Reverse Engineering Vermeer’s Secret Tool

Kurt Andersen, writing for Vanity Fair:

David Hockney and others have speculated — controversially — that a camera obscura could have helped the Dutch painter Vermeer achieve his photo-realistic effects in the 1600s. But no one understood exactly how such a device might actually have been used to paint masterpieces. An inventor in Texas — the subject of a new documentary by the magicians Penn & Teller — may have solved the riddle.

★ Saturday, 30 November 2013