Vermeer: Master of Light (COMPLETE Documentary) [No Ads]

((Subtitles are complete but in process of being edited to be more readable - punctuation, keeping sentences whole, etc. - September 23rd, 2017)) Johannes Vermeer was a painter of light. He lived and worked in Delft in the heart of the Netherlands but little else is known about this artist. Names of his masters, the nature of his training, the period of his apprenticeship all remain mysteries. He left no letters, sketches or drawings. We know only of his genius. His paintings have intrigued and fascinated viewers for centuries. The themes he chose to paint were those he encountered in daily life: a girl reading a letter in the center of a sunlit room, a figure at work, a woman pouring milk, a girl in a red hat her lips parted her eyes lit with expectation looking at us. What is it that draws us in? Is it the poetry and power of the images? The use of reflected light? The saturation of color the softness and yet brilliance of the image? Or the sense of timelessness? It's mystery and meaning the celebration of ordinary tasks and daily life filled with quiet contemplation the frozen moment in time. Its intimacy and mood: a room filled with inner thoughts. Or is it simply the virtuosity of an extraordinary craftsman? What is it that makes a Vermeer a Vermeer? There's a greater sense of light I think in Vermeer's painting than there is in anybody else's and the light bathes as a room it lights on the figures the figures seemed to glow that some of them seem to have a light OMERS within themselves and there is this brilliant brilliant use of light that nearly always comes through a window which is on one side of the scene when the fascinating things I noticed is that you never see the outside you never see a tree through the window you only see the light coming through but it is this light that is incredible his use of this light playing on the various textures that he wants to portray which have all the different meanings the supreme quality of Vermeer's light is it is the daylight effect the clear daylight effect is extraordinary daylight permeates his shadows and you see that so beautifully in the milkmaid as you look into that corner of the room where there is a wonderful still life of some kitchen implements a brass pot and a wicker basket you're seeing the whole thing but you know it is in shadow and one of the most beautiful things in the pictures of wall and back over and the gradations of light were the intense light on the right side of the picture and those gradations go from the most intense light to a darker light but the shadows are transparent there's always this clarity form the forms are never lost there's another thing that's exciting about this picture it begins I have a kind of pointillism and if you look down at the loaves of bread you have those solid forms but in them here's the touches of light he's broken his forms with these little points of light and he uses that so effectively and he use it beautifully in the view of Delft those boats which are in the lower right hand corner there those little little touches of light which means that the light bounces on to these dark forms and its wondrous to behold the woman the balance is one of those supreme examples of Vermeer is an artist's light coming in through the window is gently luminous the whole interior it's a sort of a soft deep rich light but it's wonderful to watch it happens wonderful to watch it evolve and Vermeer's gives you the sense of light spilling across the interior of that space it passes by that orange curtain you can see how the light goes from behind that curtain hits the wall directly the gray of the wall and then it passes through the thickest part of the curtain and it's a deep dark shadow at that point and then as it hits the edge of the curtain it creates a golden globe that links together the gray of the wall and the deepest part of the shadow as it comes into the room and then the light passes down illuminating the table then the gold and the pearls on the table come across caught by the edge of the table and then your eye is drawn by your hand as it rests on the table and you're brought back up to see her face it's wonderful quiet gentle face with her downcast eyes as she looks down at the balances she holds him a hand light draws you in and encompass the full scope of the painting harnessing light is central to the power of Vermeer he transformed paint into light in the most brilliant and mesmerizing way you he seduces us very quickly Vermeer does there's a magical quality to his work beautiful it's simple but that's very deceptive he's concentrating all the time he adjusts reality if you look at the art of painting as an artist in an easel we seem from the back and he's painting a woman and she really represents history and there's a map in the background and the foreground is set so beautifully with a great carpet and the wonderful chandelier all those details are ravishing but where is the right leg of the easel if you follow it down you see the top of it and you come down and you see the artist is seated on a stool and his foot is forward but there's no length of easel so where is that leg if you look in that area where his leg is forward and there are the two legs of a stool if the leg of the easel came down there it would come found that whole area so he's either hidden it behind those two legs of the stool or he's eliminated completely and if there's ever proof that Vermeer is not an ape of nature he he just doesn't paint what he sees he makes adjustments his pictures are so calculated carefully you don't see the calculation but I assure you he has calculated his effects he's concentrated there's tremendous intelligence at work your artistic intelligence Mamiya designs his paintings so brilliantly so carefully that every part of the painting every drop of paint every line every nuance of color has a deliberate meaning the meaning and the composition and meaning in the power every part of the story whatever it is everything has a meaning one of the most wonderful examples is the woman in blue reading a letter it's a single figure who's standing in the corner of a room and she's holding this letter and you can see the kind of emotional intensity of her experience because just what she clasped her arms by her side but Vermeer locks that gesture into space by placing those hands right over the very strong horizontal bar that's the bottom of the map that hangs on a wall behind her so this horizontal bar at the bottom creates this tense concentration on those hands so the result is that you feel nothing can move light also enters into this equation while there are all these beautiful shadows and subtle shadow effects throughout the painting she casts no shadow by not casting a shadow he somehow separates her out from time