♪ [Theme Music] ♪
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: Hello.
I'm Sheryl McCarthy of the
City University of New
York. Welcome to One to One.
Today we'll take a trip to
seventeenth century Europe
to learn how two Dutchman,
one a painter, the other
a naturalist, used optical
devices the camera obscura
and the microscope in new
ways to dramatically change
the way we see the world. This
lucky confluence of science
and art occurred several
hundred years before
flight and the modern
computer changed the way
we view the world yet
again. I'm delighted to
welcome historian Laura J.
Snyder to the program.
She's the author of Eye Of
The Beholder; Johannes Vermeer,
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,
and the Reinvention of Seeing.
It's just been published by
WW Norton & Company and
the story is a truly
remarkable one. Welcome.
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Thank
you Sheryl. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: How
did a professor of philosophy
at St John's University go
from Queens to seventeenth
century Holland to write
about science and art?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Well
my work is really involved
with the way that science
is not separate from the rest
of culture, but is meshed in
culture in many different ways.
And my last book, The
Philosophical Breakfast Club,
looked at a moment in the
nineteenth century where I
showed that science became
walled off a little bit from
the rest of culture. That had a
lot to do with the invention
of the word scientist and
the invention of the
scientist as a profession. What
I wanted to do with this book
was go back to a time where
art and science were not seen
as two different undertakings.
Where artists and scientists
like everybody else in culture
were engaged in the same
task and that was looking at
nature in a new way using
these new optical devices.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: So who did
you, who piqued your interest
first was it Vermeer or
was it Leeuwenhoek?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: The
funny thing is I've always loved
Vermeer and I've like everybody
else gone from museum to
museum seeing as many
of his paintings as I can and
when I first moved to New York
again to teach at St John's
I kind of adopted one of the
Vermeer paintings at The Frick
as my own personal painting.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: Which one?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Mistress
and Maid. There are so many
things I love about that
painting, but when I started
writing this book it was
Leeuwenhoek who really piqued
my interest at first, and I was
thinking about doing something
with the discovery of
microscopic life, the invention
of the notion of germs and I
started looking into Leeuwenhoek
and I realized that he was born
the same week as Vermeer,
in the same small town, they
lived so close together their
entire lives and I thought this
is fascinating. Someone
has to write a book about
it. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: Now
most people know about
Vermeer. Very few know
about Leeuwenhoek,
although some people call
him the founder of microbiology.
Why do you think, people
don't know about him?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: I
think a lot of times the
important figures in the
history of science are
overtaken by time and
there have been so many
developments in microbiology,
in the sciences in general
since that time, that many
people don't know who he is.
I think if you ask someone
in the medical profession or
someone a biologist they know
who he is because they consider
him the father of their
fields. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: Describe
the city of Delft in 1674.
It was an amazingly modern
and progressive city compared
to most other cities
in Europe and I guess-
was it called Holland then?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Yes,
Holland was part of the
Dutch Republic. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: Ok, so
was, ok and the Dutch Republic
was a remarkably progressive
country compared to other
countries in Europe.
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: It was, the
Dutch Republic was very small.
It was constantly in danger of
being overtaken by the sea,
most of the land is below sea
level, and yet for a time it
became one of the most
powerful countries in the world.
It had riches, they were
trading all over the world.
They had the first stock market,
and they had what we would
consider in many ways
liberal politics so people-
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: People
were educated. Women were
fairly, fairly equal. 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Yes,
there were very high rates
of literacy even among
girls, which people
traveling from other
countries would remark upon.
People ate well even
workers, we have diaries
from people visiting from
England and France saying
even the workers eat
cheese and vegetables
every day, they were
amazed by that. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: And it
was clean. 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: I was
just going to say that.
It was so clean there were
manuals about how to clean
your house and how important
it was to keep the front
stoop clean so that dirt
wouldn't enter your house.
