Informative about these wonderful, mysterious paintings. Kenwood House is certainly (and deservedly) fortunate to have one.

I was lucky enough to see “Girl With a Pearl Earring” in Delft. It literally glows!

Terrific talk, John. Fascinating.I've seen the Delft painting in the Hague, which is exquisite and has that ethereal quality about it that is, of course, Vermeer's trademark.Thank you.

I'm very sorry to bother you and it's rare I comment on these things but on studying vermeer I discovered that he painted a sepia under drawing first , all of his paintings have been studied. He starts with sepia under drawing then fills it with paint. It is impossible to simply paint straight away like this as if by magic. I enjoyed your talk and learnt a lot. Thankyou

I never noticed until watching this talk, what a BEAUTIFUL job he did on the blank, painted walls. So many subtle variations of the light going across it.

Thanks for put this. I think Vermeer´s story is not complete yet, maybe we have to look to all his contacts and study all of them. Lot of secrets !!

Have you seen Tim's Vermeer?

thanks for posting. helps to while away some time and actually learn something. thx

She's listening to the sound she is making, while singing.

I don't think there is any doubt these artists used optical aids and the lack of contemporary evidence of this must mean they did not want the public to know! But as David Hockney said,"Optics don't make marks!"

The cursor looks like a fly but I'm really enjoying this talk.Thank you very much.

Painting an image upside-down produces a more "honest" work - you're not painting what your brain wants a "face" or a "chair", or "brown" or "blue" to look like, you're just painting the shapes & colors you actually see.

I don't believe that Vermeer uses a camera obscura to trace outlines. His tiled floors would have been particularly easy to do with a projection device but these were constructed with a chalked thread and a vanishing point (visible in some of his pieces) He may well have studied projected images of sitters and studied the depth of field effect and specular highlights produced by lenses, incorporating them later into his work.

after seeing Tim's Vermeer and hearing about devices the artist may have used I still have the same thought, those devices require still objects, so how did he paint real people given they'd move around

If he used a camera then why did he use a pin to draw perspective lines?

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Vermeer is a much better painter than Rembrandt

the hole of the instrument it is usually dark. I know because I have a guitar and a small lute

He used a nail not camera obscura or Lucinda. He was a virtuoso.

A big secret of Vermeer’s was the fact that he did not paint several. And those several are the amateur ones, like the Guitar Player. That was executed in a paint by number style as are the others. His daughter, Maria was the likely artist. Now here is the proof… Vermeer, of course painted TGWTPE which is obviously, Maria. He painted his other daughter, Elizabeth called Portrait of A Young Lady. Note.. her age. Someone else painted Elizabeth at that age too. The dark haired girl in front of a spinet. That painting is cringingly bad. Certainly not by the master. This information is now coming to light after the exhibition at the Rijks Museum.

2 paintings featuring a man: Astronomer & Geographer.

Of course the Flemish used optics to trace. It wasn't and isn't a secret. Painters were thought of as no different than we think of day laborers today. They were just unskilled labor. They weren't painting secrets, allegory or anything else. They painted what they could capture by the optical devices and what the buyer wanted. Nothing more. Painters today are thought of as artists. Although most of them trace and pretend tracing is acceptable, they wouldn't dare admit it to a buyer. Not in a hundred years. They absolutely hide their projectors, cameras, light boxes, dark rooms, etc when company comes. If tracing were acceptable they wouldn't feel the need to lie about it or hide it from the buyers.

Enjoyable little talk. I talked with Lawrence Gowing while a student at the Slade. I make camera obscura and although it is difficult to accept, Vermeer seems to have made a living being a slow photographer. I doubt he could draw a smiley. To survive he used his curiosity and intelligence. I never got a solution like Tim Jenison did in his movie. Mirror matching is used in sextants and even in existing pantone matching devices. To leave that out and include some irrelevant and inaccurate camera obscura references is a shame. It is 'spherical aberration' that causes a patch of light around bright details. No idea where you got this 'halation' from as that is an issue within analogue silver film negatives. I have replicated Tim's idea. Vermeer composed the tableau using contemporary cliches. The fact that he wasn't an artist at all reassures me that experts and critics really know nothing more than the echoes whispering around their galleries. Lawrence Growing was a real draughtsman, admitting to me that there is something not quite right about this Vermeer painter. His inconsistencies of which you make no mention. The curved paper on the keyboard paper? The anagrams and wordplay in the deliberate text offset Latin?

I believe the last painting showing a woman in a blue “bed jacket “ is a woman who looks clearly pregnant. I’m an expert

Of course he did, they all did.

Friends of Kenwood. You refer to The Hague, the city that does not exists. You probably mean Den Haag, in South Holland. If so, then why call it by another name? Is The Hague English? The people who founded Den Haag are Dutch. Its most ancient name is Die Haghe, which became Den Haag. The original name reflects the identity of the people. The Hague is not English, it is a fantasy name. I don't doubt you can effectively and easily pronounce Den Haag.

The letter scene is quite conventional. The maid is repeating, including the gestures and attitude, what the letter writer told her to say. That's why the maid looks so awkward--she's pretending to be a man. The woman is feigning surprise. Vermeer's characters are always acting. It must have been an insufferably mannered society.