97 Household manuals advised: On maidservants in the Dutch Republic, see Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, pp. 455–60, and Israel The Dutch Republic, p. 678.
98 Rather than compensating: On the probable use of a convex mirror or concave lens in these two paintings, see Wheelock, Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650, pp. 275–76.
PART 4: LEARNING TO SEE
99 The builder’s debt: The receipt, written in Leeuwenhoek’s hand, is reproduced and translated in Dobell, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His “Little Animals,” p. 30 and plate V. The builder Heijnsbroeck is noted in the archives of Rotterdam; the Delft archives show other Heijnsbroecks residing there. William Carr’s 1691 account of the Rotterdam-to-Delft trip and its cost is quoted in Osselton, The Dumb Linguists, p. 28.
100 Deborah de Meij: Information about the London-based Elias de Mey is taken from The Marriage, Baptismal, and Burial Records, 1571–1871 and Monumental Inscriptions of the Dutch Reformed Church, Austin Friars, London (London, 1884).
101 When the French religious: Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 686.
101 The house and the interest: Rooseboom, “Leeuwenhoek’s Life in the Republic of United Netherlands,” p. 19.
101 For families whose total: Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, pp. 319–20.
102 Leeuwenhoek was a large-framed: AvL to Robert Hooke, Nov. 4, 1681, AB, 3:365. For the average height of Dutch men in the seventeenth century, see De Beer, “Observations on the History of Dutch Physical Stature,” p. 49, where it is reported that the average was in the mid-160-centimeter range (about 5′4″–5′5″) but that 170 centimeters (5′6″) was not uncommon. The current guidelines from the National Institutes of Health estimate that a healthy weight for a man 5′6″ with a large frame is 156 pounds, so Leeuwenhoek would fall into that range if he was between 5′5″ and 5′6″ even by today’s standards.
103 “So, Naturalists observe”: Swift, On Poetry, p. 20.
103 “these small flea glasses”: Descartes, Optics, 7th discourse, in Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology, p. 119.
103 Notably, in the early 1660s: See Wheelock, Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650, p. 284. Nothing else is known of Johan de Wyck.
104 Mydorge, a mathematician: A. Baillet, La vie de M. DesCartes, cited ibid., pp. 22–23n.
104 Descartes himself was: See Burnett, Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest.
104 “good at two things”: Harrington, preface to The Prerogative of Popular Government (1658), quoted in Webster, The Great Instauration, p. 170.
104 Alternatively, this combination: Much information on early grinding techniques can be found at http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/antique-machinery-history/spinozas-lathe-161086/. See also Zuylen, “The Microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,” p. 309.
105 However, although the techniques: Although the general methods remained the same, the quality of not only the glass but also the figuring and polishing of the lenses improved over the course of the seventeenth century. See Molesini, “The Optical Quality of 17th Century Lenses,” p. 117.
105 The best glass was found: See Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, p. 17.
105 As little as a single: See ibid., p. 19, and Burnett, Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest, p. 11.
105 In 1616 Galileo’s: Letter to Galileo, April 23, 1616, cited in Molesini, “The Optical Quality of 17th Century Lenses,” p. 120.
106 Another possible technique: See Hooke, Micrographia, xxii.
106 in the smallest visible things: Schott, Magia universalis naturae et artis, 1:472.
106 Kircher used a small tube: See Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, pp. 21–22.
107 Leeuwenhoek later claimed: Leeuwenhoek, Sevende vervolg der brieven, p. 91, cited ibid., p. 23n90.
107 In Leiden, Johan van Musschenbroek: Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, pp. 27–28.
107 Leeuwenhoek may also have: Berkel, “Intellectuals against Leeuwenhoek,” p. 190.
108 “hundreds and hundreds”: In 1700 Leeuwenhoek said that he had made “hondert en hondert” (hundreds and hundreds) of microscopes. Leeuwenhoek, Sevende vervolg der brieven, p. 305, quoted in Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, p. 10n23.
108 Some estimates have: From an estimate made in 1933 of the catalog used for the sale of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes at auction two years after his daughter’s death. See Zuylen, “The Microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,” p. 311.
108 One single-lens microscope: B. J. Ford, Single Lens, p. 6.
109 “You then hold”: AvL to Oldenburg, June 1674, quoted in http://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/van-leeuwenhoeks-view-of-technology-and-spinoza/ and http://lensonleeuwenhoek.net/content/illumination. See also Payne, The Cleere Observer, pp. 36–37.