this sends a passage of time that one senses with shadows the moving of shadows doesn't exist with her so it enhances that a whole sense of permanence it's very hard with Vermeer to separate one thing from another because they're also into woven interlocked in the woman holding a balance another example it looks as though she will never move it's in large part created by the gesture of the hand holding the balance because that hand is locked in space by being juxtaposed over the vertical and horizontal elements of the frame the little finger is extended horizontally it just holds that hand in space and then for me reinforces that visual juxtaposition with a perspective if you'll follow the perspective lines go right back to that finger that extended finger the perspective of the table of the mirror on the wall in front of her all we see the tooth at one point so that vanishing point reinforces the importance of that gesture and it's very interesting infamy all the way through is clear to see how we uses perspective he places the vanishing point because the vanishing point tells us where he wants the eye to go an explanation of everything making having a really serious part of the composition he's in the woman with the balance when I first examined that painting before the cleaning the frame of the Last Judgement lying behind the woman was entirely black in the X radiograph you could see the frame on the right side of the painting behind the woman's head had two light lines coming down these light lines show there was a density there a dense material which could have been white LED or led to in yellow further examination showed that this frame had been over painted by somebody not by Vermeer very much later and that two gold lines actually they were bright yellow had been painted out and painted with a dark grey when that over paint was removed if the composition came to life because you got on the right hand side the two gold lines you got on the left-hand side the light coming in and the gold yellow curtain and the right in the center is the gold little bit of her dress and there are these three very very important points creating the strength of this composition with her holding the balance without the gold lines of the frame behind the composition was just failing it just didn't have the tension and the meaning that it now has and that is a very good example of how every little thing in Vermeer's every little point every little mark has a meaning and has a purpose nothing is left to chance Vermeer's masterwork the music lesson clearly shows that nothing is left to chance on the far side of a sunlit room a woman stands playing a virginal a man in elegant dress watches her and listens intently both figures are quiet as though the music were measured and restrained this is one of the most refined of Vermeer's works he carefully calculated every aspect of its composition the figures the musical instruments the mirror table tile patches and chairs however realistically presented are conceived as interlocking patterns of color and shape ramírez placement of the vanishing point creates a dynamic and clear focus it falls on the sunlit sleeve of the woman a halo of reflected light in color emphasizes its importance we can actually see the hole in the canvas left by the pin Vermeer used to construct the perspective of the painting the power of this work grows out of Vermeer's use of linear perspective the sharply receding wall on the left coupled with the pronounced orthogonals of the window frame leads the eye quickly to the woman she becomes the fulcrum around which the painting revolves Vermeer further compresses the space by filling the right side of the scene with a large tapestry covered table the angle of its receding edge transports us quickly back to the vanishing point the floor also plays a significant role in the perspective construction its strong diagonal pattern leads us directly to the woman the interlocking series of rectangular shapes surrounding the woman adds visual emphasis to her importance Vermeer creates a strong vertical focus by placing the mirror directly above the lid of the virginal so that the bottom edge of its frame is overlapped by the top edge of the lid by including the woman's reflection in the mirror he underscores her significance within the painting the placement of the man and his relationship to the woman was of concern to Vermeer infrared analysis reveals that he first painted the man further forward and leaning more toward the woman she likewise had a more active stance her head twisted back in his direction Vermeer subsequently altered the figures the woman now stands directly facing the virginal scene from behind her face is hidden from the viewer but her image in the mirror was left as originally painted he moved the man slightly placing him in a more upright position these adjustments were subtle but crucial Vermeer transformed the figures from active poses to statuesque ones emphasizing the permanence of their relationship the effect brings them into harmony with the carefully ordered space Vermeer uses color to strengthen the focus the yellow white of the woman's blouse the golden color of the virginal and matching reflected light on the back wall highlight the figures the red of the woman's skirt and Vermeer's selective use of black on the mirror the virginal the clothing of the two figures and the pattern of the floor help lock our eye into place the combination of overall contrasting colors patterns and shapes create major and minor accents focused on the theme of the painting Vermeer preserves the privacy of the couple by creating an intimate space through the arrangement of objects on the right the strategic placement of the chairs and the bass viola on the floor locked the couple into the background protecting their private communication and separating them from us the forward position of the table and the placement of the painting on the back wall reinforce their intimate space by placing a chair directly between the table and the vanishing point Vermeer interrupts the perspective line slowing down our immediate access to the couple we are outside looking in the white elegantly proportioned pitcher sitting on the table is central to the composition of painting its form echoes the curve of the gentleman's arm and it's color helps to link the foreground to the background the purity of this form gives it an almost sacramental character symbolically reinforcing the theme of comfort and harmony provided by love the mirror is one of Vermeer's primary creative tools using the mirror Vermeer allows us to look down on the woman a carpeted table and the tiled floor of the room the sensitivity with which he has rendered the reflection is remarkable he set it back into the mirror rather than placing it on the surface by painting the