Philip Steadman created the three partial reconstructions seen above of the room depicted in The Concert and The Music Lesson by Jan Vermeer. From the three alternative views, a hypothetical point of view from which the scene is observed can be extrapolated. The narrow angle of vision and the implied distance of the point of view from the fictive scene were determined, according to Steadman, by a projected image created using a camera obscura.
Vermeer’s often summary and cursory brushwork is adduced by Steadman as further evidence of the use by Vermeer of a camera obscura in the construction of systems of spatial illusionism for his representations of domestic interiors. Distortions of the visual field cognitively corrected in human vision remain uncorrected in the camera obscura-generated image. When the camera obscura image is transposed on to a two-dimensional surface, distortions in scale most conspicuous at the edges of the image, and areas of indistinctness near the center obtain (exemplified by the very large table in the foreground of The Music Lesson and the artist’s hand in The Art of Painting).
For Steadman, the hallmarks of Vermeer’s painting style--are the result of the faithful copying of a distorted image produced by a primitive optical device. The tautology of the argument aside (the use of a camera obscura is proved by the evidence of the hypothetical camera obscura posited for argument’s sake), Steadman’s conclusion reduces the artist somewhat to an early form of copy machine.
In fact, Vermeer’s decision to leave much of the distortions and lacunae of the projected image uncorrected is a conscious artistic decision that radically shapes one’s experience of the picture. The viewer is taken on an optical wild ride, consisting of disturbing discrepancies of scale, vertiginous plunges into depth, wild contours and unresolved delineations of form. The tranquility, serenity and calm routinely ascribed to Vermeer’s art is inexplicable.
These confrontational effects, along with the anxiety produced by the enigmatic, under-explained actions depicted, transform the innocuous stuff of genre and still-life painting into epistemologically daunting, even sinister, visual experiences. Chardin fully understood this aspect of Vermeer’s art and made careful use of many of his predecessor’s pictorial provocations.
For a nuanced and visually-sensitive discussion of Vermeer's use of the camera obscura, see Lawrence Gowing’s still essential Vermeer (1952).
