I like the gratuitous framing. It’s the set of compasses you should be looking at and the painting screams it. The artist wasn’t great at hands, though. Those things look like the chicken hands the Mythbusters made.
About the hands: his left hand resting seems good to me. His right hand holding the dividers was reworked by Vermeer from holding them vertically to holding them horizontally, probably to increase the sense of intention and immanent action in the pose. But the reworking may have something to do with why that hand doesn’t look exactly right.
“10 point” dividers have 11 points numbered 0 to 0 (oddly enough, heh). I thought computers would have made them obsolete by now, but they’re still used in navigation with charts, and PJ Holden shows how to use them drawing comics.
Call me strange, but I’ve always been more of a pen-and-ink fan.Albrecht Dürer, unnamed drawing of a Rhinoceros, 1515.
That’s exactly how all the geographers I know look.
What a lovely use of light.
I wish I could see the painting in person (a trip to Frankfurt? no such luck) – but thanks for sharing it at least electronically.
Interestingly, the reproduction on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:J._VERMEER_-_El_geógrafo_(Museo_Städel,_Fráncfort_del_Meno,_1669).jpg
looks much more “like Vermeer” to my eyes, in the red tones and the shadows.
I like the gratuitous framing. It’s the set of compasses you should be looking at and the painting screams it. The artist wasn’t great at hands, though. Those things look like the chicken hands the Mythbusters made.
Argh. Looks like I didn’t give the right link to the wikipedia commons version. Let’s see if this works:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/J._VERMEER_-_El_geógrafo_%28Museo_Städel%2C_Fráncfort_del_Meno%2C_1669%29.jpg
About the hands: his left hand resting seems good to me. His right hand holding the dividers was reworked by Vermeer from holding them vertically to holding them horizontally, probably to increase the sense of intention and immanent action in the pose. But the reworking may have something to do with why that hand doesn’t look exactly right.
Thanks, I swapped that one.
Lovely. 🙂
“10 point” dividers have 11 points numbered 0 to 0 (oddly enough, heh). I thought computers would have made them obsolete by now, but they’re still used in navigation with charts, and PJ Holden shows how to use them drawing comics.