forms softer and smaller and by depicting the distorted reflections along the mirrors beveled edge Vermeer uses the mirror to give us another viewpoint of the woman revealing her most inner thoughts by leaving the woman's original position in the mirror gazing at the man he suspends that psychological moment forever it is this poetic image in the mirror that draws us emotionally into the heart of the painting premier manipulated the angle of the mirror for that purpose here we see the tilt of the mirror as he painted it but in order to actually see the scene the mirror reflects it would have to be drastically tilted by more than 30 degrees Vermeer manipulated reality to intensify the psychological power of the painting understanding the potential of light is a primary aspect of Vermeer's genius here we see the room as it most likely would have been lit given the clues the painting provides Vermeer then selectively manipulates the light to strengthen the focus he eliminated the shadows that should exist on the back wall to create an evenly illuminated white surface providing a backdrop to emphasize the silhouettes of the figures while Vermeer drastically reduced the shadow at the top of the virginal to allow the upper wall to be gently bathed in light he darkened the shadow at the base of the window and distorted its angle on the wall these two divergent shadows hold the virginal in place the upper shadow leading the eye to the corner of the lid and the lower shadow drawing our eye to where the leg meets the floor Vermeer manipulated the shadows beneath the virginal by placing them closer to each other than they would really be giving them greater substance and emphasizing the silhouetted shapes of the legs he eliminated the shadow of the virginals body against the rear wall in order to reinforce this effect Vermeer completes this masterpiece by inserting his own presence showing the reflection of his easel in the top of the mirror he reminds us that the artist is clearly present and in complete control he is the master of what we see the little Street is one incredible painting it's really the one I would most like to have at home is one of these paintings that somehow brings you back to your childhood makes you remember what it was like to be a kid to look out across the way and see life going on just like it always had gone on you'd see the woman sitting there doing a little thing you see the kids playing on the street you see the little maid in the back they've been there time after time after time you know something very comforting about this world it's a very contained world it's a few of a street but you its what's interesting is you don't feel like you need to go left or right you're very happy right there you're very happy you don't want to go anyplace else from here somehow has created a sense of a street and you don't want to walk down it you just want to stay and look at this little world that he's given you and one of the magical things one of the reasons that that happens is because of that red shutter that red shutter says stop that red shadow says you've gone far enough you don't have to go any further so that red shutter is really important to blocking limiting the giving that sense of comfort in that world he's created to the left of the door you see that there's not nearly enough space for the shutters on the two windows to the left to completely open so Vermeer has actually adjust to the architecture of the building widen the space between the window on the far right and the door to allow that shutter to open flat because he needed that red there he knew he needed that red flat against the wall in order to complete that composition so there is a wonderful example of color being used for compositional purposes he's a colorist from the word go from the very beginning is a great colorist and what changes in its color is from a warm tonality from reds and yellows to the yellow and blue to the cool and then the silvery quality of his light and I don't think he divorced the light from the color it's all of a piece he can get the sheen and the texture in a magical way Vermeer does this repaint satin it really looks like Santa crisp you can almost hear it in a pile of a rug or the bread the crustiness of a bread the color is doing that or the water and a view of Delft the viscous water the fabric or the color of the of the clouds and mind you that fault in the view of Delft that sky is just unbelievable you know you say that Vermeer copies nature and sense those clouds he organized those clouds clouds aren't that way clouds don't stand still for landscape painter he has to figure out how am I going to arrange them and he keep some horizontal so his sense of the great vault and then of the heavens and it goes back to the horizon and he's doing that always color his color is intense he can use one color next door to door to another with the most brilliant intensity there's a great example in the girl with a red hat where she is wearing this beautiful blue costume and the highlights instead of being lighter blue which is what you would expect a yellow which is opposite to blue and therefore creates this shimmer and this is this nobody else does this it is absolutely extraordinary and that painting is a brilliant display of color she's sitting against this rich woven tapestry marvellous interweaving at these shapes all of which are brilliantly placed not one has a little thing out of place they all play a part in getting this fabulous sense of this moment of this girl turning towards you catching the light on her face and in her hat and it's a brilliant brilliant piece of observation and translation of that into this painting when you're able to hold the girl the red hat in your hands that is a very special feeling and in doing that you really sense the artist at work there's a whole different relationship that you have at that time little things that are hard to pick up in the gallery for example for Mary gives this radiance of her vision with a little turquoise highlight that he puts in your eye and this wonderful pink highlight in the mouth it's little accents like that that just make it come alive and have this kind of vivid quality Vermeer works in glazes very thin glazes and the Blues particular are very thinly painted he uses natural ultramarine which is a wonderful pure pigment he prepared that area of the the blue robe with a reddish-brown under painting and that gives a certain warmth to the blue so when he paints it very thinly you have this warm glow that comes to the background so it's not just a cool blue it has this inner WAMP that ties it in to the red of the Hat and the orange of the cheeks and sort of the whole humanity of the image comes across through that means and he uses his material and his techniques to enhance the the emotional and psychological