108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring
66 comments
·May 1, 2025cgriswald
When viewing this I was captivated by the girl's lips. In the full view, the bottom lip looks not just full and moist, but slightly wet. Zooming in, it's a bit of a muddy mess with only a splash of white giving definition to the (anatomical) left of the girl's mouth.
In my current incarnation I'm a fledgling novelist and one of the things I've learned is to trust the audience to 'fill in the gaps'. Although this is probably obvious already to many, the parallel between that and the way that we sort of do that when we look at paintings suddenly hit me.
roughly
If you get a chance to see some of the impressionists in person, they’re kind of mind blowing for exactly the same reason - you’re looking at a scene of a ship in a storm and seeing all kinds of nuance, and then you get closer and realize it’s all your brain filling in the blanks.
From a literary angle - two books I’ve read that are absolute master classes in this are Italio Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and “This Is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - both do an incredible job of putting you in a series of vivid, fantastical places within a paragraph or two of exposition.
dvt
> Italio Calvino’s “Invisible Cities”
So wild seeing this referenced here, it's a pretty obscure book (of poetry nonetheless), and one my absolute favorites. Cheers to having great taste :)
PS: Small nit: it's "Italo," not "Italio."
photonthug
Hey! We read more than code, and Calvino's not so obscure. ;) Here, enjoy some stuff from my open tabs: https://rustandmoth.com/work/on-the-ducks-who-are-people-and... https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/26063/... https://fleursdumal.org/poem/099 https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/bernstein/books/artifi...
te_chris
Likewise! I love this book
nandomrumber
Who’s that fella what did that TV show where he paints portraits of his famous guests.
TylerE
Absolutely. I was at the Virginia Museum of Art where they have several Monets and 3 Van Goghs. They also let you get quite close to them… less than a foot away in some cases. The amount of texture is incredible. (What also struck me in person, though I had read about it previously, is how tiny almost all Van Goghs are. Barely more than postcard size in some cases.
kylebenzle
I read a lot of sci-fi and because it's come up in recommendations I've tried two or three times to read that book, "This Is How You Lose the Time War".
The popularity of that book along with stuff like N.K. Jemisin winning "Best SciFi book" of the year 3 years in a row prove more than ever that the vast majority of people simply don't have taste in the sense they can not decide if they actually like something or not they can only like what other people like.
That book was objectively bad but it keeps showing up on the top of best sci-fi book lists for some reason and so a lot of people keep (mistakingly) thinking they liked it.
dripdry45
Guh, NK Jemisin :Q I tried getting through a few chapters of three of her books and haven't felt so... Pushed? Talked at? Bored? Hadn't grimaced internally and externally as much with an author in a while.
They feel juvenile, trying SO hard. Using a different person perspective in one of them to hamfisted effect, as opposed to someone like Tamsyn Muir who integrates that device for good reason and to brilliant effect.
I gave NK a solid try and was appalled at how in the world anyone could think these are engaging.
roughly
> objectively bad
Well that settles that, then.
gilleain
Are you not confusing 'liking' a work with 'thinking it good'. I'm not sure what criteria go into your evaluation, but perhaps those criteria are different from the ones other people are using?
fish_phrenology
It took a bit but by the end it had grown on me. I agree it's technically not great but maybe I'm just used to that from reading sci-fi, most of which feels technically bad. That said my reaction to the first quarter was mostly "uhh?". Big disagree on N.K. Jemisin though, I enjoyed reading those. Books 2 and 3 of the three body problem series feel like what you're describing to me. Never got why those were popular, the first one had the interesting cultural revolution flashback element but the sequels did almost nothing for me.
Filling-in-the-gaps-books wise, it's hard to do better than Earthsea in my mind. They're quite short books, yet I found myself far more engrossed in the world and the goings-on than some thousand page Sanderson tomb I snoozed through.
michaelhoney
... or maybe it's not objectively bad, and you're bouncing off it for some reason?
Per the parent comment, it does a lot with very little. And it's heady and literary and beautiful. Not everyone is into that. But a lot of people are.
pcblues
Not sure if anyone here saw the movie Clueless, but a great quote was, "That guy is such a Monet. From a distance he looks great, but up close he's a real mess."
userbinator
Zooming in, it's a bit of a muddy mess
The analog equivalent of pixelation.
jychang
More like the analog version of doing a FTT and looking at only the high frequency parts vs the low frequency parts.
cgriswald
It's like touching it with your eye, without the pain. I love the future.
