Vermeer's paintings might be 350 year-old color photographs | Hacker News Reader

Vermeer's paintings might be 350 year-old color photographs

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749 pointsfamousactress155 comments

Wow, this guy is seriously hard-core:

> I needed a CNC lathe to make the legs for the harpsichord and the blue chair. I couldn't find a CNC lathe large enough to make these parts so I came up with the simple hack of bolting a cheap wood lathe onto the bed of the milling machine. Then, I programmed the mill to trace out the contour of the leg while the lathe spun the wood underneath the mill head.

...

> The legs of the instrument turned out to be a few inches too long for my wood lathe so I pulled the lathe out of the milling machine and cut it into two pieces on a band saw. I then bolted both pieces back into the mill, separated by a few inches. Now the lathe could accommodate a longer piece of wood.

Adam and Jamie would be proud.

>Adam and Jamie would be proud.

As much as I like Mythbusters, Tim is in a league all by himself. Not only is the movie a grand piece of seriously dedicated geekery, he's also a software developer and created video processing software on the Amiga in the 90's, amongst other things. When I was a teen, our local cable community tv channel used his Video Toaster software.

Strangely enough he doesn't have a personal wikipedia page and his name just forwards to the name of his company.

They're cut from the same cloth. Adam has some great stuff on YouTube now.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJtitKU0CAehsdcybehbP...

And:

> Since lenses in the 17th century were less perfect than modern lenses, I decided to make my own lens using 17th century techniques.

That's some serious dedication.

It's not too hard to be dedicated when you have a production budget to cover the cost of your ideas. He could have used various off-the-shelf technologies and most people would not have objected particularly - for example, anyone with a basic interest in science knows that Galileo was using telescopes to make astronomical observations several centuries before Vermeer, so the notion of moderately good lenses being available by the 17th century would not be strange. Indeed, the producers could probably have sourced lenses of similar vintage on the antique market or with the cooperation of a museum. But that would not be as interesting for the documentary.

Recall that Penn & Teller were producing and directing, respectively, and they are, in the most literal sense, experts in the 'show' business. Your typical science documentary doesn't have access to a large production budget, which is why there's a lot more 'tell' from talking heads than 'show' of the subject material.

There's a good parallel here or startups: Tim started with a 'minimum viable product' of a small mirror attached to a pair of cheap eyeglasses, and produced a high quality oil painting in a matter of hours despite lacking any special painting skills. But once you get the trick, the business of reproducing an image turns out to be the least interesting part. Think about P&T's stage act, where they're more famous for demonstrating how classic magic tricks are performed. If they just came out and said 'you've seen stage magicians saw people in half, right? OK, here's how it's done,' they wouldn't be so popular. Instead they do the trick, but then talk about the history, the secrecy of pro magicians, variations on the trick, and how it really works, and then they show how it's done. And then they usually do it again, but with Teller getting set on fire or otherwise endangered in the course of performance (which sometimes involves other tricks that are not explained or even mentioned to the audience).

I'm not sure sure about the lenses point. I read a book once about how William Herschel (1738-1822) spent an inordinate amount of time making lenses for his home-made telescopes, polishing them for hours and hours. These were probably far bigger and more precise than the kind of thing that an artist would need, but it gives the impression that lenses may not have been as readily available in the 17th century as you think. (The book was called 'The Age of Wonder' by Richard Holmes, if you're interested)

While it's circumstantial evidence, Vermeer lived only a few streets away from Anton van Leeuwenhoek (known as the father of microbiology, and who made numerous innovations in microscope design) in the tiny Dutch town of Delft - which also manages to famous for its university and fine china, despite having only ~25,000 people. Vermeer and Van Leeuwenhok definitely knew each other: van Leeuwenhok was the executor of Vermeer's will.

So Vermeer certainly had access to state of the art techniques in optics. Delft is a lovely place, by the way, well worth a visit if you are in the Netherlands and like history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonie_van_Leeuwenhoek

I think that Herschel was more well know for reflectors, and he built one with a 1.2m diameter mirror.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40-foot_telescope

...although I'm sure that he probably ground his own tiny lenses for the eyepieces. This site says that:

"He began by putting together refracting telescopes from lenses and tubes that he bought, but quickly decided that refractors were too long and clumsy to handle."

http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/ground...

Deleted comment

You'd be surprised. 'Shoddy' >> 'authentic'. As someone else pointed out, most wood lathes are built to handle things like turning a table leg, so it's not impossible that that whole thing was staged. Even if this one wasn't, it would make a lot more sense to do the leg in two pieces and attach them using a dowel than it would to cut the lathe into two pieces...but that's an awful more stylish :)

It might well be home footage, but it is quite common to use lower quality for artistic effect, eg think of how many fictional films where childhood recollections are presented with blown-up super-8 footage, whose super-grainy texture evokes the technological past as well as the fuzziness and imprecision of memory. It provides aesthetic texture, and in a story about the mechanical underpinnings of creating hyperrealistic images, use of ugly or low-quality imagery is an implicit commentary on the subject matter.

What's really amazing is that this -- all this -- was for rank speculation!!! There was not one scrap, not one scrap of evidence of any mechanical interest, or ability, or optical devices in Vermeer's life or among his possessions. It would be one thing if he thought Da Vinci had done it. But Vermeer?

And yet he said, no, you can tell by the paint chips. That is an absolutely amazing amount of dedication to verifying something without looking at any evidence whatsoever but the end result.

I couldn't have done it. I would have given up after a lack of any corroborating evidence.

Although the article doesn't mention it, there is evidence that Vermeer had access to optical devices: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, inventor of the microscope, born in the same year (1632) lived very close to Vermeer in Delft and was named the executor of his will, so they must have known each other well.

The entire article was entertaining and enlightening, but his throw away comment regarding the lathe was a paradigm shift for me.

This guy is probably far more skilled in certain aspects that not only would they be impressed but they could probably learn a great deal from him.

Tim has a very long history of coming up with cool stuff, check out the wikipedia page on this company:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewTek

It's interesting to see David Hockney there, since he made a documentary many years ago (the 90s?) about how Vermeer might have used lenses and mirrors to create his paintings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynrnfBnhWSo

He points out that the intricacy of Vermeer's paintings, and peculiarities of perspective, strongly suggest the use of a camera obscura (or other optical device) to aid his work.

