Giants of Delft: Johannes Vermeer and
the Natural Philosophers: The Parallel Search for Knowledge during
the Age of Discovery
by Robert D. Huerta
Bucknell University Press, New Jersey, USA, 2003
156 pp., illus. b/w, col.
ISBN: 0-8387-5538-0
Reviewed by David Topper
University of Winnipeg
David.Topper@ds1.uwinnipeg.ca
Once while browsing through a video store I came across a film titled,
All the Vermeers in New York. After reading the box I took
the film home. It was not very memorable: as I recall it was a prosaic
girl meets boy movie, which I never would have noticed without the
title catching my eye. Ive spoken with others who rented the
movie for the same reason; the name "Vermeer" can do that.
But this was not always so. It is hard to believe that there was a
time starting not long after his
early death when Vermeers paintings
were seen as run-of-the-mill Dutch art; not until the mid-19th
century, with the trend toward pictures that capture light and color,
was there a Vermeer revival. Stylistic trends are fickle: the same
happened to Bach and Shakespeare. So today Vermeers quiet pictures
of humans and their artifacts in comfortable rooms are recognized
as some of the most serene and breathtaking works in European art.
Thus the attraction to anything including
a movie title bearing his name.
Despite this reverence for seemingly anything related to Vermeer,
little is know of his short life (1632-75). To surmount this problem,
historians have looked to the artists environment, his intellectual
and social circle, for clues to penetrating the enigma of those "still
life" portraits. Holland of the 17th century was a
center of commerce and publishing as well as art and science. Dutchmen
invented the telescope and microscope. Much has been written about
Vermeers use of a camera obscura, mirrors, and other possible
optical and perspective devices. Huerta covers this too, but draws
his circle much wider by encompassing the scientists of the time,
primarily Galileo and Kepler (both used the telescope and camera obscura),
Hooke and Leeuwenhoek (masters of the microscope), and Huygens (master-builder
of telescopes and clocks, and discoverer of the rings of Saturn).
Using indirect evidence, Huerta makes a convincing case that Vermeer
knew both Huygens and Leeuwenhoek. Vermeer and Leeuwenhoek were born
within a few days of each other in Delft; Leeuwenhoek was the executor
of Vermeers estate.
The past several decades have seen an abundance of publications on
the interrelationship of science and art around the Scientific Revolution
of the 16th and 17th centuries. Huerta draws heavily upon this work:
indeed, the book is very much an ingenious synthesis it. Those familiar
with this scholarship will recognize the authors: a partial list includes
Samuel Edgerton, Martin Kemp, Phillip Steadman, Arthur Wheelock, Scott
Montgomery, Albert Van Helden, Stephen Straker, Svetlana Alpers, and
James Welu. I found no "gaps" in Huertas research.
The resulting range of topics not only entails the camera obscura
(incidentally, the first illustration of this device shows it being
used to view safely a solar eclipse), but also the telescope, microscope,
as well as various lenses and mirrors. Hence scientists enter the
story, who were both superior observers and masters of their instruments.
Not surprisingly, as a master observer, Vermeer is linked with Van
Eyck and the Northern tradition of painting minute details and the
possible use of mirrors. Such instrument-mediated perception leads
Huerta to the topic of perception and art; and here again there is
a wealth of material to rely on: that the names of E. H. Gombrich
and Richard Gregory arise is not unexpected, since both emphasized
the role of mental hypotheses in visual perception and in the act
of depiction.
On page 55, Huerta discusses the example of the depiction of a Rhinoceros
by Dürer as discussed in Gombrichs classic, Art and
illusion. Since Gombrich juxtaposes the drawing with a photograph
of a Rhino (the African species), this example
often quoted over the years by writers on matters pertaining to art
and perception is viewed as showing
how Dürer departed from a realistic transcription, relying more
on his mental schemata for depicting a unfamiliar object. Gombrich
goes on to show how Dürers Rhino became the model for such
depictions through the 18th century, even for those looking
at real animals. But the original comparison is erroneous. The Rhinoceros
that Dürer drew was the Indian species, which has an armored-looking
body, very similar to Dürers drawing. I once corresponded
with Gombrich on this matter and he replied: "In the early years
of the book I was bombarded by letters of protest" on the photo
of the African rhino. He went on to inform me that he intended finally
to correct this if another edition of the book appeared. Alas, this
is not to be since Gombrich recently died. Hence I am pleased to make
this correction here.
Nonetheless knowledge-mediated perceptions need not entail erroneous
observations. Galileos familiarity with artistic techniques
for depicting three-dimensional objects facilitated his perception
and subsequent depiction of the craters of the moon. A similar mental
imagery facilitated Huygens in "seeing" the arcs on the
sides of Saturn as three-dimensional ellipses (the planets rings)
around it. Some of Huertas connections between art and science,
however, are forced, others just plain silly. For example: of the
35 remaining works attributed to Vermeer 32 are domestic interiors
(three early paintings are mythological themes); Huygens visualized
the changing images of Saturn circling the Sun and revealing the planets
rings with a famous illustration containing 32 images of different
viewpoints. Of this, Huerta writes (p.66): "As in Huygenss
drawing, Vermeers oeuvre provides us with thirty-two
images, thirty-two variations on Vermeers optical themes."
The range of issues, beyond perception and optics, include the word-image
interplay and the role of maps (the wall-covers in so many of Vermeers
paintings) in both science and art. As such, the book is an informed
and inventive synthesis of a vast amount of scholarship. But for a
work on such a wide range of topics, its about 105 pages (which includes
pictures and illustrations) is relatively short, and surprisingly
repetitive. Nonetheless, and perhaps because of its synthetic brevity,
it is a superb summary and introduction to this borderline area of
art and science during the Scientific Revolution.