The jury seems to be still out regarding Vermeer’s use of an optical device for creating his paintings, and with evidence to support both sides, actually.

I have always felt that for Vermeer to have literally “painted” by using some sort of optical device that could have been available in his day is almost nonsense.

The reason is that his projected image would have to have been so faint, and difficult to see that he would have done better “winging it”.

Also, unless he employed some sort of reversing-mirror, he would have been required to paint his image upside-down, as well as flopped!

However, he most certainly could have used such a projected image for DRAWING his scene. While being quite difficult, it would have been possible.

One item that always indicates that he used an optical device SOMEWHERE in his creation of a painted image is that he includes optical aberrations that could ONLY have been apparent in an optically-projected image. For example, on a loaf of bread in his milkmaid painting (I think), he indicates very small, “circles of confusion” in the form of highlights on the sesame seeds of the bread loaf. This effect is a camera aberration, and could ONLY have come from observing the image through some sort of LENS. He may not have literally painted, or drawn from such a projected image. but he most certainly observed it well enough to have considered that optical aberration to be an actual “reality”.

(A “circle of confusion” is that “doughnut-shaped circle of highlight that is always apparent when the camera is just a slight bit out of focus. Instead of being a pin-point circle of glistening, spectral highlight, it is evident as a small doughnut shaped circle of highlight, with a center of darker value, instead.)

Personally, I believe Vermeer used SOME SORT of optical device, SOMEWHERE in his creation of some of his paintings. He certainly DID employ glazes, and that is what fascinates me about his paintings.:thumbsup:

woops, I wrote the wrong name, so here’s my summary correction before the detailed quote from my second post:

Vermeer’s eldest daughter Maria: Girl with the Pearl Earing, Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace.
Vermeer’s second eldest daughter, Lijsbeth: Girl Writing, Girl With a Guitar, and Lacemaker
Family maid: Milk Maid, and possibly Chevalier.

You were asking in your OP ‘do we know who the girl is’, and I mentioned in my post I’ve always figured it’s one of his many daughters, it seems this is a thesis supported by art historians as well. Short answer, his eldest daughter Lijsbeth.

“Several authors identified the figures who appear repeatedly in his compositions as Vermeer, his wife, his gradually ageing eldest daughters Maria and Elisabeth (Lijsbeth), and even the family maid in Vermeer’s Milkmaid (the suggestion of the historian J.M. Montias and likely inspiration for Chevalier). But no one sought to address Vermeer’s use of family models in a systematic way, and some rejected the possibility altogether.

In his Art of Painting, Young Woman With a Pearl Necklace, and Girl With a Pearl Earring, scholars recognized the same beautiful young model who resembles Vermeer’s wife in earlier compositions. Maria was born around 1654 and would have been 13, 15, and 16 if the paintings in question are dated 1667, 1669, and 1670, respectively. The plainer model in Vermeer’s Girl Writing, Girl With a Guitar, and Lacemaker, who resembles Vermeer in his dated self-portraits, would have been his second daughter, Lijsbeth.”

Cheers!

Yes, WF Martin, It is nonsense since regardless of using camera obscura, was a master of painting the light.