Did Vermeer Use the Camera Obscura to Define His Underpaintings?
Lawrence Gowing, a painter and one of the most penetrating of Vermeer scholars, believes that an x-ray photograph of the face of the Girl with a Pearl Earring constitutes evidence of the artist’s painting method. X-rays images reveal the presence of lead, which is the primary component of lead-white, the principal white pigment used by painters until the mid-nineteenth century. Gowing assumes that the white areas of the image correspond the underpainting stage and was a direct transcription of the incidence of light on the screen of the camera obscura. Particularly suggestive of the camera obscura’s effect is the perfectly spherical highlight of the pearl earring which has been altered in the final version, the same goes for the dim highlight of the eye to the right hand side of the painting. Gowing believes that “the artist, evidently proceeded, in finishing the picture, to mediate between objectivity and convention.”1 Since the x-ray image only reveals the presence of the heavier lea
