MovieChat Forums > Tim's Vermeer (2014) Discussion > Unanswered question

Unanswered question

posted 10 years ago by cpbvk
5 replies | jump to latest

I thought this documentary was fascinating and enjoyable, but it didn't answer all of the questions it presented. It described the out-of-focus lion's head in "Girl With a Red Hat" as a relict of lens use, but since Tim abandoned the camera obscura in favor of a pair of mirrors, his device had no lens and would not have caused such problems. The other "photographic" qualities, like the light strip along the edge of the skirt in "Woman in Blue Reading a Letter" could have been caused by the curved mirror. It could also have been placed there intentionally by the artist to soften the edge. As an aside, it's also interesting to note that Vermeer appears to have been good friends with the optics expert van Leeuwenhoek, who's popularly credited with the invention of the modern microscope.

[–] unclechichi 10 years ago

I could be wrong, but I believe that a lens was used as well. Did I misinterpret that part? I believe he swapped out the flat mirror for the concave (or convex?) mirror but kept the lens intact.

[–] Naldoman 10 years ago

Yes, he was still using the lens to project an image onto the concave mirror. He bumped it slightly out of place which cause the chair to look weird until he discovered the misalignment and had to repaint the chair.

Because the mirrors reflected more light, it was no longer necessary to be in a black room to see the image from the lens.

[–] cpbvk 10 years ago

I don't remember the bumping incident; I'll have to rewatch the movie. A mirror would not only reflect more light projected from a lens, but would reflect virtually ALL of the ambient light, completely washing out the projected image, and making a darkened room even more necessary. Projecting an image from a lens onto a mirror in a lighted room just would not work. What would work is reflecting all of that ambient light from the concave mirror directly onto the small mirror, exactly the same way we're used to seeing a mirror reflect an image onto our retinas. The concave shape of the mirror reduces the reflected image to a workable size.

[–] megArnold 10 years ago

As shown in the film, the light passes through the convex lense, to the concave mirror, which reflects and concentrates it onto the small "makeup" mirror over the canvas. No camera obscura involved, however his workspace was darker than the "model" room.

--
No, Schmuck! You are only entitled to your INFORMED opinion!!
-- Harlan Ellison

[–] post-meridian 9 years ago

Another interesting issue discussed in the film was the chromatic aberration seen in images viewed through a lens. It shows up in Vermeer's paintings and might provide further evidence that the lens/mirror device was used by Vermeer. Remember the light blue line present in one of Vermeer's paintings of a woman? This effect was well known to Isaac Newton. He developed the reflecting or Newtonian telescope to avoid the chromatic aberration seen with the refracting or Galilean telescope.