109 The best way to make: See B. J. Ford, Single Lens, pp. 35–36.
110 The focal length: Zuylen, “The Microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,” pp. 211–13.
110 He most likely began: Tiemen Cocquyt of the Boehaave Museum in Leiden suggested to me that Leeuwenhoek may have used mirror fragments; on the polish, see ibid., pp. 317–19.
110 By the late seventeenth century: See Schechner, “Between Knowing and Doing,” p. 156.
110 It was found during: Zuylen, “The Microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,” p. 316. In 1699 Leeuwenhoek wrote of his having ground his microscopes with increasing skill over the years, and in 1700 he mentioned making hundreds of instruments by grinding. Later he claimed that he had ground all his microscopes in the same grinding lap. See Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, p. 19. In 1695 Leeuwenhoek told Anthonie Heinsius, “Your Honor might perhaps think that I was an expert in Glass-blowing,” but he declared that he was not. See AvL to Anthonie Heinsius, Aug. 18, 1695, AB, 11:63.
110 It is nearly impossible: Zuylen, “The Microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,” pp. 319, 322.
111 And a bacterium would be: B. J. Ford, Single Lens, pp. 3–4. Zuylen has suggested that Leeuwenhoek may have used blowing for making the high-powered lenses, and grinding/polishing for the low-powered ones. See Zuylen, “The Microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,” p. 322.
111 This may not even: See Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, pp. 14 and 14n39. The strongest of the twenty-six microscopes left to the Royal Society of London was reported to have a magnification of 200 times.
111 “My Study stands”: AvL to Oldenburg, Oct. 9, 1676, AB, 2:79.
111 But since the outer: See ibid., pp. 78–79 and 79n73, and Zuylen, “The Microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,” pp. 315–16.
112 Like Leeuwenhoek, Spinoza: Interesting work on Spinoza as a lens grinder can be found at the website http://kvond.wordpress.com.
113 “Their Worships the Burgomasters”: Quoted and translated in Dobell, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His “Little Animals,” p. 32.
114 Federico Cesi, in the first: See Fournier, “The Fabric of Life,” p. 47.
115 the eye of a whale: See Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, p. 133.
115 In one notable frenzy: See AB, 1:31–35, 139–53, 195, 4:213–31.
115 Is that process an innate: Kemp suggests that this issue arose only in eighteenth-century theories of vision, but it was already present in the seventeenth century. Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 234.
115 “All this”: Quoted in Lindberg, Theories of Vision, p. 203.
116 Molyneux concluded that: Molyneux to Locke, quoted in Degenaar and Lokhorst, “Molyneux’s Problem.” For a detailed discussion of the debates surrounding this issue in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Degenaar, Molyneux’s Problem.
116 Without past experience: See Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 234.
116 In 1709 George Berkeley: Berkeley, A New Theory of Vision (1709), quoted ibid., p. 235.
116 The English surgeon William Cheselden: Cheselden was also known for his work The Anatomy of the Human Body (1713), which contained fifty-six copperplate
engravings produced with the aid of a camera obscura. See Degenaar, Molyneux’s Problem, p. 53n1, and Kemp, Seen/Unseen, pp. 252–53.
117 “Expecting the pictures would”: Cheselden, “An Account of Some Observations Made by a Young Gentleman,” pp. 447–50. For a discussion of this case as providing evidence for the Molyneux problem and its solution by Locke and others, see Degenaar, Molyneux’s Problem, pp. 53–86.
117 The modern-day philosopher: See Hacking, “Do We See through a Microscope,” and Representing and Intervening, pp. 186–209. In the latter, however, Hacking incorrectly asserts that the microscope—unlike the telescope—did not generate philosophical paradox, because “everyone expected to find worlds within worlds here on earth” (p. 187).
117 Interestingly, three years before: Molyneux, Dioptrica nova, p. 281, quoted in Dobell, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His “Little Animals,” pp. 59–60.
118 “The instrument must be”: Galileo, Opere, 10:277–78, quoted in Van Helden, “Introduction,” p. 13.
119 “of these kinds of Objects”: Hooke, Micrographia, preface, n.p.
