Traces of Vermeer
We have uploaded a couple of times now on the research on whether Vermeer used a Camera Obscura as part of his process for some of his paintings. Now there’s more..
First to recap:
Jonathan Jones had written a piece on this topic: click here
There’s a site devoted to Vermeer: click here
and what really kicked off the recent debate was the book – Traces of Vermeer: An artist’s detective story about the working methods of Johannes Vermeer by Jane Jelley: Click here
We have just been sent a link to a review of that book…
For the review of Jane Jelley’s Traces of Vermeer by David G. Stork: click here
To give you a taste of the review here’s quote from the linked page:
“In short, Jelley makes a quite plausible case that Vermeer could have used optics to produce an image, paint over the image, and “print” it onto his canvas as a first step in his method but falls short of making a convincing case that he actually did so. “
And so the debate continues.
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and while on the subject of Vermeer, a wonderful piece, Woman Reading a Letter, was included in the exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age. This one piece stole the show and a couple of reviewers have talked about this.
Here’s one reviewer who saw the Vermeer as the centre piece of he exhibition: click here.
And (this may be behind a pay wall) Sebastian Smee writes about his visit to the same exhibition – and this sentence says it all: It’s only about two thirds of the way through that you get to the semicircular gallery with the single Vermeer, Woman Reading a Letter. Everything else melts away. Click here