This is not to detract from the investigation in the OA, just point out that others have been this way before.

I've not seen the film but I have heard Penn discuss it to some extent and I believe he has made it clear that the idea in a general sense and certainly in particular to the use of a camera obscura well predate Tim's interest. Where Tim goes further than any example I'm aware of is in actually implementing and spending a significant amount of time testing a specific implementation to which Vermeer can reasonably be expected to have had access.

Hockney did that sort of test too, I believe, although as an artist so perhaps saw it differently eg he knew how to paint first so could perhaps work with less.

David Hockney plays a not insignificant part in the documentary.

They're pretty honest that the idea that these painters where using tools to help them did not originate with them.

The article points out the problem with using a camera obscura: when it's dark enough to see the color of the scene, you can't see the color of your paint. This new build apparently addresses that particular problem.

There is so much more to Vermeer's art than just clever use of tools. I like this article much better (it got completely ignored on HN):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7254447

To be fair though, the technical excellence of his paintings has always been a subject of considerable interest to people.

That's an article about Vermeer and his art.

This is an article about the technical aspects of his painting.

They're different topics and it's not really surprising to see this one generating more interest; but yes, indeed. There's a lot more to his work than simply the technical means by which he produced them; that's true of any artist (composition, etc).

Also, that site has a really horrid and hard to read layout. The densely packed sans-serif font blocks that academic sites seem to favor are terrible. It's ironic given the attention that typesetting gets for academic papers seemed to get completely ignored once the web comes into it. -__-

It also discusses other tools he used, and other approaches to using those tools by other artists. Well worth a read, thanks for reposting it.

I took a look, read the subtitle, the first paragraph, scrolled to the bottom and closed the tab. I would like to at least remotely know what the topic is before reading something this long and dense.

Sorry for sharing an honest reaction as to why that article might not have worked on HN...

I've been waiting for this to come out on DVD. Time to add it to the Queue.

Is it wrong for me to think that Tim's Vermeer is better than Vermeer's Vermeer?

Vermeer: http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/xl_mu...

Tim: http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ML2s....

FWIW, I saw this painting (The Music Lesson) when it was on exhibition at the National Gallery in London last year, and that photograph doesn't do it justice.

There's an issue about the quality of the photo, and its colour reproduction, for instance compare these three photos:

http://historicartgallery.com/store/media/catalog/product/ca...

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/vermeer/i/music-lesson....

http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/xl_mu...

Also, part of the exhibition was about various painting and materials techniques he used to achieve effects like opalescence, and I suspect things like that (which work by reflection of light as you move past the photograph) are difficult to capture using photography.

Having said that, the reproduction is extremely impressive. I wonder if the process could be automated. I wouldn't mind a fake, almost-as-good-as-Vermeer hanging in my room.

There's a village in China where they've made an industry out of producing good quality hand-painted reproductions of famous works. The cheap ones probably don't look that great up close, but I'm sure if you were willing to pay more (like $500) you could get something very nice.

http://www.dafenvillageonline.com/

Consider that Tim's painting doesn't have centuries of aging to contend with- in regards to vibrancy and cracking.

I think part of the quality differential has to do with 100s of years of aging versus brand new paint.

Here is a better scan of vermeer: (4000x5000) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Johannes...

Definitely more to love in this scan. I still kind of like Tim's instructor better though.

Do we have any idea how long Vermeer spent painting the original? I speculate that Tim may have been willing and able to spend a lot more time on it. Also, the idea of spending more time than many would consider reasonable to accomplish something that others consider impossible is a recurring meme among magicians and stated often by Tim's friend Penn Jillette.

Side by side:

http://www.flownet.com/ron/vermeer.html

I like how Vermeer directs our focus by making things like the roof slightly out of focus, kind of an emulation of the effect of having peripheral vision. Tim's lacks this.

Also, the woman is facing the wrong way in Tim's.

Agreed. The sense of focus is lost in Tim's. While it's probably more accurate, a key part of art is selective distortion, guiding the viewer to focus on certain things.

I also disagree with his assertion that Vermeer is photorealistic. Very realistic, true, but not more than other Dutch masters, and there are many contemporary artists whose paintings and drawings truly are indistinguishable from photographs.

Is that "Tim's" feet in the reflection in the mirror?

I first saw a piece about this painting a long time ago, possible an Open University / BBC collaboration - it was concerned with the room being the wrong length to allow for the optical method people thought was used, or some such, I don't recall too well.

Other (?) speculation has been on here not too long ago.

It's the corner of the carpet on the floor tile - the one farthest from us, not the one in the foreground of the painting. I work in film and one thing cinematographers love doing is shooting into mirrors, so I've gotten used to checking them for continuity purposes :)

As for the dimensions of the room, being 'wrong', that may be deliberate. Again in film props and furniture are adjusted out of their natural position surprisingly often, in pursuit of aesthetic harmony. If you analyzed an interior scene that had been shot from multiple angles in hopes of mapping the room's contents accurately, you'd be disappointed to discover that many things had changed position by ~10% of their own size from shot to shot. Part of the craft is the ability to look at the image on a tiny monitor and be able to identify whatever it is that is distracting your eye from where you're supposed to be looking, like a table which looks fine in one shot but feels too small following a change in the focal length of the camera lens for a different shot. Solution - move the table towards the lens a bit.

Don't even get me started on lighting and related tricks, which can further mess up your spatial intuition. For example, a very common and cheap effect is to make a room feel bigger by painting adjacent walls slightly different shades of the same color. Lots of these techniques are stolen from painting, where the deliberate falsification of perspective has long been used for both aesthetic and semantic effect. Check out this especially famous example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein)

The better question is what is the mirror reflecting in the Vermeer?

Yup, looks like his feet to me, as well as the feet of his desk. He seems to facing sideways (to the left)

The woman is facing the wrong way in Vermeer's, isn't she?

No, she's facing the right way - it's a music lesson, so she's facing the instrument which she's playing. But she's looking slightly towards the (I assume) teacher, as if asking "Am I doing this right?". On Tim's version, she has abandoned the instrument completely and is just talking to the gentleman, who is also much more engaged with her judging by the body postrue - I'd say even there's something else than music lesson going on in that version :) So these paintings, while being similar, actually depict two quite different situations.

