Circa 1950s "Street in Delft" Vintage Full Color Print After Vermeer

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An excellent First Edition, American Classical, Traditional or Eclectic Style, vintage full color print after oil painting "A Street in … Read more An excellent First Edition, American Classical, Traditional or Eclectic Style, vintage full color print after oil painting "A Street in Delft" (circa 1659) by Vermeer. Comes from a rare First Edition folio of the artist published by Albert Skira in Geneva, Switzerland in the 1950s. Printed on one side. Numbered at the lower right corner: 1. Excellent condition - never framed.

Overall 9.25" W x 11.8" H
Image 8.25" W x 10.1" H

Optical instruments were being manufactured in Delft in Vermeer’s time, and he appears to have been in contact with Leeuwenhoek, who perfected the microscope. It has been conjectured that Vermeer may have used some such optical device as the camera obscura; this would account not only for the focus of certain pictures but also for their luminous intensity. This picture, painted flat in a succession of silhouetted planes, brings to mind a snapshot, and it is in fact this photographic quality in Vermeer which has attracted so many modern artists to him. See less