119 Descartes spent years: See Burnett, Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest.
120 Another difficulty in looking: See Fournier, “The Fabric of Life,” p. 22.
120 The obstacle was compounded: Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, pp. 16–19.
121 In the nineteenth century: James, “The Will to Believe.”
121 “not just the eyes”: Galileo speaking about Orazio Grassi, quoted in Reeves, Painting the Heavens, p. 116.
122 “color-charged, glistening”: For the quotation, see Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p. 127.
122 “For in fact”: Huygens’s autobiography, quoted in Alpers, The Art of Describing, pp. 6–7.
PART 5: UT PICTURA, ITA VISIO
124 As Huygens later recalled: This account of the day’s events is taken closely from Huygens’s description in his autobiography, which he wrote, in Latin, in 1629, when he was thirty-three. It seems to have been circulated among his friends, but was not published until long after his death, in the nineteenth century. On the autobiography, see Alpers, The Art of Describing, p. 2.
124 “Are the little people”: Translation of the Latin by John P. McCaskey. It has been argued that Huygens did not have a box-type camera obscura, but that he had set up his dining room as a room-type camera obscura (see Delsaute, “The Camera Obscura and Painting in the 16th and 17th Century,” p. 113, and Liedtke, Vermeer, pp. 181–82). Huygens refers to the “white (or bright) plate within an enclosed space,” which means a plate inside a space, or in a box. A box-type camera obscura could be used to project images of people seen outside, if it was placed on the window ledge or a table close to the window. Lüthy, in “Hockney’s Secret Knowledge, Vanvitelli’s Camera Obscura,” suggests that Vanvitelli used a box-type camera obscura in this manner. Although it is often claimed that a portable box-type camera was not made until around 1660, I believe it probable that Drebbel had constructed one earlier, and that this is the type Huygens purchased from him. Steadman agrees that Huygens brought back a box-type camera from Drebbel, but denies that Vermeer used this kind of camera obscura. See Vermeer’s Camera, pp. 18–19.
124 “this cunning fox”: See Wheelock, Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650, p. 164.
124 Torrentius’s still-life paintings: Modern x-ray analysis of one of Torrentius’s sole remaining picture has shown that it was painted on a white ground, with black lines marking out the composition, which could have been done by tracing from a camera obscura projection. See Groen, “Painting Technique in the 17th Century in Holland and the Possible Use of the Camera Obscura by Vermeer,” p. 203, and Wallert, “A Peculiar Emblematic Still-Life Painting from Johannes Torrentius.”
124 Although he continued: Huygens’s autobiography, quoted in Groen, “Painting Technique in the 17th Century in Holland and the Possible Use of the Camera Obscura by Vermeer,” p. 195.
124 Already by 1623 Huygens: But he also wondered “by what negligence on the part of our painters it happens, that so pleasant and useful an aid to them in their own work should so far have been neglected by them.” By the 1660s Huygens would not have had this complaint. Quoted in Wheelock, Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650, p. 95.
125 In order for the image: See Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 189.
125 He referred to the place: See Needham, Science and Civilization in China, cited in J. Hammond, The Camera Obscura, p. 1.
125 During a solar eclipse: Chap. XI, 912b12–15. Before the nineteenth century, this work was thought to have been written in the fourth century BCE by Aristotle; since then, scholars have rejected this attribution. However, writers on the camera obscura continue to claim that this passage was written by Aristotle. See, e.g., J. Hammond, The Camera Obscura, pp. 3–4, and M. S. Hammond, “The Camera Obscura,” p. 12. For a discussion of the evidence against Aristotle’s authorship, see Aristotle, Problems, “Introduction.”
126 He noted that images: See J. Hammond, The Camera Obscura, p. 5.
126 In a discussion on: See M. S. Hammond, “The Camera Obscura,” pp. 30, 35.
126 He hired other actors: See J. Hammond, The Camera Obscura, p. 9.
126 “The spectators that see not”: Della Porta, Magia naturalis, quoted in J. Hammond, The Camera Obscura, p. 19.
126 “For some days after”: Quoted in J. Hammond, The Camera Obscura, p. 16.
