Synopses & Reviews
Art historians have long speculated on how Vermeer achieved the uncanny mixture of detached precision, compositional repose, and perspective accuracy that have drawn many to describe his work as "photographic." Indeed, many wonder if Vermeer employed a camera obscura, a primitive form of camera, to enhance his realistic effects?
In Vermeer's Camera, Philip Steadman traces the development of the camera obscura--first described by Leonaro da Vinci--weighs the arguments that scholars have made for and against Vermeer's use of the camera, and offers a fascinating examination of the paintings themselves and what they alone can tell us of Vermeer's technique. Vermeer left no record of his method and indeed we know almost nothing of the man nor of how he worked. But by a close and illuminating study of the paintings Steadman concludes that Vermeer did use the camera obscura and shows how the inherent defects in this primitive device enabled Vermeer to achieve some remarkable effects--the slight blurring of image, the absence of sharp lines, the peculiar illusion not of closeness but of distance in the domestic scenes. Steadman argues that the use of the camera also explains some previously unexplainable qualities of Vermeer's art, such as the absence of conventional drawing, the pattern of underpainting in areas of pure tone, the pervasive feeling of reticence that suffuses his canvases, and the almost magical sense that Vermeer is painting not objects but light itself.
Drawing on a wealth of Vermeer research and displaying an extraordinary sensitivity to the subtleties of the work itself, Philip Steadman offers in Vermeer's Camera a fresh perspective on some of the most enchanting paintings ever created.
Review
"Vivid and impressive.... An experience that is closer to how we absorb the painter's intense, spooky, and perfectionistic work.... It's only in Steadman's presentation that I felt I came close to Vermeer himself."--Sanford Schwartz,
The New York Review of BooksReview
"Vermeer's Camera offers a fresh perspective on some of the most exceptional paintings ever created."--Gadfly
"Did the rise of photography prepare the way for Vermeer's rediscovery after two centuries of neglect? More than that, Steadman argues in his new book, 'Vermeer's Camera,' Vermeer may have paved the way for photography itself by his use of a camera obscura. Most art historians now believe that Vermeer used this optical convenience, but no one has taken more trouble to prove it than Steadman."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Of the three new approaches to the painter, Philip Steadman's Vermeer's Camera is the most vivid and impressive.... In its chief thesis, that Vermeer used an optical device, a camera obscura, to make his paintings, it may even be dead wrong. Yet reading about how Vermeer might have used such an aid presents, at least in Steadman's telling, an experience that is closer to how we absorb the painter's intense, spooky, and perfectionistic work than Liedtke's or Bailey's accounts. It's only in Steadman's presentation that I felt I came close to Vermeer himself."--Sanford Schwartz, The New York Review of Books
"This geometer and architect will add a new dimension to the literature on Vermeer."--Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Philip Steadman is Professor of Urban and Built Form Studies, University College London.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The camera obscura
2. The discovery of Vermeer's use of the camera
3. Who taught Vermeer about optics?
4. A room in Vermeer's house?
5. Reconstructing the spaces in Vermeer's paintings
6. The riddle of the Sphinx of Delft
7. More evidence, from rebuilding Vermeer's studio
8. Arguments against Vermeer's use of the camera
9. The influence of the camera on Vermeer's painting style
Appendices
Further Reading
A. Architectural features appearing in Vermeer's interiors
B. Measurements of Vermeer's room and furniture