I’d like to turn for a moment to astronomical sleuthing, and the work of Donald Olson, Russell Doescher and Doescher’s students who have been working to understand exactly when Johannes Vermeer painted his famous “View on the Delft” painting. 

This Dutch city is now a wild tangle of bikes, cars, and buildings old and new, but in this painting, we see a quieter time, and the combination of lighting and cloud makes it hard to immediately grasp this painting’s time of day. After traveling to Delft to find the location where this was painted, the team is able to say the painting captures roughly 8 am on or about September 3. It’s estimated it was painted no later than 1659. This painting was done from the second floor of an inn that overlooked the city. They were able to sort sightlines and determine where and when they needed to look thanks to tools available in Google Earth. 

This is just the latest in a long series of paintings that Donald Olson and his collaborators have understood through science across several decades. This is really satisfying work that has consistently appeared in Sky and Telescope magazine.

More Information

Texas State University press release