qualities of his work the girl with the red hat is a sensuous painting it is intimate and immediate she communicates directly with us for Muir's use of colour drives the emotional power of this painting he sets the figure against the muted tones of a tapestry concentrating colour on the flame red of her hat and the lushness of her blue robe ramier established an ochre base for the background of the painting the soft tones of the tapestry elegantly emerge from that color the Lionhead finials defined the foreground and placed the figure in space quick strong strokes suggest the basic contours and structure of the heads using reddish-brown color for the base of the robe ramier covered it with deep blue to establish its form the brown bleeds through and the combination of colors creates an extraordinary sense of warmth he applied a delicate blue glaze to define the folds of the fabric his use of thinly painted glazes creates depth and the addition of ice blue highlights provides a shimmering quality The face is established first in shadow. Vermeer used an opaque deep red orange paint as the underground for the Hat. The red is an intensely warm and active color. It heightens the immediacy of the girls gaze. A succession of semi-transparent strokes of light red and orange creates the feathery appearance of the Hat. Vermeer demonstrates his sensitivity to the effects of reflected light by placing a dark purple hue on the underside of the Hat. He subtly casts an orange-red reflection across the girl's face to accentuate the effect the red has on the viewer He then uses green, the complementary color of red, to create the shadows on the face enhancing both colors Vermeer paints the cravat in a brilliant white after laying the white down he scraped away some of the paint to create definition the white in the center of the composition cradles the face and focuses attention on her expression Vermeer draws upon the power of light to increase the intensity of the color and to animate the painting adding soft and shimmering highlights that crystallized the form of the finials yellow highlights to enhance the blue of the robe and accentuate the quality of its color delicate strokes finishing the texture and lushness of her hat and highlights on the earring nose and lips to bring the face to life his crowning touches are the placement of the pink on her lips the turquoise in her eye Vermeer's extraordinary use of color encourages a dialogue between the viewer and the girl and enhances the sense of poetry that flows throughout his paintings Oh you premier was trying to emulate effects that he would have seen an optical device called a camera obscura some of those qualities of this immediacy of looking out of this more momentary character of this painting may and in fact be partially explained by the inspiration of the camera obscura I did really paint from a camera obscura he certainly didn't copy the camera obscura but it was a way of seeing was way enriching the way he saw that he then would apply and create and adapt in paintings such as this camera obscura means darkened chamber its images were seen as magical in the 17th century often described as nature's paintings it's process is simple when the camera faces an image on the outside rays of light enter into the darkened chamber through a convex lens on the front of the box projecting an inverted and reversed image on the surface of the glass viewing window at the back of the camera the image contains optical effects such as diffused or soft highlights this is an actual black-and-white image of a lion head finial as seen through a camera obscura the impact of this optical effect can clearly be seen when we place it next to Vermeer's painted finial and the girl with the red hat those finials are a marvelous example of what you will see from a camera obscura they're slightly out of focus in a way and yet he's managed that light on them in the most brilliant way the highlights are made by building up layers of paint starting with an opaque layer then building translucent layers one on top of another and finishing with little spots of bright white light and those spots bright white light are intense and in fact they remind me of the pearls that you see absorbed in infamy as paintings where he does exactly the same thing where he puts this circle of translucent white paint grayish white paint to create the roundness of the pearl than this little blob of white paint in the center which creates the light is exactly the same way that he paints the finials is it's quite extraordinary I think the most magical moment perhaps that all of Vermeer's work is in the lacemaker what a wonderful painting and you have this woman this intent woman who's busy with her activity of lace making in the foreground you have this thread spilling out of this cushion totally diffuse I mean you cannot make out what these are this incredible unfocused quality of these threads it's amazing and that is such a wonderful example of what one would see in a camera focused closely on an individual you focus the image on the face of the individual and the foreground then gets entirely out of focus with Vermeer there's this marvelous softness where outlines are soft every layer flows into one another so you get this fabulous sense this poetic sense of light and movement whether it be on a tabletop whether it be on a ball whether it be on a person's face everything is very very soft and flowing from one layer into another there are no hard edges to look out of a mirror through a microscope is an extraordinary experience because you see all this flowing all these soft soft edges you wonder whether you're looking at the edge of the finger or something else when you're looking at a woman's hand so soft are they and he achieved this by painting wet in wet now this is very simple he would put down one layer let's say over Paik paint while it was still wet he would put another layer on top and because the underlying layer was still wet they would meld together soften together the edges would just blur a little bit and there would be this flowing of these edges so if you have a number of layers one on top of the other doing this this is creating this extraordinary sense of atmosphere in diffusion of light this marvelous feeling of the form without having to describe every little fine detail and a very good example of this is the little Street and Delft the house which has this facade of a brick wall where if you look at it you think that every little brick is being painted very distinctly absolutely not when you look at it it's a texture which gives you the sense of all this brickwork not every little brick and so he's creating this movement throughout the whole surface of the painting by this technique of painting wet-in-wet it's quite ingenious there's illusion of texture in