HideousKojima
It's like the museum scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off when Cameron is staring super intently at the painting
cmehdy
We think that everything is made of things but we forget that everything is mostly made of nothing, and it's the gaps between things that make it all be.
See also: atomic size vs distance between atoms in any structure, on perceptual levels the visual saccadic movement and how much the brain fills in the gaps.
Nothing is quite something after all.
fcatalan
You can also see that the hanging yellow part of the headscarf, he just winged it, effective as it might be.
I paint as a sort of weekly ritual, just 2 hours every Wednesday evening, and did an inept copy of this as my first serious try. Months of staring closely at every little detail of it leave you in a sort of communion with the work and the artist.
One thing you quickly learn is that the old masters were "impressionists" too. If you overwork stuff trying to perfect every shape with hundreds of precise brushstrokes, you end up with a naive, infantile looking painting that feels "unpainterly".
Trying and failing to mimic that single quick brushtroke that fools the eye leaves you in awe, fully appreciating the mastery.
drob518
Yep, I noticed the same thing and came to a similar realization.
pinoy420
[dead]
lubujackson
I highly recommend the movie "Tim's Vermeer" about the likelihood that Vermeer used something like a lightbox to paint his paintings. Specifically, his ability to reproduce light and color is unmatched while he only had basic training as a painter and never let anyone see him work. A fascinating engineering problem to deduce how he might have accomplished this.
dewarrn1
It's an appealing hypothesis, but there's some compelling evidence to the contrary [0]. I'm not an expert, but this could potentially fall under the heading of pop history or pseudohistory.
adastra22
Watch Tim’s Vermeer. The camera obscura doesn’t work (for similar reasons as mentioned in the article). Don’t want to spoil it, but Tim comes up with a very low tech solution that fits all the evidence.
y-curious
Thank you! I watched some clips on YouTube and I'm very impressed by Tim's technique's efficacy.
diego_moita
It isn't a bad hypothesis.
Many people speculate that the model for the "The Astronomer" and "The Geographer" was Leeuwenhoek, the creator of the first microscope. He was a close friend of Vermeer.
And the use of devices for helping in drawing was actually quite common in those times. Durer and Da Vinci made drawings showing these kind of devices.
noufalibrahim
It's a great science documentary though. His obsession, how he works towards it and the emotional effect the whole project has on him. Worth watching regardless of your opinion on the hypothesis.
vanderZwan
Side-rant: I just watched a clip[0] and I have to say something about the misrepresentation of the Hockney-Falco thesis[1] in it.
And when I say I have to I really mean that: I'm Dutch, tried studying physics, dropped out, switched to studying art, specifically photography (even built my own camera at one point), then in the first year of art school was introduced to the Hockney-Falco thesis, then went to the International Congress of Physics Students one last time to hang out with my friends, decided to give a talk on the topic, and ended up winning best talk of the conference. So I'm kind of obliged to Have Some Opinions on this topic.
The clip mentions the HF thesis as if Hockney introduced the notion that the Dutch painters in Vermeer's time used optical tools. That's... not what the thesis claimed. Johannes Vermeer lived in the 17th century[2]. As the clip (correctly) states, telescopes and mirrors were known to the Netherlands by then - in fact the earliest known records of a refracting telescope is from a failed patent application in the Netherlands in 1608[3].
From what I remember, the hypothesis that Vermeer used optical tools wasn't controversial even back in the mid-2000s, a decade before this film came out. While there was no direct proof, he did live in the right place and period to have been introduced to telescopes, and artists trying out new tools is obviously a thing that happened throughout history. Being secretive about his work was obviously also very suspicious. I recall that we also discussed how certain visual qualities of the painting suggested the use of optical tools - Vermeer's style was also just so noticeably different and photograph-like compared to his peers. To be clear, nobody thought this diminished the quality of Vermeer's paintings: he was still innovating and mastering his tools, and creating the beautiful paintings that he made still took tremendous skill.
However, what the Hockney-Falco thesis claims is that Early Renaissance painters like, say, Jan van Eyck[4] already used optical tools, centuries before telescopes and optical mirrors optics were introduced in Europe. We're talking 15th century onwards. And not only that, that this was secret knowledge hidden by the painter's guilds, of which no known record survives even though we have records of all the other painting techniques used. That's what makes it so controversial.
