Diálogos Transdisciplinares em Girl with a Pearl Earring: a Arte ...

e da sua maneira de trabalhar, como acontece quando ele pergunta a Griet se ela
gostaria de espreitar para dentro da Câmara Escura (52):
“...’Do you want to look in it?’ he asked. It was the first time he had spoken
directly to me since he asked about the vegetables many weeks before. ‘Yes, sir. I
do’ ... ‘What is it?’ ‘It is called a camera obscura.’ The words meant nothing to
me” (59).
No decorrer do romance, fica claro que Chevalier aceita a teoria que Vermeer
pintava seus quadros utilizando a Câmara Escura. Nas palavras de Cibelli, citando
Daniel Fink 49 :
Daniel Fink, one of a number of scholars who analyzes Vermeer’s paintings for
evidence that he used the device, stated that points of lights that occur as
highlights on round and metallic objects in Vermeer’s paintings were “circles of
confusion” from the lens of the camera obscura. (585).
A Câmara Escura era uma pequena caixa com uma lente que refletia a imagem:
“... ‘Do you see this?’ He pointed to the round object at the end of the smaller
box. ‘This is called a lens. It is made of a piece of glass cut in a certain way.
When light from that scene – ‘ he pointed to the corner – ‘goes through it and into
the box it projects the image so that we can see it here.’ … ‘What is an image,
sir? It is not a word I know.’ … ‘It is a picture, like a painting.’” (61-62).
, e fazia com que algumas partes da composição ficasse mais nítida em detrimento
de outras, ao mesmo tempo que intensificava as cores 50 :
“ ... I could see on the glass a faint trace of the scene in the corner. As I brought
the robe over my head the image, as he called it, became clearer and clearer – the
table, the chairs, the yellow curtain in the corner, the back wall with the hanging
on it, the ceramic pot gleaming on the table, the pewter basin, the powderbrush,
the letter. They were all there, assembled before my eyes on a flat surface, a
painting that was not a painting. I cautiously touched the glass – it was smooth
and cold, with no traces of paint on it. I removed the robe and the image went
faint again, though it was still there. I put the robe over me once more, closing out
the light, and watched the jewelled colours appear again. They seemed to be even
brighter and more colourful on the glass than they were in the corner” (62-63).
49
Fink, Daniel. “Vermeer’s Use of the Camera Obscura – A Comparative Study.” Art Bulletin 53
(1971): 493-505.
50
(Wheelock and Bross 148; Wheelock, “Vermeer’s Craft and Artistry” 46-47).