Vermeer's work the most extraordinary textural effects are probably in the view of Delft and I think the view of Delft is really amazing because there's a view of this city seen from across the waterway and across the harbor and yet it seems so immediate so real there's something so intense about that view that it just comes out at you and it's color with its light but it's really texture that is at the core that and any does lots of different things to create this effect in this painting one of the amazing things if you look at the roof lines the different types of roofs the orange tile roofs on the left for example have a kind of a bumpy character that he creates by having a sand layer mixed with LED white underneath the paint so it's a lumpy base specific to that area so he very consciously wanted to create the effect of texture three dimensionally and then he puts on it the orange and little highlights on top of little little dots on top of it then when it comes to the boats this wonderful feeling of light flickering off the water onto the sides of the boats that he does without any three-dimensional texture but with all his handling of paint with these various diffused layers these little circles these diffuse highlights and then the opaque highlights on top of very interweaving of thin and thick and then thick it's different in different parts of the painting but it's all to serve a certain effect it's really interesting the photographing for me because everything always seems out of focus it's one of these changes things and even restorers have been bothered by this and this painting alone writing letters is a wonderful example where when we brought it into restoration the arm was in fact quite precise and definition and we discovered that in fact the restorer had made a contour line along that arms to make it defined in space sort of losing the whole quality of life that Vermeer is creating that is so unlike Philly and Vermeer did not create hard edges they were all soft and this repaint was quite clearly much later than Vermeer and having established that this paint was false it was removed very easily with no damage to the underlying and there you see this typical lovely soft edge to her arm as she leans rather she caresses the table in the same way that she's caressing letters the letter which she's writing is the most intimate quiet painting in fact I think it's the most quiet soulful of all of his paintings it's as far as I'm concerned part of the magic infirmary's to create more than he then he actually is put down it could be the sense of more there than there is and that happens a lot with color and color he uses colors so selectively and you feel this wonderful yellow of her jacket but when you look at it carefully you see and in fact that there's very little yellow there it's only in those highlights where the light is hitting the form that he's actually using the lead tin yellow to give that focus for the rest it's really done an okras it's very subtle very understated and this is something that he does throughout his career it's it's this suggestion of form suggestion of color suggestion of space done with the most minimum means suggestion of narrative suggestion of emotional energy the feeling of mood is is just the hints of these things so what happens then is that we complete them he leaves lots of room for us to enter into these things and for us to become part of the whole experience to create it to fulfill it to finish it in our own individual ways Vermeer is a man of great dignity and we see it in in his mature works in a beautiful way the servants are as dignified as the mistress of the household and the milkmaid is to me a masterwork and it's a serving woman that he's representing there is that the dignity of humankind because it doesn't embrace all of him but it's the dignity of women I love it and I love women but there is this wonderful sense of his love of women which comes through on every occasion none of his women are hard none of them are angry in any way they're all concerned with fairly deadly occupation very gentle very warm occupations that he seemed to enjoy to me one of the most moving pictures most poetic pictures by Vermeer is a painting in Berlin of a woman putting on a necklace in that gesture of a woman doing nothing but just about to clasp the pearl necklace that's something no writer can know if you know you can only see a woman put on a necklace but to have captured that moment at me it's one of those beautiful things that Vermeer ever created it's the life of women that he's painting men don't come in very often but women reading a letter we've been writing a letter woman delivering a letter this quiet existence of women that's much of the poetry of Vermeer what makes a Vermeer Vermeer that's a very difficult question I've been worrying about that question for about 60 years for me it is that extraordinary quality that he has of inviting you in and keeping you away that an enigmatic feeling that he creates he is telling you a story and yet there's almost like a veil between you and the painting there is not an immediacy between you and the painting although you're fooled into thinking there is one something so personal about a Vermeer painting it's one of these kinds of images that you really want to see all by yourself you don't want to be interrupted you don't want to hear noises around you oh you can't put it into words really just as you when you see a great baseball player whose forms fabulous what makes them so great or there's great cook and you have a great meal what makes it so great well you can talk a bit about it but there's always something you can't put into words he raises these scenes of life into something that is very very special how come that our milk may just pouring milk into a jug can produce this moment of magic on a canvas this extraordinary sense of light and moment in which you feel there's so much depth there is so much more than just this simple domestic act and he raises up these these pictures into this into this ethereal level which is very hard for us to comprehend comprehend and he really is a genius at making these seems quite magical in quite mysterious at the same time it's so universal something about that image that is meaningful to all of humanity there's truths the underlying truth if they're fundamental truths about human existence they're our sense of harmony of life relationship of man and nature the joy of life the sense of of possibility in such an understated and subtle way that's you just come back to it over and over again and just feel enriched by the experience. What makes a Vermeer of Vermeer? Perhaps there is no single answer but rather it is a combination of answers which is different for each and every one of us. This is at the very heart of what seeing is all about.