She is facing the right way but her reflection in the mirror isn't.

It looks to me that their heads are pointing in about the same direction (looking at the man) but in Vermeer's she is turning her head (her body is facing another direction)

It definitely has problems, with color balance and JPEG artifacts at least. It's not even straight! Anyway I played with it for a minute and here's what I got: https://imgur.com/o2yaTUf

No, it's not better, Tim got it wrong with the shadow under the cello—it looks like it's floating, and tilt of the mirror looks way more natural on Vermeer's painting.

Otherwise both paintings are great.

The way Vermeer painted this wall is consistent with a photograph. It is not consistent with human vision. If you were standing in the room that Vermeer painted, you would see that wall as a pretty even shade of off-white.

For an untrained eye casually glancing at the wall, sure, the brain edits out variations. But a big part of training to be a painter is learning to see, and even with an untrained eye, if you stare at a wall long enough you'll start to see color and texture variations. Not saying he couldn't have used a camera obscura or some other machine, but this in itself is hardly evidence that he had mechanical help.

I studied art for many years and I agree. I also wouldn't consider his paintings particularly photographic-like, and you certain don't need mechanical aid to paints that are far more photo-like that Vermeer's paintings.

John Singer Sargent's work demonstrates that it's more about the lighting and selective details.

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Sargent_Lady_Agnew_of_Lochnaw.jpg

37.media.tumblr.com/a815602d0a7437c561817b5153e59bc9/tumblr_mjdy7uWvkL1s6fgo9o1_1280.jpg

FYI, the trailer for the documentary at the bottom of this article has a clip that makes it clearer what exactly he does with the mirror to help him paint photo-realistically. It wasn't super clear to me until seeing that.

I'm guessing a mirror pointed at the subject over one eye with the other eye looking at the blank canvas? Then it would just be a matter of filling in paint on the canvas where it should match up with the original.

No, the mirror is on a stick and doesn't move. When Tim is looking down at the mirror from above he can see the reflected image he wants to paint, and also the paint surface he is going to paint on. He keeps adding color until the edge of the mirror disappears at which point he knows that he got the color on the surface to match the color in real life.

Here's a screenshot. The mirror is on the top, and the painting surface is below: http://i.imgur.com/Uk7vSQ5.png

Or on the painting of his father-in-law: http://i.imgur.com/WP2ls3A.png

Oh interesting. That may be it. I wasn't sure whether he was actively using both eyes that way, or if he was tilting the mirror in and out while painting. I think it's probably hard to sort out how well it would work without trying it yourself.

There was a Kickstarter done to build a modern camera lucida, they are still building batches of them (they even have DYI including prescription lucidas):

http://neolucida.com

(not affiliated, just an art geek)

It's really clever, and I enjoyed the process involved immensely. The whole project is a work of art IMHO. I'm looking forward to watching the documentary of it all.

I also like this conclusion.

> My experiment doesn't prove that Vermeer worked this way, but it proves that he COULD have worked this way.

I do take issue with the hypothesis.

>The way Vermeer painted this wall is consistent with a photograph. It is not consistent with human vision. If you were standing in the room that Vermeer painted, you would see that wall as a pretty even shade of off-white. The retina in your eyeball does some image processing to minimize the effect of light and shadow. To your eye, the wall appears to have far less contrast than it actually has. And if you can't see it, you can't paint it.

Then you can't see it through this device either.

I'm not an artist, but I've taken a few art classes, and one of the transformative things that happens during formal art training is that you learn to look at things in non-intuitive ways. For example, when most people are told to "draw a dog", even if they're looking at one, they reach back into their semantic memory, look up the mental function for "draw dog" and reproduce that.

The same thing is true for colors, brightness values, etc. A great deal of formal art education is learning to detach your visual stimulus from the semantic association you would otherwise naturally make...and perhaps reattach it to new semantic associations like "negative space" and "comparative brightness" and "relative white value". When you get really good you can even start reprocessing a scene or a model, deconstructing it in your mind and then reconstructing it via some other technique. You can go from photorealistic reproduction to complete abstraction.

http://www.etsycreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/vince...

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_94URbVj_t8A/SZ7v2Iw28qI/AAAAAAAAA...

http://uploads2.wikiart.org/images/vincent-van-gogh/the-star...

https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/e8b99...

http://www.mde-art.com/art-blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/a...

I think a better hypothesis might have been "techniques at the time weren't suited to such exact reproduction of scenes, even great artists slightly distort objects and subjects in their work. Yet these paintings don't appear to suffer from such distortion, the shape and color reproduction is as exact as a tracing or photograph. There must have been a technique or tool used to assist the artist in not only tracing the shape, but reproducing the colors."

> Then you can't see it through this device either.

The documentary goes into more depth as to why it is possible to see subtle variations in lighting using the device, and why a simple camera obscura is insufficient.

Similarly, the documentary also notes that the scrollwork on the harpsichord in The Music Lesson exhibits lens distortion consistent with an optical system. And Tim's contraption intrinsically reproduced that same distortion, before it was consciously noticed.

I'd highly recommend watching the documentary; it's quite fun.

In the documentary they show a Pieter de Hooch and a Vermeer side by side:

"Het Melkmeisje" by Vermeer: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Johannes_...

And "Die Goldwägerin" by de Hooch: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Pieter_de...

Though these painters were heavily influenced by one another, the difference is remarkable. See also: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Gerard_te... for a difference between Vermeer's walls and other painters of the time period.

But then I saw: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Pieter_de... and that closet nearly renders as real to me, it almost has one of those 60s cut-and-paste photoshop feel to it.

Really like the documentary too. Rekindled some of my awe with art and the process it takes. One thing I didn't spot in the documentary, but can see in detail in Tim's Vermeer: http://www.vanityfair.com/dam/2013/11/vermeer-the-music-less... I think Tim painted his own feet in the mirror.

> I think Tim painted his own feet in the mirror.

Nice easter egg! You can see the legs of the table and his feet.

I believe the device is meant to focus on certain locations so you can perceive the colors accurately without the brain doing image processing based on surrounding context.

