John Dingler's Deconstruction: Vermeer's Geographer

I decided to remove one item after another in Jan Vermeer's Geographer just for fun, but then the project turned analytical, into one that answered the question, "Are the two scrolls that rest on the floor underneath the cabinet or in front of it?"

In the process, I had to reconstruct the lower portion of the cabinet based on Vermeer's use of one point perspective. I discovered that the scrolls are underneath. I wonder if this might be a significant discovery to some art historians.

Musical score: Arcangelo Corelli: Cto. Grosso (Gmin), Op. 6/8 "Christmas"

This is response to Richard Corral who observed differently and reached a different conclusion:

Hi Richard,
You observe what I missed. By implication, you observed that a shadow should fall on the scrolls. You would be correct, and I agree; The cabinet's shadow should fall across both scrolls and, I guess one could say, overlap the shadow that is cast diagonally on the floor between the right front leg and the wall's baseboard.

However, while I honor your observation about the shadow, I disagree with your conclusion that it therefore follows that the scrolls are in front. They do not.

Based on my reexamination of Vermeer's perspective lines, it appears that my conclusion remains correct; The scrolls rest behind the leg, not in front.

Now, one could make another arguments in support of your hypothesis:
1. My reconstruction of the cabinet is wrong; Perhaps the cabinet was perhaps legless, resting on a shelf, hence its bottom suspended -- based on the composition, no higher than the window sill -- so it could not cast a shadow on the floor.

The advantage of this suggestion is that it would eliminate having to take the shadow into account. However, you would need to take into account the shadow on the floor, and explain what object that we can see in the composition, or perhaps an object behind him, casts it. The most likely object is the cabinet, and at least one of its legs, the right front one. Another possibility might be an object resting on the floor behind him. This is an unknown. However, if there was such an object behind him, it would need to be in the exact same location as my reconstructed leg, but the mathematical chances of this being the case are remote, hence highly unlikely.

I think what we are left with is that Vermeer simply did not correctly represent the physics of light and space in that room. If he had, he would have included a shadow over the scrolls, not just a shadow under them, which is an impossibility.

We can speculate why he did not, but it would be guesswork. For example, perhaps he did not include it for aesthetic reasons: He did not want to darken that part of the composition; He added the cabinet after he painted the scrolls. It would have been trivial to simply paint that wedge of dark color across the flat floor but not as trivial to also darken the scrolls which are rounded. Or perhaps he got distracted and simply forgot.

There is another possibility, however, and it's intriguing. Perhaps he painted the shadow under the scrolls not to represent a real cast shadow, that is, one that would be seen in the camera obscura, but to simply paint on canvas for the paint itself, i.e., not for compositional purposes, and not because the paint stood for an object, in this case, the shadow.

Category:

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• Delft
• geographer
• humanities
• visual
• arts
• art
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• Arcangelo
• Corelli:
• Cto.
• Grosso
• (Gmin)
• Op.
• 6/8
• Christmas
• john
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• riverside
• room
• history
• reconstruction
• deconstruction

[chevyyyyyyy]

Hi Richard,

There is not enough space here to respond justly to your observation about the shadow, so I responded on the right where I describe the video, right under the "SUBSCRIBE" button. Cheers.

[RichardCorral]

no. cuz if they were underneath they would have a shadow casted on them.