They kept the
streets very clean, people
could walk along the
streets. I don't think
people realize today how
dirty most countries were
at the time. The way
people moved items and
themselves were by horses
and so horses left a mess,
people would, in other
countries, would just
throw excrement and scraps
from their food out on the
street and so you'd have
to navigate around that to walk.
In the Dutch Republic, the
streets were kept a
really clean. And again
visitors would remark about
how ladies in their fine
shoes could walk along the
streets without worry.
So the Dutch Republic was clean.
People were fed, the
poor people were taken care of,
there was a welfare system,
it really was the place you
would want to live if you
were born in
the seventeenth century.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY:
Vermeer and Leeuwenhoek
were born around, well you
said, was it the same day?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: They
were born the same week.
They were baptized a week
apart. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: And
they lived a block or a few
blocks apart. But we're not
sure if they knew each other
or what kind of relationship
they might have had right?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Yes,
there's no smoking gun.
There's no letter between
the two of them, of course they
live so close together they
would not have written letters.
When I embarked on the project
of writing the book I felt
that it would be wonderful if
I could find some document
proving that they knew each
other, but there is no such
document and as a historian
I cannot then assert that they
definitely knew each
other. However as a writer
imagining life in Delft at
the time it's so hard to
believe they didn't know
each other. Delft had
about twenty thousand
people at the time.
They both, Vermeer and
Leeuwenhoek, lived and
worked in and around the
Market Square, which was
the size of an American
football field minus the
end zones, they both had
positions in the civic
government. They knew
people in common.
There were many connections
between them and then when
Vermeer died Leeuwenhoek
was appointed the executor
of his estate. So again
there is no absolute proof
that they knew each other
but there's a web of
connections that makes it
very unlikely they did not.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY:
Leeuwenhoek started out as
a cloth merchant, later
got a comfortable job as a
civil servant and was after
that basically free to retire
and start
fiddling around with lenses.
How did he get into
experimenting with microscopes?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: We
don't know that for sure,
but we do know that in
Delft at this time there
were lenses all around.
The French philosopher
Rene Descartes when he
came to Amsterdam wrote
about how people would
walk around with
magnifying glasses, called
flee glasses, to examine
the bread and the cheese.
They were fascinated by
little flies that they
could see magnified in
these lenses, they were
fascinated to see that the
dust on the rind of their
cheeses wasn't really dust
but were little mites
crawling around, how they
continued to eat that
cheese I do not know,
but they found it fascinating
so every day people were
walking around with lenses
to examine the world close up.
Artists at the time
were using magnifying
glasses to look at insects
to draw them. They were
using them to look at
flowers to draw those
beautiful detailed flower
paintings that we know of
from that period and other
natural philosophers were
also using lenses. So they
were all around Leeuwenhoek,
we don't know exactly why,
but somehow he decided to
start making his own lenses and
microscopes.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: And what
did his, describe, you have-
is this the kind of microscope
he created or used?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Yes,
this is an exact replica
of the Leeuwenhoek
microscope. It was made by
the Science Museum in
Leiden where they have
five of the eight remaining
Leeuwenhoek microscopes.
He would take a plaque of
brass or sliver about an
inch and a half by half
an inch long, poke a hole,
and in that hole he would put a
tiny little lens that he had-
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: Which
is basically a piece of
ground glass, it's ground
in a certain way. 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Yes,
he would either, at first
he made them out of
melting a rod of glass in
a fire, in a candle flame,
and the glass would drop,
little droplet lenses,
that he would then grind.
Later he blew some lenses.
He was very secretive
about his method so we
don't know exactly,
but how he would use it is the
specimen would be affixed
to the back on the little
pointier or else he would
have a tiny little tube
where he would put a
liquid and the specimen
was moved around by the
use of little screws back
and forth, up and down,
and he would take the
microscope and put it very
close up to one eye and
point it to a tiny stream
of sunlight coming in
through his study or else
at a candle flame
observing in a dark room
at night and he could see
amazing things through it.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: And he
was really able to see,
I mean that's got to be, I
mean just inventing that
is very exacting kind of
process, but he was able
to see much more- now
microscopes have been
around for a while, but he
was able to see much more
with his microscopes than
anybody else had. 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: It was
amazing what he could see.
