* It is surprisingly small
* It is kinda "fuzzy" or "blurry", you can't detect too much brushwork.
* It is very expressive
But my favorite Vermeer is not this, it is View of Delft, also in the Mauritshuis. The colors, hues and textures on it are just amazing.
For Brazilians, a funny curiosity: Mauritshuis means House of Maurice. It is really the former residence of Maurice of Nassau (Maurício de Nassau), the governor of the Dutch colonies in Brazil. This museum also have some interesting works by Rugendas and other painters showing life in colonial Brazil and a very cool collection of puppets made with bread paste showing life in colonial Indonesia.
The Mauritshuis is a very good reason to visit The Hague. If you go there take a walk to the M.C. Escher museum too.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Vermeer-...
Many people speculate that the model for the "The Astronomer" and "The Geographer" was Leeuwenhoek, the creator of the first microscope. He was a close friend of Vermeer.
And the use of devices for helping in drawing was actually quite common in those times. Durer and Da Vinci made drawings showing these kind of devices.
And when I say I have to I really mean that: I'm Dutch, tried studying physics, dropped out, switched to studying art, specifically photography (even built my own camera at one point), then in the first year of art school was introduced to the Hockney-Falco thesis, then went to the International Congress of Physics Students one last time to hang out with my friends, decided to give a talk on the topic, and ended up winning best talk of the conference. So I'm kind of obliged to Have Some Opinions on this topic.
The clip mentions the HF thesis as if Hockney introduced the notion that the Dutch painters in Vermeer's time used optical tools. That's... not what the thesis claimed. Johannes Vermeer lived in the 17th century[2]. As the clip (correctly) states, telescopes and mirrors were known to the Netherlands by then - in fact the earliest known records of a refracting telescope is from a failed patent application in the Netherlands in 1608[3].
From what I remember, the hypothesis that Vermeer used optical tools wasn't controversial even back in the mid-2000s, a decade before this film came out. While there was no direct proof, he did live in the right place and period to have been introduced to telescopes, and artists trying out new tools is obviously a thing that happened throughout history. Being secretive about his work was obviously also very suspicious. I recall that we also discussed how certain visual qualities of the painting suggested the use of optical tools - Vermeer's style was also just so noticeably different and photograph-like compared to his peers. To be clear, nobody thought this diminished the quality of Vermeer's paintings: he was still innovating and mastering his tools, and creating the beautiful paintings that he made still took tremendous skill.
However, what the Hockney-Falco thesis claims is that Early Renaissance painters like, say, Jan van Eyck[4] already used optical tools, centuries before telescopes and optical mirrors optics were introduced in Europe. We're talking 15th century onwards. And not only that, that this was secret knowledge hidden by the painter's guilds, of which no known record survives even though we have records of all the other painting techniques used. That's what makes it so controversial.
The hypothesis that there was a painter who lived during a time of great innovation in optical tools in the place where those innovations took place, then secretly used those tools to get a leg up on the competition is very plausible.
The suggestion that the entirety of Europe's Renaissance painters learned about optical tools from Arab lands but managed to keep this knowledge secret for centuries sounds like a conspiracy theory.
(also, it's completely ignorant of the realistic qualities of some of the old Roman art[5], and those painters definitely did not have high quality lenses available to them)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoqWwuRnj3o
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockney%E2%80%93Falco_thesis
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telescope
At the same time, people love gossip.
Of course, the only secrets we know from the past were by definition not exactly well-kept.
But your question is an interesting one, for sure. Revealed secrets come in different flavors - fully known ones, but also "known unknown" types of secrets, like the exact "recipes" a painter might have used for their paints being a mystery. However, when it comes to "unknown unknowns" hiddeo secrets I think it's very hard to keep those when dealing with more than a handful of individuals.
I'll note two parts of the movie that support my view. First, if his art is so great, then why is it not displayed all over the place? He has a few alleged experts giving praise without criticism, and in the end, it is on the wall in his bedroom. Surely, if the art were that easy to recreate, galleries would be demanding his piece?
Second, notice how they never actually show the real painting. In fact, at one point they make it out to be a conspiracy, that the painting is being kept in some back room nobody can access. I would loved to have seen the real painting side-by-side with Tim's alleged reproduction. I suspect they didn't push to hard for access, because it would have ruined their narrative.