The hypothesis that there was a painter who lived during a time of great innovation in optical tools in the place where those innovations took place, then secretly used those tools to get a leg up on the competition is very plausible.
The suggestion that the entirety of Europe's Renaissance painters learned about optical tools from Arab lands but managed to keep this knowledge secret for centuries sounds like a conspiracy theory.
(also, it's completely ignorant of the realistic qualities of some of the old Roman art[5], and those painters definitely did not have high quality lenses available to them)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoqWwuRnj3o
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockney%E2%80%93Falco_thesis
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telescope
MaxRegret
Steve Mould just released a video about the microscopy technique that was used to capture this 3D relief of the painting: https://youtu.be/o-dZKBwbsis
petargyurov
The microscope used for this is mind blowing. Falls squarely into the list of things I want but do not need.
koliber
When you zoom in on the cracks, you can see the bevel on the edge of the crack. That’s incredible.
In many places on the edges of the cracks in the dark background you can see tinges of blue or pink color. Is that from the lighting, or is the color actually there, if it is there, anyone have an idea why?
geuis
This painting really needs some Baumgartner intervention.
There are hints of overpainting around the right eye (left side facing us). Background plus eyebrow. Too smooth, doesn't have the same crackle as the rest of the painting.
The veneer may be quite yellowed. Looking at the cloth on the top of the head over the blue fabric. Might originally be a bright white, but now appears yellowed due to exposure of the last veneer aging and yellowing under UV light.
BrandoElFollito
A man of culture I see :)
I watch his restorations with onesie, but his narrative (when it's not technical) is tiring because it wants to be fancy but it sounds fake to me.
His technical work looks great to me, I have no idea about conservation outside his videos. I heard that he got a lot of hate from conservators (which I do not understand) and actively fought critical comments on his videos (which I find petty).
It's been two weeks he has not uploaded anything and it is annoying :)
BTW I also watch cow hoof trimming and always wondered how many people have such weird lists of videos (art, hoof trimming, software dev, history, action movies, science, cooking, middle age, tables building, ...) - some I do a lit, some not (I saw a cow live twice)
Joel_Mckay
Keep in mind many painters of the day would intentionally distort the perspective to compensate for the viewing angle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homography
Beauty is complicated, and imperfection itself can form a timeless lesson:
https://sambourque.com/blog/kintsugi-beauty-in-imperfection
In many ways, some suggest it is an allegory for how people grow throughout their life... and for others it is just broken pottery.
Have a wonderful day, =3
perks_12
The company behind this has a making of on YouTube: https://youtu.be/j_MvpMlgfwI?si=mK9LWleFBE8r_saz
otherayden
Anyone know what they’re using to render this? Something like map tiles?
jer0me
Yes. This site seems to be using https://krpano.com, but https://openseadragon.github.io/ is an open-source alternative. The New York Times has used the latter for features like this one: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/26/world/europe/...
gblargg
Props to them for not locking out older browsers as many sites are doing these days.
padjo
I thought it was cool. Then I saw the 3D button!
djmips
I was immediately drawn to the faint text in the upper left. Meer I could read but it's the artist's signature. https://www.essentialvermeer.com/references/signatures/facsi...
psychoslave
I'm not versed enough in history of art to fully appreciate this painting and how it became so popular, could someone point me to some resources to improve my culture on the matter?
Thanks in advance for any reply
sn0wleppard
John Berger's Ways of Seeing, I think it's all on youtube. There's also a book adaptation though I've not read that
conductr
The artist is well known for his use of light/shadow in his works and is probably going to be the first bullet on any list. Also known for expensive pigments, an unknown style/methods , and being sloppy but extremely detailed depending on your vantage / distance. Zooming in on this one will highlight that
archiepeach
I very recently created an app that helps people learn art history.
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/for-arts-sake/id6744744230
It’s a first version, and there’s a lot more content and features to come, but it’s actually already taught me so much making it!
happyraul
I can recommend The Story of Art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Art
BrandoElFollito
Thank you too from me. Ideally a youtube channel or channels
chrismcb
I'm amazed at how fast this is.
tehjoker
It's like Google Maps. I didn't look under the cover but typically the way these things work is there's a resolution hierarchy and it loads bits dynamically as you zoom in. The zoom here is a bit slow (it doesn't let you slam into the painting at warp speed) so there is likely a bit of latency hiding as it loads high res tiles.
There are plenty of these here :)
https://artsandculture.google.com/search/asset?project=art-c...