Tim's Vermeer (2013) on Netflix
PG-1320131h 20mDocumentaryHistory
Inventor Tim Jenison believes Johannes Vermeer used optical devices to paint. He builds a mirror setup to test the idea, then tries to recreate one of the Dutch master's scenes by hand.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.8/108,884 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Tim Jenison is an inventor, the founder of the computer graphics company NewTek, and an art enthusiast. He is drawn to the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, the 17th-century Dutch master whose work is often said to look photographic, and he studies David Hockney's Secret Knowledge and Philip Steadman's Vermeer's Camera. Jenison suspects Vermeer used a camera obscura to guide his brush, but finds that painting over a projection makes color matching nearly impossible. His answer is a mirror angled above the canvas, letting him compare the original with his own work and adjust each area until the reflected edge vanishes. He tests the method on a photograph of his father-in-law and on a vase, then sets out to rebuild the scene of Vermeer's The Music Lesson using only 17th-century tools.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Tim's Vermeer (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Tim Jenison spent almost seven months hand-building a life-size replica of the room in Vermeer's The Music Lesson, doing his own woodworking and carpentry and even sawing a lathe in half, then painted his copy using only 17th-century tools and mixing his own paint.
- While painting the virginal in his copy of The Music Lesson, Tim Jenison noticed the curvature of his lens made him bend the instrument's seahorse pattern, and found the same curvature in a print of Vermeer's original.
- Tim Jenison's method was to fix a small mirror above the canvas at a 45-degree angle so he could compare the original image with his canvas at the same time, getting the color right when the mirror's edge disappeared.
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