> First, if his art is so great, then why is it not displayed all over the place? He has a few alleged experts giving praise without criticism, and in the end, it is on the wall in his bedroom. Surely, if the art were that easy to recreate, galleries would be demanding his piece?
I could be wrong but I don't think there's much demand for replicas of classic paintings even if they are incredibly high quality. A lot of the value of a Vermeer painting is that it was actually painted by Vermeer in the 17th century -- not necessarily the quality of the piece itself.
Regarding your second point, who knows?
And yes, both of my points are speculation, fueled by an immense dislike for the movie.
That's it.
All painters must grapple with the technical nature of paint itself and its manipulation. Choice of type of paint, canvas, application, &c. is paramount. Rothko’s work, for instance, is only effective because he found a novel way to apply paint that lends his paintings a remarkable, nigh eerie depth of color. Spending roughly half an hour just staring at the Seagram murals in the “Rothko Room” at the Tate Modern is one of my all-time favorite experiences.
i feel like the above comment might come across as sarcastic but i genuinely find it super cool when a layman can master a new discipline with force of will and publicly available writings. much like vermeer's much speculated-upon clever use of technology ;)
In my current incarnation I'm a fledgling novelist and one of the things I've learned is to trust the audience to 'fill in the gaps'. Although this is probably obvious already to many, the parallel between that and the way that we sort of do that when we look at paintings suddenly hit me.
The analog equivalent of pixelation.
See also: atomic size vs distance between atoms in any structure, on perceptual levels the visual saccadic movement and how much the brain fills in the gaps.
Nothing is quite something after all.
The electron doesn't actually have a measured radius (in our current theories). QFT describes it as point-like excitation of an underlying quantum field. The only connection between our quantum theories (that is really just slightly hand wavy math) and reality is that our theories can predict the statistics of observing a particle or interaction in a given state. So maybe a slightly more coherent explanation is that for a given region between atoms in solid matter, the probability of observing an electron (or any particle) is extremely small. Its like a quantum mechanical cat who's territory extends across mountains and forests, you're probably not gonna stumble across it on any given day, unlike a (quantum) house cat that lives in someones apartment. More generally there are no big "lumps" in the wave-functions, it's very thinly spread like too little butter on toast.
From a literary angle - two books I’ve read that are absolute master classes in this are Italio Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and “This Is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - both do an incredible job of putting you in a series of vivid, fantastical places within a paragraph or two of exposition.
The popularity of that book along with stuff like N.K. Jemisin winning "Best SciFi book" of the year 3 years in a row prove more than ever that the vast majority of people simply don't have taste in the sense they can not decide if they actually like something or not they can only like what other people like.
That book was objectively bad but it keeps showing up on the top of best sci-fi book lists for some reason and so a lot of people keep (mistakingly) thinking they liked it.
Filling-in-the-gaps-books wise, it's hard to do better than Earthsea in my mind. They're quite short books, yet I found myself far more engrossed in the world and the goings-on than some thousand page Sanderson tomb I snoozed through.
Interestingly this section either appeared in the beginning or somewhere in the middle depending on the translation/version (I forget how the distinction was made) due to it being so different from the rest of the book.
It was in the beginning when I read it years ago and I think it took a bit for its context to make sense but I also read many lost interest during it.
I enjoyed all the books. (spoilers incoming) I actually enjoyed the love story elements, how a star given to someone would play such an important role later. How he survived in the end and communicated the three fairy tales, and enjoyed each in turn. I've never seen a story span such a vast amount of time nor remember one that took us literally to the end.
But a big part of the problem is that after looking into space colonisation etc a bit, the aliens in most alien invasion stories feel utterly stupid to me.
I can still live with 'War of the worlds': their aliens only come from Mars not from the stars, and I can suspend my disbelief over eg its theory of how the planets formed: it's just a fantasy world where outer planets formed earlier and are older.
But the Three Body Problem tries to be current-ish with modern technology. And its aliens have enough technology to just build orbitals or terraform Mars or so. Or just kill off all the humans from space with an orbital bombardment or a killer virus. Instead of whatever clunky and ineffective methods they use in the book.
I did like the start though, when things were still kept behind the curtain. Also the Cultural Revolution flashbacks, too.
