Did it take Vermeer 130 days to paint his paintings?

Vermeer wasn't a terribly prolific artist. There are only 35 known paintings in existence; with that in mind, and considering the unparalleled amount of detail in his compositions, it's safe to assume he took much longer to build up his canvases... unrestricted by a filming schedule, some paintings no doubt stretched on for years until they achieve a "finished" state (for artists, are the artworks ever really finished?).

Tim's "Vermeer" was great--especially the carpet/blanket, which, frankly, rivals the old masters in quality of execution (I agree with the historian near the end of the film when he said, somewhat hyperbolically, "That's better than Vermeer"--but the overall painting wasn't nearly as polished as Vermeer's. Some painting skill can't be figured out so quickly. Much of Tim's painting, though beautiful, had a flatness to it.

It's difficult to tell for certain how much time was spent on each element of the composition, but it's obvious in the film that Tim spent a remarkable amount of time on that carpet; Vermeer, or other seasoned artists, would have spent equally as much time on every element in the composition, because there's just as much nuance and detail everywhere. (Tim realized fairly late in the game that simply "free form painting" the carpet, without all of the individual knots, wouldn't have been as impressive--however, it's clear that other elements suffered the fate of being less detailed.) I noticed Tim's stringed instrument (the one on the ground) was fairly flat; Vermeer would have labored over that for weeks in and of itself, slowly building up nuance layer by layer, achieving the minuscule grains in the wood itself.

I thought the documentary was stellar and I'm totally impressed with what Tim accomplished. Brilliant stuff!

Head clamps are hardly "modern equipment." They have been in use by portrait artists for hundreds of years.

Being a skilled artist Vermeer could probably paint in some areas more quickly, you can also see he's taken some shortcuts, I'd argue Tim exceeded Vermeer in his rendition of the blanket for example and in the hanging painting on the wall.