Channel: D Torrez

Views: 970,084

Keywords: Vermeer, Jan Vermeer, Art, Painting Techniques, Johannes Vermeer (Painter), Complete, Tim's Vermeer, Tim Jenison, Camera Obscura, Painting, Dutch, Netherlands, Holland, Baroque, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Art Documentary, Documentary

Id: DEior-0inxU

Length: 57min 35sec (3455 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/FartingPotato]

From the description under the video.

It's obvious that Vermeer played around with a camera obscura, but the more likely explanation is that he became so familiar with its optical distortion that he 'became' a camera obscura (he adopted its way of seeing as his aesthetic). The placement of his pointillist highlights on the bread in the Milkmaid (for example) is a how a camera obscura would place highlights on a highly reflective object, but NEVER a loaf of bread. He placed them there because he was creating it in his imagination to look how shinier objects would look through a camera obscura because he consciously enjoyed the effect of it and created it thus.

If Vermeer were dependent on a bulky optical device he would never have painted the View of Delft -- a massive outdoor landscape scene that was certainly created at home. It was generally impossible before the advent of tubed paint to work alla prima outside, and if the camera obscura were a trade secret he would have never have risked using it in public. Vermeer worked it up (along with the 'Little Street') from drawings and returned to the studio to make it.

Vermeer painted all of his interiors in the same room of his small house in Delft, yet the windows, the floor, the walls etc. always look different. Why? Because he was creating them in his head to look like a camera obscura, but not slavishly with a camera obscura.

Finally, X-rays of Vermeer's paintings show that he reworked the placement of things over and over -- meaning he was building from imagination, not directly from an optical device.

[u/weeatpoison]

Watch "Tim's Vermeer" it's a good one.

[u/azrael9]

Remarkable. The entire breakdown for the woman playing the virginal while the man looks on, just wow. He was insanely brilliant. A true master.