enough for an observer to be seated inside. The principal advantage is that, because the space is enclosed securely, only the light which is filtered through the lens aperture enters the booth. Thus, the image is particularly clean and brilliant

There is absolutely no documentary evidence to support the idea of using optical devices by Vermeer or Caravaggio.

The only source of information is the visual information exhibited by the paintings themselves.

The Milkmaid c. 1658-60 (150 Kb); Oil on canvas, 45.4 x 41 cm (17 7/8 x 16 1/8 in); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

There are essentially five characteristics of Vermeer's paintings that suggest the use of a camera obscura

perspective tonal rendering composition handling of light some peculiar effects produced

uniquely by the camera obscura.

PERSPECTIVE

For centuries painters had both a working and theoretical knowledge of perspective and understood very well that, to create a believable three dimensional space, figures which appeared far from the viewer had to be represented smaller while those which were nearer had to be proportionately larger.

PERSPECTIVE:

Note the evident discrepancy in scale of the two figures. Before eyes had been accustomed to the modern photographic camera's way of seeing, in 1891 Joseph Pennell was the first to suppose that Vermeer might have employed an optical device as an aid to his painting

Soldier and a Laughing Girl c. 1658 (190 Kb); Oil on canvas, 49.2 x 44.4 cm; The Frick Collection, New York

Because the viewpoint of the picture is unusually close to the table, in 17th-century painting Vermeer's contemporaries would have made this closer object smaller and render what the artist knew rather that what he sawThe Music Lesson

c. 1662-65 (180 Kb); Oil on canvas, 74.6 x 64.1 cm; Royal Collection, St. James' Palace, London

PECULIAR EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE CAMARA OBSCURA: POINTILLÈS 17th-century lenses did not focus with complete precision through the entire depth of fields.

The effects of imperfect focus in the camera obscura produced the so called pointillès found in many of Vermeer's paintings. Vermeer's pointillès, globular touches of thick opaque paint, "resemble nothing so much as the fuzzy, overlapping sequins of light that appear in an out-of-focus photograph and are referred to as 'discs of confusion' by photographers." 7

The disks of confusion seen on the screen of a camera obscura occur in the place of natural highlights, bright reflections of various forms and intensities frequently seen with the naked eye on shiny surfaces such as glass or polished metal. "If a small highlight of this type, whatever its shape, is not brought exactly into focus at the viewing plane, its image becomes spread out into a circle (or disk) of confusion. "8 Thus, Vermeer has voluntarily imitated a byproduct of the camera obscura which cannot be perceived in normal circumstances by the naked eye.

details of the lion's head finialin Seymour's camera obscura (left) and of Vermeer's Girl in a Red Hat

a purposely unfocussed photograph modern day door knocker

photographed at the Oude Delft, Delft, which gives surprisingly similar

results as Seymour's experiments

Optical devices certainly don't paint pictures, the use of them diminishes no great artist.

The Music Lesson c. 1662-65 (180 Kb); Oil on canvas, 74.6 x 64.1 cm; Royal Collection, St. James' Palace, London

BIBLIOGRAPHY http://www.essentialvermeer.com/camera_obscura/co_one.html

www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/vermeer_camera_02.shtml Philip Steadman, Vermeer and the Camera obscura

Jean-Luc Delsaute, "The Camera Obscura and Painting in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," in Vermeer Studies, p. 111

Philip Steadman, Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces, Oxford, 2001, p. 21

Mariet Westermann, Vermeer and the Dutch Interior, Madrid, 2003, p. 226

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jruwMMT_bc8: Against the use of the camara

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer: Vermeer

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Johannes Vermeer

(Videos): Vermeer: Master of Light - at the National Gallery of Art, Washington

› Part 1: Woman Holding a Balance

› Part 2: The Music Lesson

› Part 3: Girl with the Red Hat

› Part 4: Camera Obscura

Johannes Vermeer Biography, Style and Artwork

Vermeer Exhibition 2008 commentary by Esmée Quodbach of the Center for the History of Collecting in America via the Frick Collection

Vermeer's Woman Holding a Balance In-depth discussion of this painting in the National Gallery of Art along with discussion of the artist's life, conservation, illustration of related works

Essential Vermeer, In-depth coverage of Vermeer's life, works, and environment

Entry in Britannica encyclopaedia

Virtual Vermeer, Familiar biography, interesting entries

Van Meegeren's Fake Vermeers at Arttube (Museum Boijmans)

Vermeercentrum, housed at the site of the former St. Lucas Guild in Delft. (The Vermeer Centre offers a visual voyage of discovery through the life, work and city of Johannes Vermeer.)

Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Jan Vermeer. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.

Painting discovered in Vermeer

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/vermeer_camera_01.shtml

http://www.grand-illusions.com/articles/mystery_in_the_mirror/page05.shtml

http://www.unet.brandeis.edu/~teuber/vermeer4.htm

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/verm_4.shtm

The Art of Painting

The painting is famous for being one of Vermeer's favourites. Many art experts believe that the work of art is an allegory of painting, hence the alternate title of the painting. It is the largest and most complex of all of Vermeer's works.