In particular, the edge of the mirror is the key. By optically putting the subject of your painting directly next to the painting itself, you can directly compare shapes and tones. And moving your head back and forth, you can "scan" the edge of the mirror across the painting to find inconsistencies.

I was wondering how in the world this device works, but this explains it well. I understand now how an untrained artist can make such an amazing painting.

There is neurological evidence for your thesis:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/22/magazine/22SAVANT.html

Savant like drawing skills can be induced in ordinary people by selectively disabling the part of their brain responsible for semantic interpretation. See the shape of the cat, not the cat.

Perhaps Vermeer was a savant.

Not likely. There is a reason why the rather nasty Supper at Emmaus van Meegeren forgery was able to fools the experts, and that's that Vermeer wasn't a particularly good draughtsman early on. Good colourist for the most part, yes, but not much cop at getting things straight or in proportion. His early works show distinct signs of painting things iconically; that is, he was drawing and painting what he "knew" things looked like rather than what they actually looked like. So he learned something in mid-career to change everything, and an optical device is a likely aid. I'm not convinced that a lucie was necessary. It's easy enough to create contour lines for tone using a camera obscura while you're tracing edges; it's something you can accomplish in a few minutes' work, and it's much less likely to be remarked upon by your sitting clients. (Let's remember that Vermeer took commissions; not everything could have been kept "in the family".)

So he learned something in mid-career to change everything, and an optical device is a likely aid.

Do you have evidence to suggest a mechanical aid rather than just improvement in skills? Artists often change the way they produce art midway through their career. Ever listen to juvenalia by Beethoven, Brahms, or Strauss? Ever listen to early Stravinsky and compare it to what he was writing in the 1960s? Ever look at what Picasso was doing before his primitivist paintings? They all completely changed over the course of their careers, and they all had a moment in their career when they starting making art that was in their voice.

So seeing someone get better at something like painting mid-career doesn't indicate to me some deus ex machina, just the gradual accumulation of skill and judgement, until it finally clicks and a mature artist is born.

This is not proof that you're wrong, I just want to know why you jump to that conclusion when there seems to be a perfectly normal explanation.

There are no transitional fossils, so to speak. That is, there are no examples where he got the perspective right but the lighting was a bit rough, or the general proportions correct with foreshortening a bit off. As a man who needed to earn a living, he couldn't afford to take a couple-three years off to learn how to draw. Picasso (who was never much of a draughtsman, even in his youth) was working in an era where photography had largely supplanted painterly realism; his concern was not with middle-class portraiture or advertising his skills in creating it.

Picasso was skilled at drawing as a child, and he started formal art education at age 10. But maybe you mean he wasn't that impressive at drawing perspective and architecture?

Childhood drawings by Picasso: http://drawingatduke.blogspot.no/2012/02/drawings-of-pablo-p...

No, I don't think it's particularly remarkable, even for a ten-year-old. (At that age, I had been attending an atelier myself for three years, fancying myself a draughtsman and painter, and being told repeatedly that I had some skill. There were kids there who were immensely better than I was, and the differences in direct comparison were extremely subtle -- fractions of millimetres here and there -- but made all kinds of difference.) Nor was there anything convincing or compelling about his blue period paintings. Hell, even his cubism was inferior to Braque. Picasso was merely successfully audacious.

Crucially, the drawings in that NY Times piece were done from memory, not observation. It's a different problem. "draw what you see, not what you know" is the standard instruction given to beginning artists, and the idea that this is the way to draw us well-established, for example in the philosopher Thomas Reid:

'I was recently much struck by a passage from the 18th century Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid, who speaks of the general habit of the human mind to move extremely rapidly, from the reception of stimuli in the eye, to mental interpretations of those stimuli in terms of known objects in the world. "The mind has acquired a confirmed and inveterate habit of inattention to [the luminous stimuli]; for they no sooner appear than quick as lightning the thing signified succeeds, and engrosses all our regard..." The only profession in life in which it is necessary, by training the eye and mind, to break this process apart - to separate seeing from recognising - Reid says, is painting. "The painter hath occasion for an abstraction, with regard to visible objects... and this is indeed the most difficult part of his art. For it is evident, that if he could fix in his imagination the visible appearance of objects, without confounding it with the things signified by that appearance, it would be as easy for him to paint from the life, and to give every figure its proper shading and relief, and its perspective proportions, as it is to paint from a copy." ' (Philip Steadman)

Or Paul Valery: "Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees." Practically a cliche.

>Or Paul Valery: "Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees." Practically a cliche.

A great book that puts this to practice is "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". Some of the first exercises are to free hand copy a line drawing, while the picture you are copying is upside-down. The theory being that the symbol-interpreting portion of the brain then doesn't exert much influence on the drawing. It was pretty amazing to see the difference this makes. Anyone who is interested in learning how to draw, but doesn't think they have the talent should check out this book.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=drawing+on+the+right+side+of+th...

> Then you can't see it through this device either.

The technical trick is to align an edge of a mirror which reflects part of the real image with the canvas and add paint until there is no visible difference.

I believe this trick can get around the shade corrections made by the brain, just like tracing over camera obscura gets around the proportion & angle corrections.

> Then you can't see it through this device either.

So this isn't me saying you're wrong, because in this specific case, I have no idea. Just wanted to throw something interesting in there, which is lateral inhibition [1]

Lateral inhibition in vision is basically a rod cell, which is sending a strong bright signal to the brain, inhibits the signal of rod cells near it, which makes them send a darker signal; it increases sharpness and contrast in lines and helps with edge detection before the brain ever gets ahold of the image.

The wikipedia article has a graduated series of black to white stripes that demonstrates the idea. It looks like the stripes fade from light to dark. I bring it up because you can suppress this by covering the two sides of the stripe, providing a constant signal to your rod cells. I haven't seen the movie, but it sounds like (from the comments I read below) that might be part of what's going on. Using optical tricks to suppress certain pre processing the brain/eyes do.

(this is more a post about how interesting lateral inhibition is, because of information being preprocessed even before your brain mangles it, than to disagree with anything you said, which is a really interesting idea as well)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_inhibition#Visual_inhib...