127 In 1292 Guillaume de Saint-Cloud: See M. S. Hammond, “The Camera Obscura,” p. 74.
127 The solar eclipse of January 1544: In 1544 and 1545, the astronomer Erasmus Reinhold, a professor at Wittenberg, also used a camera obscura to observe solar eclipses. See Huerta, Giants of Delft, p. 21, and Wenczel, “The Optical Camera Obscura II,” p. 27. See also M. S. Hammond, “The Camera Obscura,” p. 102.
127 To observe sunspots, Galileo: Kemp, The Science of Art, pp. 191–92.
127 The first to suggest this: Barbaro may have been preceded by Girolamo Cardano, who mentioned using a “glass,” but it is unclear whether Cardano meant that a lens or a concave mirror should be used. See M. S. Hammond, “The Camera Obscura,” p. 162.
127 “make a hole of the size”: Quoted in Wheelock, Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650, pp. 137–38. See also Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 190.
128 Actually, it was sharper: See M. S. Hammond, “The Camera Obscura,” p. 173, and Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, p. 18. Barbaro wrote, “When it pleases you to make the experiment you should choose the glasses which do best, and should cover the glass so much that you leave a little of the circumference in the middle, which should be clear and open, and you will see a still brighter effect.” Quoted in Wheelock, Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650, pp. 137–38.
128 Barbaro himself suggested: See M. S. Hammond, “The Camera Obscura,” p. 172.
128 “painters, astronomers, and”: See ibid., p. 160.
128 Reinerus Gemma Frisius: See ibid., p. 193.
128 Christoph Scheiner: See ibid., p. 214.
129 If a mirror was placed: See ibid., p. 178.
129 The use of a mirror: See Camerota, “Looking for an Artificial Eye,” p. 272.
129 Around this time English: See ibid., p. 274.
129 Della Porta, who wrote: M. S. Hammond, “The Camera Obscura,” pp. 125–26.
129 “One that is skilled”: Della Porta, Magia naturalis, bk. 20 (2nd ed.), xvii.6, quoted in Wenczel, “The Optical Camera Obscura II,” p. 15. Some writers have argued that Della Porta did not intend for artists to use the camera obscura, but meant to suggest only that it could be useful for the picturae ignari, those who are ignorant of the art of painting, but still wish to depict nature, or paint a portrait. See Delsaute, “The Camera Obscura and Paintings in the 16th and 17th Century,” p. 113, and Gorman, “Projecting Nature in Early Modern Europe,” p. 42.
130 He believed that: Della Porta, Magia naturalis, quoted in Wheelock, Persp
ective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650, p. 144. And see Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 191.
130 Della Porta’s book was: See Wheelock, Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650, pp. 143–44. Galileo’s friend Cigoli also recommended the use of the camera obscura as an aid to painters in his 1612 treatise, Prospettiva pratica. See Camerota, “Looking for an Artificial Eye,” p. 264.
130 A man would go inside: In his Ars magna (1646), Athanasius Kircher described a similar setup, a portable camera obscura that would be carried like a sedan chair on horizontal rails by two men. The artist would enter through a trapdoor at the bottom of the box. Kircher’s student Gaspar Schott mentioned his teacher’s device in his book Magia universalis (1657); in the 1677 edition he noted that he had heard from a traveler in Spain of a version of Kircher’s device that was small enough to carry in the arms. See M. S. Hammond, “The Camera Obscura,” p. 284.
130 Kepler himself had coined: Kepler had discussed the room-type camera obscura in a book published in 1604, the Astronomiae pars optica (The optical part of astronomy), but in that discussion he used the term “camera clausa,” a closed chamber or room. There he described a room-type camera obscura, noting that Della Porta had discussed this setup but that “he did not add a demonstration,” meaning that Della Porta did not seem to have used a camera obscura himself, whereas Kepler had. See Kepler, Optics, p. 67.
130 Kepler used the term: The full statement is as follows: “Let a convex lens block the single opening in a dark chamber [camera obscura]. A sheet of paper is placed at the focus [of the lens]. Now by all its rays which radiate onto the lens, a single point of the visible thing is collected again into a single point. Visible objects actually consist of infinitely many points. Therefore, infinitely many such points are painted on the paper, that is, the entire surface of the visible object is depicted there.” Translation from M. S. Hammond, “The Camera Obscura,” p. 212.
130 Through a small aperture: See ibid., p. 201; see also Straker, “Kepler’s Optics.”
Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing Page 41