War of the Worlds never lifts that curtain for sure. Everything stays fairly mysterious, and the narrative only gives us some limited speculation from the narrator who clearly has also only a limited view on things.
Well that settles that, then.
Per the parent comment, it does a lot with very little. And it's heady and literary and beautiful. Not everyone is into that. But a lot of people are.
They feel juvenile, trying SO hard. Using a different person perspective in one of them to hamfisted effect, as opposed to someone like Tamsyn Muir who integrates that device for good reason and to brilliant effect.
I gave NK a solid try and was appalled at how in the world anyone could think these are engaging.
The combination is fantastically human.
Talk to more people, you'll find they can think too.
So wild seeing this referenced here, it's a pretty obscure book (of poetry nonetheless), and one my absolute favorites. Cheers to having great taste :)
PS: Small nit: it's "Italo," not "Italio."
Perhaps postcard sized was slight hyperbole, but not by much. All 3 would have been in the bottom 5 of the museum size wise, and it’s a huge museum.
That happened to me some years ago in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, two remarkable pictures particularly come to mind Vermeer's The Milkmaid and a Rembrandt self portrait.
The Milkmaid is comparatively small painting (~18×16" according to Wiki) and I was not only able to view it up incredibly close and in detail but also it was a quiet time for visitors and I had the painting all to myself. I stared at it for minutes in a strange state of amazement brought on by not only how wonderful this Vermeer masterpiece was and that I was looking at it for real and it wasn't a dream but also that I could get so close and do so for so long given the work is worth many, many millions, it's effectively priceless. My experience was even more remarkable given that I was visiting the museum just after Rembrandt's The Night Watch had been repaired, restored and put back on display after a maniac had slashed it with a knife.
The other painting was a Rembrandt self portrait, it was in an alcove all on its own. Again, I had this truly remarkable painting all to myself to view close up. It was an incredible experience, with Rembrandt's eyes staring directly at me it felt as if he was talking to me. It shocked me that a painting that is over 350 years old and painted by someone many generations removed from today could generate such a large emotional response in me.
I consider that particular visit to the Rijksmuseum (I've been there a number of times) as one of the most memorable experiences of my life and I consider it a great privilege that the museum provided me the opportunity to see these remarkable works up close and in depth.
No other book captured the feelings of being 20-something and flirting like reading this. Reading it felt like being right back there again, with all the excitement and anxiety. Highly recommended to anyone.
Unsure how it connects to the notion of a brain filling in the blanks. I thought it was quite "filled in", but maybe my brain did it, and therefore I'm making your point for you :)
It also won the Modern Language Association's top award — the James Russell Lowell Prize for the most outstanding book published in 2023.
I paint as a sort of weekly ritual, just 2 hours every Wednesday evening, and did an inept copy of this as my first serious try. Months of staring closely at every little detail of it leave you in a sort of communion with the work and the artist.
One thing you quickly learn is that the old masters were "impressionists" too. If you overwork stuff trying to perfect every shape with hundreds of precise brushstrokes, you end up with a naive, infantile looking painting that feels "unpainterly".
Trying and failing to mimic that single quick brushtroke that fools the eye leaves you in awe, fully appreciating the mastery.
It is a bit like those illusions where one grey looks darker than the other, based on surrounding shadows in the image and what the brain assumes... but the RGB values are the same.
But Vermeer is next level, especially for the time. A growing contingent of historians believe he used camera obscura to achieve the results
If you really want to capture the full visual information of a painting, you'd need full PBR-style data — reflective, refractive, subsurface properties — essentially the response of the surface from any viewing angle in the hemisphere, lit from at least a few fixed directions (like in a museum light setup). Even limited to the visible spectrum, this would massively increase the amount of data needed to represent the image accurately.
The 2019 scan apparently deliberately removed reflections, even though they're an essential part of the artist's intended expression.
Are there models that simulate the actual physical properties of paintings — under artificial lighting, viewed from arbitrary angles? Seems like a worthwhile direction for preserving artworks beyond their flat 2D captures. It could also enable virtually accurate displays of art for single observers using head-tracked screens or VR.
Might also be a promising use case for NERFs or 3D Gaussian Splatting.
If an animation is in progress, that's an easy prediction.
If the user is using a mouse, they'll generally scroll or pan but not both.
If the user is on a touch screen, again the gestures are limited.
When you have your predictions, you start loading the those things.
