VERMEER AND CAMERA OBSCURA

Many art historians believe the 17th-century Dutch Master painter Johannes Vermeer used the camera obscura. 

(photo courtesy: www.essentialvermeer.com)

The reason they believe Vermeer used camera obscura is by observing the visual effects in some of his paintings. For example, when you look at the above painting Officer and Laughing Girl, you will notice the officer's body is nearly twice the size of the girl.  The disproportionate size is a result of seeing the scene through a lens, in other words, a photographic perspective.  If this were a photograph rather than a painting, the size variation would not be as noticeable. We are quite familiar today with foreground objects appearing very large in snapshots, but in a 17th century painting this was rather unusual.  Vermeer's fellow painters would have painted the officer and girl equally in size.  This scene is correct in the visual sense; the officer just looks so much bigger because of his closeness to the viewer.

If you would like to read more about Vermeer and his use of camera obscura, click here for a very interesting three-part article, Vermeer and the Camera Obscura.

Thank you for visiting.

A Great Europe Trip Planner

This post was originally published in my blog Tutti Capolavori on July 10, 2012.

CAMERA OBSCURA

In the previous post, I mentioned that Canaletto often used a camera obscura as an aid to creating his drawings and paintings.  Let's discuss what that is...

The principle of the camera obscura has been known since ancient Greek and Chinese time, but it became popular during the Renaissance of the 1500s.  The literal translation of the Latin term is dark room (camera for "room", obscura for "dark").

It works like this: You are in a very dark room on a very sunny day.  Cut a small hole in a window cover and look at the opposite wall.  What do you see?  Magic! There in full color will be a view of outside the window upside down! This magic is explained by a simple law of the physical world.  Light travels in a straight line and when some of the rays reflected from a bright subject pass through a small hole in thin material they do not scatter but form an upside down image on a flat surface parallel to the hole.  With mirrors positioned inside the room the image could be flipped 180 degrees and reflected right-size-up onto a surface for tracing onto a canvas.

In the image above you can see how an artist would use the camera obscura to help create his painting.  The reflected image inside the camera obscura not only miniaturizes the scene reflected, but it also intensifies color, and highlights and increases the contrast of light and dark areas.  The image could then be traced to create an accurate sketch and be transformed into a painting.  

In the mid-17th century the portable camera obscura was developed and became the basis of the photographic camera.

Thank you for visiting.

A Great Europe Trip Planner

This post was originally published in my blog Tutti Capolavori on July 6, 2012.

VIEW OF THE RIVA DEGLI SCHIAVONI, VENICE

Venice, with its light and architecture, its canals and people, was a subject of endless fascination and exploration for Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto.  In this painting from the late 1730s, the flicker of light on the water, the gondoliers, and the clearly delineated buildings against a crisp blue sky demonstrate Canaletto's passion for recording the details of his native Venice. Often using a camera obscura as an aid to composition, Canaletto painted his compelling views of Venice primarily for Englishmen, a masterpiece being the ultimate souvenir of their Grand Tour.  This painting hangs in the Toledo Art Museum.

Thank you for visiting.

A Great Europe Trip Planner

This post was originally published in my blog Tutti Capolavori on July 3, 2012. The photo in this blog post was taken by me on my visit to the Toledo Art Museum in May, 2012.

RECREATING AN OLD ART BLOG

This new blog has actually been recreated from an old blog of mine. I originally started Tutti Capolavori back in 2012, but that blog got thrown on the back burner due to trying to keep up with A Great Europe Trip Planner blog and my life.

However, I have decided to recreate it (along with naming it correctly by adding the "I" to the title). I'm going to start out by slowly copying the current posts from the old blog, then writing new posts about my favorite artists and their paintings from my visits to art museums, here in the U.S. and in Europe.

I hope you will enjoy this blog as much as my travel blog. Thank you for visiting.

A Great Europe Trip Planner