I think he is talking about optical illusions like the "Checker Shadow Illusion":

http://www.businessballs.com/shadow-optical-illusion.htm

So we perceive the same color as a different one depending on the other colors surrounding it (also http://www.designmatrix.com/pl/cyberpl/cic.html ) I'm not sure there is any art training that can change your brain to make this illusion not work. Using a tool like the mirror device in the article, makes it easier to match colors because it can remove the other colors around it and also moves it closer to the color you are painting.

You're right. Try bringing the "Checker Shadow Illusion" as a .jpg into Photoshop or GIMP and check the color values. Surprisingly in both A and B locales they're 120,120,120 (RGB). More curious is experimentation with the eraser. Using the 120s, seemingly similar black squares can be grayed-out[?].

> When you get really good you can even start reprocessing a scene or a model, deconstructing it in your mind and then reconstructing it via some other technique. You can go from photorealistic reproduction to complete abstraction.

I think this is the first time I have seen an convincing argument for the value of abstract art. Thanks.

Thanks. Believe it or not, I'm not a big fan of most abstract art. I think the problem for me is that it's too easy to hack. Instead of going through years of art training and study, you really can just go throw a bunch of paint on a canvas and it's virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

Yeah, that "easy to hack" is why I was turned off of abstract art as a category. That there is a possibility of some artwork to have that kind of an underlying language is exciting to me :-)

I'm no expert or even connoisseur of paintings or art in general, but one of my favorite artists is Wassily Kandinsky.

To me it's abstract art, but I really think it won't be easy to reproduce something that looks like his work. I think maybe someone more knowledgeable could teach you to "see" the abstract art. It happens to me with Jazz for example. By itself I really don't get it, but if one of my music loving friends walks me through it, explaining why the song is like this and that, then it all takes on a different dimension and I even start to like it. Then my friend goes away and again Jazz sounds like a mess to me.

So maybe go see some abstract art with a friend that knows about it and can explain it and it might surprise what you find aesthetic. Then again it might not, but I Believe there must be some value to abstract art.

Sure, though it would be fun to see the principles of how visual arts are deconstructed for myself. I have a guess that there are essential overlaps with the bits of Haskell and martial arts I know.

1. Wow--I was thinking the same thing, but about another artist. 2. I didn't realize most of Vermeer's painting are done at the same studio. The studio does look like it's on the first floor? (The way the lighting hits his subjects?) 3. Vermeer was not a famous artist when he was alive, and died in debt.(Probally, like I will). It would be very easy to set up staging area outside a room--noone cared about? 4. Woulden't it be ironic if his famous painting The Little Street 1658 is directly across from his original studio? 5. I got this from the wiki on Vermeer, and it's probally false, but here goes,"Here Vermeer lived for the rest of his life, producing paintings in the front room on the second floor". Second floor! Now, a staging area in the air? 6. I'll watch the video, and suffer through Penn & Teller, but in my heart I don't think he used camera obscura. 7. My favorite styles of art have been Expressionism, and Modern Art. I don't think these can be faked? I only got into art after some pretty sever anxiety issues--It might be the only positive out of a horrid situation?

Sci-fi author Greg Egan has a disturbing short-story on similar themes, 'The Caress', part of the collection Axiomatic. (The full collection is just $2.99 via the author's self-published ebooks: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Ebooks...) It could make a great Blade Runner-like movie, and then that movie would be a perfect double-feature with Tim's Vermeer.

And in digging up links about 'The Caress', I came across a cool word, ekphrasis, that also applies to Tim's Vermeer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekphrasis

Pablo Garcia and Golan Levin at CMU reconstructed the Camera Lucida, which was a common artists' tool up until the last century, and describe the history of it here: http://neolucida.com/history/lucida-history/

Basically, it's a tiny prism on a stick that projects what is in front of you to your drawing surface.

(disclaimer: I have no financial connection to these guys, but I did buy one of their Neolucidas, and it is a lot of fun)

Very interesting article but this:

"I couldn't find a CNC lathe large enough to make these parts"

Makes absolutely no sense. I've worked on CNC rigs that would turn shafts for ocean liners and wheels for cranes, a couple of table legs should not have been a problem.

As for the theory, very interesting.

Here is the artist painting himself in his studio:

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/image-paintings/ar...

I don't see anything like lenses, mirrors or other tricks, mostly just brushes, paint, canvas, the artist and the subject. There is that little black stick on the top right of the canvas, wonder what that is? Maybe there is a mirror at the end of it ;) It would be funny if the evidence for all this was sitting in plain view for a few hundred years but likely there is a more ordinary explanation for that stick, maybe someone with more experience in painting can chip in about what that is.

The about box at the bottom lists Tim as the guy behind DigiPaint of Amiga fame, and his company is also the one behind LightWave 3D.

I couldn't find a CNC lathe large enough to make these parts

My interpretation was more like "when looking around my basement full of awesome tools, I didn't have anything readily on hand, so I built one from what I had," not that no such machines existed.

> There is that little black stick on the top right of the canvas, wonder what that is?

It's a mahl stick. http://painting.about.com/od/artglossarym/g/defmahlstick.htm

Learn a new thing every day! Thank you.

  Here is the artist painting himself in his studio:

  I don't see anything like lenses, mirrors or other tricks, mostly just brushes, paint, canvas, the artist and the subject.

To be fair, I doubt that Vermeer himself would have wanted to publicize that he was using "crutches" like the techniques described. As others have mentioned, if these techniques were used, they probably would have been treated as trade secrets.

I'm not sure using mechanical techniques would have the same meaning back then. It might have actually been a high-technology selling point.

>There is that little black stick on the top right of the canvas, wonder what that is? Maybe there is a mirror at the end of it ;)

You mean like that round, brass colored thing that would otherwise look like his hand?

No, I think he means the stick he used to partially rest his hand on. Remember, mirror and lens or not, it takes a LONG time to do that kind of detail work. If they really worked at that angle, I imagine your arm would get VERY tired, and the stick there might offer a bit of relief while working.

No, the black stick that appears to protrude from his hand. Note that it is not the brush and that at the top right part of the black stick there is something round (near the canvas).

I was referring to the "mirror on the end of it" part and just quoted the preceding line.

Compared to the hands of the girl in the picture, the color and the shape of his own hand looked odd. It's too round and looked kind of brassy.