Thanks in advance for any reply
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/for-arts-sake/id6744744230
It’s a first version, and there’s a lot more content and features to come, but it’s actually already taught me so much making it!
There are hints of overpainting around the right eye (left side facing us). Background plus eyebrow. Too smooth, doesn't have the same crackle as the rest of the painting.
The veneer may be quite yellowed. Looking at the cloth on the top of the head over the blue fabric. Might originally be a bright white, but now appears yellowed due to exposure of the last veneer aging and yellowing under UV light.
I watch his restorations with onesie, but his narrative (when it's not technical) is tiring because it wants to be fancy but it sounds fake to me.
His technical work looks great to me, I have no idea about conservation outside his videos. I heard that he got a lot of hate from conservators (which I do not understand) and actively fought critical comments on his videos (which I find petty).
It's been two weeks he has not uploaded anything and it is annoying :)
BTW I also watch cow hoof trimming and always wondered how many people have such weird lists of videos (art, hoof trimming, software dev, history, action movies, science, cooking, middle age, tables building, ...) - some I do a lit, some not (I saw a cow live twice)
For example, you will frequently see Baumgartner do over- and in-painting of fairly large areas that have been lost. Modern conservation has slowly evolved to distance itself from mere restoration; the objective of conservators who work for museums or major collections is to only apply non-invasive procedures that can bring the artwork closer to its original state (e.g. grime removal) and shore up the structural integrity of the physical object to preserve it, but without adding anything non-original if possible. Baumgartner claims that all his changes are reversible, but you still see him prying lacquer off with a scalpel, completely replacing the wood of wood-panel paintings, and many other techniques that cast doubt on those claims.
I'm not a professional, so I can't judge whether all of this is accurate, but I find the drama fascinating. In the field of conservation, Baumgartner is an outsider, as he mentored under his father rather than study conservation in an academic setting. Baumgartner's videos look absolutely world-class, but he probably wouldn't meet the bar for qualifications imposed by major museums, which typically require a postgraduate degree in conservation, including formal training in chemistry. So there's probably an element of disdain for amateurs to the criticism, as well.
To be clear, what Baumgartner does is probably perfectly acceptable for many artworks, where the owner's directive is to restore the artwork back to what it may have looked like when it was made. But I'm not sure he should touch a Vermeer.
You may want to have a painting (or other art) in the form it used to be - and then you look at a "whole" painting where you can imagine the object as a continuous thing to look at -- or at what time has done to it and just at the original parts.
I like both, it really depends on what you are looking at. Venus of Milo is fine as it (mostly because I am used to it) and is quite unique. Fitting the arm back would turn it into yet another sculpture. Watching a detailed painting with a lot of losses would derail me from what is happening in the picture itself.
Their expert copy of the work would be valuable and educational in itself, and avoid damaging the original
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homography
Beauty is complicated, and imperfection itself can form a timeless lesson:
https://sambourque.com/blog/kintsugi-beauty-in-imperfection
In many ways, some suggest it is an allegory for how people grow throughout their life... and for others it is just broken pottery.
Have a wonderful day, =3
In many places on the edges of the cracks in the dark background you can see tinges of blue or pink color. Is that from the lighting, or is the color actually there, if it is there, anyone have an idea why?
I just looked it up and there is a picture from an analysis where they are showing its possible state before the restoration:
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image...
"In UV fluorescence, the natural resin varnish layer fluoresces greenish, and areas retouched in 1994 can be distinguished from the original paint as they appear darker"
The full paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s40494-019-0307-5
https://artsandculture.google.com/search/asset?project=art-c...
I also can't stand the sight of it.
It has been abused as a kitchy backdrop on so much tat and assorted items — including wheelie bins, recycling bins, garden fences, pillows, phone covers, and posters — to such an extent that it just oozes bad taste by implication.
Poor girl.
I still think it's an absolutely stunning work of art (regardless of whether Vermeer used camera-obscura or not).
Is what you can see at this level of detail helping anyone understand the painting?
Someone thinks so. So what do we now know?
I'm sure people are thinking about it, but with high resolution scanning, 3D printing, etc., it feels like it should be possible to create extremely high quality reproductions of famous artwork at scale, and at a fairly reasonable cost.
Is anyone working on this?
WalterBright•23h ago