American infrared survey Book

There has been a huge amount of speculation about Johannes Vermeer's paintings. It is generally agreed that the perspective is too perfect and so it is suspected that he must have used some sort of mechanical contrivance to help him get the right perspective. This particular book pursues the idea that Vermeer used some sort of camera obcscura. (Basically a very large pin-hole camera ...and in this case, probably with a convex lens). I have read a book by David Hockney where he makes a case for Vermeer using a camera lucida (which is not really a camera at all but ...usually some sort of crystal of calcite which doubly refracts the light so you can see the image with one eye and draw the image with the other). I also recall reading an article (I think) in Scientific America where they compared Vermeer's drawing of a chandelier with a camera version ....As I recall they concluded that it was not exact but he probably had used something like a camera obscura.
The current book goes into great detail about whether Vermeer had access to the technology, How it was possible for him to employ the techniques of the camera obscura? And, although the documentation seems totally absent they are able to make a reasonable case for Vermeer to have had access to the technology and to have employed it. They even go to the trouble to actually make models and full sized sets to see the kind of views that Vermeer would have had.
they do devote a lot of effort to describing how Vermeer's paintings are blurry where they might have been blurry because of vignetting or because of problems focussing his lens. Actually, I'm not totally convinced by this sort of argument. For Vermeer to use the camera obscura, he didn't have to sit inside his darkened box the whole time. All he really needed to do was to establish the main lines of his painting and afterwards he could have totally done away with the device and compared colours directly with the real model etc. It's actually very difficult to trace directly over a photographic image and paint to that image......mainly because real life objects often or generally don't have nice hard lines outlining them. A three dimensional face, for example has shadows and tones but doesn't have a nice neat outline which can be traced. Sure you can trace something like the outline but one has to be prepared, when painting, to replace that hard line with slightly darker tones....depending on the lighting.
It's actually rather amusing that people should consider this "cheating". The artists were happy to use every tool at their disposal to give a close likeness to reality. Durer actually illustrates some techniques implying threads and a sighting point.
Am I convinced that Vermeer used a camera obscura like device? Well pretty much. Does it matter to me? No. Not really. I guess my main interest in the subject is curiosity and in the detective work that has gone into proving the case.
An interesting book. Maybe becoming a little tedious with all the effort to prove a point but without any documentary evidence. I give it 3.5 stars.