I tried to buy the video, and got this error message from Amazon: "We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions."

Where can I buy this in Europe? In today's globalized world, online videos should be available everywhere at once.

It's apparently for sale via Amazon, iTunes and Vudu. E.g. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tims-Vermeer-Tim-Jenison/dp/B00K2YVA... It's not yet on Netflix (streaming) anywhere in the world. http://www.moreflicks.com/titles/movies_tim-s-vermeer_2014

However, I'm not able to buy it on Amazon, due to "geographical restrictions on the product". Searching for it on iTunes gives 0 results. So it's clear that they don't want me to buy it in Europe.

Last I checked the UK was a part of Europe, but since you didn't specify further I can't help ya. Call or complain to Sony Pictures Classics. Or find ways to buypass regional restrictions. I do it all the time to get Spotify which has yet to make it to Canada.

It's on kickass.to if you are so inclined

Have you tried searching for it on amazon's site with the TLD for your country, or the one of a neighboring country? It is available on Amazon instant on amazon.co.uk. I haven't tried playing it yet, though. And I don't know if it would work outside of the UK.

This will be a neat documentary and the idea clever to recreate the painting, but the camera obscura idea has been pretty well know for a while. Here is some evidence due to the quality of 17th C lens: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/camera_obscura/co_three.html I can't find a link but there was also good evidence of how the image shifts as focus changes in another painting. Some people even claim it's visible here: http://www.archiviobolano.it/img/arnolfini_SPECCHIO.JPG

Shoot it was a van Eyck painting that I mentioned, sorry, good explanation here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockney%E2%80%93Falco_thesis

Norman Rockwell painted over projections of photographs to achieve his photo-realistic results.

This article shows his paintings and photo sources side-by-side:

http://petapixel.com/2012/12/27/the-photographs-norman-rockw...

I am going to add my own useless commentary and say that I absolutely love things like this. It is the idea of applying a scientific approach to something for fun and because why not? This is Having Fun + Learning = Win in its purest form.

did anyone else notice the photo/painting's caption read "Click to Embiggen"?

Could this be a subtle nod to the animators who painstakenly produce live cartons at the sacrifice of their wrists?

I, for one, am hoping this word slowly seeps into public consciousness and then into dictionaries. If it is a subtle nod, it's a perfectly cromulent one.

If you want to have a look at some Vermeer paintings in great detail, go to the Rijksmuseum (Dutch Royal Museum). They digitised all their paintings (not just Vermeer) in great detail.

You can zoom in and see the flecks of paint.

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/explore-the-collection/overvie...

Every year some ancient artist becomes a photographer. The last time it was Caravaggio using mercury salt and a pinhole camera setup.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/mar/11/caravagg...

Saw the documentary which was enlightening, whether or not Vermeer actually produced his works like this, doesn't do it less good. An artist is still an artist, no matter which tools he uses (of course, printing a photograph with a 3d-printer to get some relief i still a 3d-printed photograph, reproducing it by hand however is still a wholly diff thing, and if you can see how much time "Tim" spent on his Vermeer, you can only applaud the fact that he persisted in his try to copy one of the greater works in history).

Nice docu and a fun way to get acquainted with some artsy work. In the end, "photorealists" are just that, "photorealists" who like to get as close to the real deal as they possibly can, whatever means necessary. (what or what isn't "photograph" is not up to discussion here at all)

Here is some criticism from the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/20...

Here is the same critic a year ago sneering that Vermeer is wildly overrated, and that people just like him because his slavish attention to detail is more accessible to people who are used to looking at photographs.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/20...

And here's the same critic going on about how Vermeer's paintings are full of mystery and eroticism: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/20...

Jones is a prime example of why I find most art critics insufferable.

The technology Jenison relies on can replicate art, but it does so synthetically, with no understanding of art's inner life

What a bunch of rhetorical diarrhea. This was nothing more than an exercise in curiosity, an exploration and evaluation of a hypothesis. This was not an attempt to disprove Vermeer's creativity, disprove artists in general, or disprove art.

Indeed. For the historical investigation that forms the backbones of the story, they had to do an imitation of the original work.

The paint strokes on the canvas are literally the superficial aspects of the painting. There is much more 'art' in the choice of subject, perspective, layout and so on. But had Tim chosen his own subject matter freely, then comparison's with Vermeer's technique would have been almost impossible.

FTFA: The film implies anyone can make a beautiful work of art with the right application of science. There is no need for mystical ideas like genius.

The film implies no such thing. I saw the movie a few months ago and it was pretty clear they believed that a Vermeer was more than simply technique.

I just finished this movie and I have to say it was awesome. The near obsessive lengths he took to re-create this painting was amazing to watch - it was probably some of the worst burn-out that veteran software engineer ever experienced

I saw the documentary. Its good, I enjoyed it.

I'm involved in arts (open studios board and website operator) in massachusetts and have been talking to painters about this (none had seen the documentary yet). Generally they don't see it as changing things, unless a lot of people start doing this. Also painters enjoy the freedom to create stuff that doesn't exist, where is this technique is kinda like a photograph where what you capture has to exist.

Makes you question art and its valuation (a lot does these days). No matter how its done the end result is what should be judged.

I had been waiting to see this movie forever and finally did right when it came out, and I can tell you it is awesome. It's a fantastic example of science and technology being used to solve a problem that just happens to be art. It's also a very compelling theory about the possible ways Vermeer did his more photorealistic paintings. Pretty much after this and spending the last year teaching myself to paint I can safely say if it looks like a photo, it's from a photo.

Another great book to check out is David Hockney's "Secret Knowledge", which covers how this is done in other ways, how projection devices were used by Kepler and others, how it could have been considered a guild secret among painters, and how when the photograph first came out people remarked how much the looked like "finished" paintings. His latest exhibit at the De Young was actually based on the research from this book where he cranked out a metric ton (quite literally) of art using various projection devices.

Another fun thing to do is "spot the laptop". You know how people are doing impressive hyperrealistic paintings like this:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/pictured-eloy-morale...

These are amazing, until you realize he's getting the fidelity he needs by making the paintings huge, then taking pictures of them from farther away. Can't tell a painting's size on the internet, so it looks super realistic until you see it in person. Next, if you look carefully at that first photo, he's looking off in the distance at....a laptop most likely, or a projection. If you look in youtube or at various artist's blogs you start to catch them with a laptop sitting right there, or an ipad stuck to their easel with the image right on it.

If you check out these hyperrealists (they don't say photo 'cause that's a bad word) you can sometimes catch them with a laptop, image on it squared off, sometimes even zoomed in.

What modern "Vermeers" are doing is they're using computers and screen technology to get very exacting details and color harmony using combinations of large size projections (you can see Eloy's pre-drawn lines), gridded images, and zooming on a computer screen. So the awesome thing about Tim's Vermeer is he shows that if someone's using enough technology to make art then they become just a mechanical photo printer. Might as well be a photographer.

Here's another artist you can see copying a photo:

http://www.littleobservationist.com/2013/05/22/artist-interv...

Françoise Nielly at least interprets them, but I bet if you looked she probably uses the hell out of computers at first to get studies right.

What's interesting is many artists use technology like this, and many of them get into this "cheating" when they run into disabilities or time constraints. The problem isn't the technology though, it's whether they pretend they don't use any, which is what a lot of these hyperrealists try to get away with. But, take an artist like Richard Schmid and you find he started using a computer after a major back injury and he freely admits he uses photos and computers to do painting.

What I liked about Tim's Vermeer is it's at least proof that someone with zero talent can use technology to create an equivalent to what's considered a masterpiece. David Hockney's book also demonstrates that much of the art we consider painted using pure skill is actually just clever uses of technology to do photo reproductions with oil paint.

The way you explain this, it seems you share the same concept of "cheating" as Jack White (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=AJ...)

I am left wondering if this isn't cheating per se, but a balance between skills and intelligence. What do you think?

Well, artists are fond of saying "there's no rules in art", that is until you violate all the ones they've set down as acceptable art.

So, if three's no rules, then there's no way to really cheat. Do whatever you want to make whatever art you feel like making, and hell just calling yourself an artist is all it takes to be one these days.

However, if you're pretending that you have an innate ability that's actually the result of technology, or if you're teaching people a topic and lying to them about the tools you use, then yes you're cheating.

I can understand a painter not admitting she uses computers to help her paint if she's selling the paintings and doesn't want to ruin the mystique. But, I've ran into teachers that pretend to not use tech and then you find out they totally do, and that's just wrong. The French Salon era was full of this kind of con artistry where teachers would run schools full of cast painting and boring exercises and then the teacher would go off and use projection to make their paintings anyway. David Hockney points out a few like this.

So I think if you're lying to people about the tools you use, or downplaying the significance of tools, then you're full of crap. Otherwise, rock on and do what you do.

White seems unaware of the extent to which photographers manipulate things in the darkroom.

Ironically enough, given O'Brien's app joke, Ansel Adams made extensive use of darkroom techniques to basically "Photoshop" before there was Photoshop.

At the end of the day, though, if you have no taste, no artistic vision, then technology isn't going save you or your work.

> If you check out these hyperrealists (they don't say photo 'cause that's a bad word) you can sometimes catch them with a laptop, image on it squared off, sometimes even zoomed in.

How is that different from a painter looking at a live model or doing a self portrait with a mirror?

I had been waiting to see this movie forever and finally did right when it came out, and I can tell you it is awesome. [...] So the awesome thing about Tim's Vermeer is he shows that if someone's using enough technology to make art then they become just a mechanical photo printer. Might as well be a photographer.

Those filthy fakers! You've certainly caught them in the act - hopefully all right-thinking people will discount their output appropriately in the light of this wicked artifice.

Seriously, you seem to have some sort of pent-up resentment towards people who paint, to the point that your obvious glee in deconstructing their technique has eclipsed your ability to enjoy the paintings as images.

If you read my posting, I said that it's not cheating unless you claim you don't use technology. As someone who teaches and researches teaching, I find it it incredibly disingenuous to teach people that painting is some mystical talent from the wellspring of the soul and at the same time use tons of tricks and techniques to make the image.

So yes, people should discount the credibility of outright liars as nothing but con artists if they're going around claiming they can paint "naturally" but end up using tons of tech to do what they do. Especially if those people are teaching art, music, anything.

Edit: And yes, I do get a little tingle when I find out someone figured out how to hack something. That's why I'm a hacker, and so were all those painters who figured this shit out 500+ years ago.

But your two examples say little or nothing about their technique and the second one makes no attempt to concept the laptop. There's a lot more to art the technique of getting it onto the canvas; and even the business of getting it onto the canvas is a good bit more complex than just getting the dimensions and perspective correct.

I'm not objecting to your getting a tingle when you figure something out, but wondering whether you've substituted knowledge of the recipe for enjoyment of a meal.

Reminds me of Teller's article: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/teller-reveals-hi...

"..You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest."

Teller's friend Tim appears to have taken the same attitude towards checking out his Vermeer hypothesis. Amazing effort.

I was recruited to work as editor on this project about two years ago. My reason for not taking the job at the time was that it would be hard to make the ending interesting enough to justify the effort. Two years have passed and now that I see the reproduction, I've changed my mind, it was impossible to make the ending interesting enough. Would have made a good magazine article in the Smithsonian though.

"what a sweep of vanity comes this way!" - Shakespeare

That's a pretty cheap shot - I think you owe it both to us and to the participants to say what you think the problem is. As it is, you comment comes off very much as sour grapes.

Just my humble opinion, but it doesn't matter how the artist achieved the results. The work speaks for itself.

Tim's Vermeer is probably a lot like watching a behind the scenes video. If you enjoy consuming information for information sake, you might find it interesting, but a lot of work and money goes into making a feature documentary and it should be a work of art itself. If it doesn't have broad appeal, it's referred to as a vanity project.

The Cove is a good example of a documentary that is also a work of art. The story has a beginning a middle and an end and they are all made big through the story telling. The same could have been true of Tim's Vermeer if the story was told differently.

I apologize if my original comment came across as negative. I sometimes feel let down if stories are told in lazy or inexperienced ways and the article makes the story play like an episode of this old house.

The article doesn't quite give the film justice. While there are certainly some "behind the scenes" like material, the documentary is more than just a "How to paint like Vermeer" type instructional video. It delves more into Tim's obsession with completing the project, showcasing both the "1% inspiration" and especially the "99% perspiration" moments. There is also some great subtext, it's a story of a man whose daughter goes off to college, and then he takes on this big project to fill the hole in his life (which also helps bring him closer to her, as she models the girl in the painting when she comes home for break). There is also an interesting scene at the end where Tim hangs his Vermeer on his mantle. Proud at his accomplishment, and yet it feels hollow, as Tim has not gained the artistic skill of Vermeer, he's only acted as a very, very slow human camera, taking many months to capture what a modern camera (even those used to film the documentary) could capture in seconds. I haven't seen Cove, and I don't know if this elevates Tim's Vermeer to your standards of art, but there's more to it than "an episode of This Old House".

I don't know if it will have broad appeal, but it only had a limited theatrical release, and I think it will be suited better to DVD and VOD like Netflix.

As far as vanity goes, I mean it certainly seems like Tim painted the Vermeer more to scratch his own curiosity than to make a big profit. Making the documentary might also have been a way to help him give himself incentive to finish the project, indeed in one part of the film he says "If the cameras weren't filming right now, I would just give up."

Thanks for the information. Sounds like they took the personal journey approach and it also sounds like you enjoyed it, which would indicate that they did a good job, including the ending. I'll look forward to watching when I get a chance, but thanks for filling in the blanks. I'm willing to say, I stand corrected.

I saw the film and I thought the ending was interesting. What was it about the ending that made you think it was impossible to make interesting?

Anyone who has seen a Vermeer painting up close, knows how hypnotic the experience can be. Is it true that in the movie Tim never gets to see the original and is reproducing based on a poster?

Tim gets to see the original Vermeer, but they weren't allowed to film it. However his reproduction is not based exactly on the poster or the original. Instead what Tim did was build a replica of the room Vermeer painted in, including all the props, and make his own painting by using his mirror device to observe this replica room.

Are you saying this is all one big ego trip on Tim's part?

It costs a lot of money to make a film. I don't know Tim and I suspect he's a nice and interesting guy, but movies that lack broad appeal are sometimes referred to as vanity projects. I'd like to know how much money was spent making the film, where that money came from and what the theatrical run took in. If I had that information, I could tell you whether this was a vanity project.

This is getting philosophical, but even if this was incontrovertible proof that Vermeer used these techniques to produce his works, it wouldn't detract from my appreciation. It would reshape my appreciate a bit, but I think that discovering these methods (by both Jenison and potentially Vermeer) is remarkable in itself. All artists use tools to produce their work - Vermeer may have just been innovative to find some really unique ones in his time.

This post reminded me of Adam Savage's "Obsession" TED talk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEg-ZNB3qyI

"...maybe, then maybe! I will have reached the end of the exercise. Except, if I'm being honest with myself, reaching the end of the exercise was never really the point of the exercise, was it?"

If that's true, and after having watched the documentary it's hard for me to believe it's not, then Vermeer was kind of like a magician : his paintings were made with a trick that he kept secret. On one hand the whole story is charming but on the other hand I have the feeling Vermeer was kind of a dick not to reveal this technique to the World.

Perhaps if art were taught in US schools with the systematic rigor of mathematics and rhetorical essay composition, as it should be, people would cease being surprised that artists exploit technological advances like everyone else. The LAX International Terminal features digital installations, not frescos.

Here's an hour long interview with Tim Jenison where they discuss some of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D0AMvdt11g

Another interesting post on the topic from awhile ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6823528

Having not seen any of Vermeer's paintings before, I was astonished for a few moments as I thought the very first picture in the article was a painting. Then I scrolled down...

While the theory works fine for static objects, how can it work for people? Did they have to precisely repeat their position while posing? Wouldn't it ruin the copying aspect?

He's using mannequins in the main picture at the top of the article, so I assume one technique would be to use mannequins as placeholders until you needed to do the distinctly human parts of the painting (hands, faces), then you could substitute a person into place and paint that part.

For what it's worth, for all the people I never told that I thought this to be true. I told you so :)

Hmm, wonder how Johannes Vermeer did all of his self portraits ...

Tim did a damn good job of the rug on the table.

Just watched the film, absolutely mind blowing.

this was really i^3 (interesting, informative, and innovative). thanks!

he's so cool, clever and can do anything

Good grief, talk about yak shaving.

OMG! Vermeer used a camera lucida! I'm surprised!

...Said no art historian ever.

You do realise that Vermeer predates the patenting of the camera lucida by a hundred years? 1807 vs 1675, respectively.

Doesn't mean he didn't use something similar. David Hockney made this point in 2001 (if I recall).

Besides, Brunelleschi used a mirror to demonstrate the effectiveness of his perspective drawings in the 1400s: http://zeiteye.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/c1450_brunellesch...

Durer used string and moveable panel in his perspective studies: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.geometry/unit11/durer.....

And of course, there was the camera obscura. I can't believe there wasn't any development in drawing aids in the 400 years since Bruneschelli's demonstration.

Do you have a background in art history? How do you know that wasn't the case?

I don't, but I am a designer, with a graduate degree from RISD, if that qualifies for something. I don't think you understand sarcasm. The point is that it has been long assumed that Vermeer used at least a camera lucida to construct his paintings.

This Guardian article has been mentioned on this thread, but it really gets to what bothers me about this "study." http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/20...

> So what does it lack? The film implies anyone can make a beautiful work of art with the right application of science. There is no need for mystical ideas like genius. > But the mysterious genius of Vermeer is exactly what's missing from Tim's Vermeer.

Edit: Added more for the downvoters to downvote.

Tim's is better. ;D

Bis? This story has already ran ... I guess this is fine for the 'new' crowd at HN

My self-esteem just took a serious hit. I guess I should blame my bluntness and my ability to recall old stories.

Seriously though, is there some type of algorithm on HN which 'discourages' posting the same story within an allotted time period (say 2-6 months)?

I love the process he follows, but Vermeer the biggest painter of all time?. He must be kidding.

Vermeer painting is ok, but there are better paintings and certainly better painters.

Rembrandt or Velazquez run circles around Vermeer in photorealism, but if you consider other things Vermeer is not even in the top ten, probably in top 100.

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