Others in the Dutch Republic
were using microscopes that
looked much like this. So he
made his entirely by hand,
but he was not the only one
using microscopes that looked
like this, but he was seeing
more than anyone else.
And again he was very secretive
about his method so we don't
know exactly how he
observed, under what
conditions, so we don't
know exactly why he was so
talented. I think it was
in part his patience.
He would spend hours, and
hours, and hours looking
through the lens,
examining something, and
then he would look again,
and again at different
specimens of the same
object for years really on
end and so he was able to
see what other people
maybe just didn't have the
patience to see. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: Was he
the person who first
saw microorganisms?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: He
was, which is amazing to
me if I can only you know
imagine what it must have
been like. He took a little
drop of water from a nearby
lake that used to get
covered over in green from
algae probably, and
certain times of the year.
And he brought it home and
he looked at it in one of
the little tubes he would
affix to the back of his
microscope and he was
probably trying to figure
out why it turned green.
Maybe he thought he'd see
little green particles
inside but instead he saw
a multitude of different
types of creatures and he
knew they were creatures
because they had fins or
little tails and they were
moving themselves and it
must have just been this
moment where it would have
been impossible to imagine
that there were little
creatures there and he
wrote about them with such
delight that it must have
been the most exciting
thing he could have ever
imagined. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: We
tend to think of
microorganisms as being
bad, we tend to think of
them as being germs, but
they are not all bad are they?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER:
They're not all bad.
Leeuwenhoek I think
thought none of them were bad.
He really had an
affection for the creatures.
At a certain point the president
of the Royal Society of
London with whom Leeuwenhoek
corresponded over many
years said to Leeuwenhoek,
why don't you look at the
puss of smallpox victims and
maybe you'll find your little
animals in there. And
Leeuwenhoek resisted that
because he didn't want to
believe that these little
creatures he had seen were
bad and could be causing-
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: This
terrible disease. 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Exactly. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: OK.
We're going to take a break
then we'll be back with more
with Laura J. Snyder,
author of Eye of the Beholder,
after this message.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY:
Welcome back to One to One.
I'm Sheryl McCarthy of the
City University of New York
and I'm talking with Laura J.
Snyder, author of
Eye of the Beholder; Johannes
Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,
and the Reinvention of Seeing.
It's just been published
by WW Norton & Company.
Vermeer was a painter who
you believe used the
camera obscura as an aid
in his painting. What
exactly is a camera obscura?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Well a
camera obscura, which means
dark room in Latin, originally
was just that, it was a room
that was dark with a
tiny aperture, a small hole,
that would be the only
source of light into the room
and it was known since
ancient times that if you had a
small opening like that light
passing through the opening
would have its rays crossed as
it passed through the hole
and it would invert- it would
project an inverted image
on the opposite wall of
what was outside.
Some time in the thirteenth
century astronomers were
using that type of darkroom set
up to observe solar eclipses
and sunspots because it was
dangerous to look directly
at the sun and this way
they could avoid going blind.
By the sixteenth century someone
decided to put a lens into
that little hole and suddenly
the image would become sharper
and it would seem brighter.
And so it was starting to
be suggested as an aid to
painters-
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: And
you've got one right here.
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: I have
one, later by the seventeenth
century, no one knows exactly
when, the entire room was
shrunk down into a small
box, which was the exact set up
of the room type camera
obscura, there would be a tube
with a lens letting in the light
into a box and inside there
would be a mirror to project the
image up to the top of the
box where there is a bit
of glass or plastic now
where you can see the
image being projected in
from the tube with the
lens. Now this needs to be
used in a dark room,
that's why there's this
part here, and these
camera obscura's were used
in the invention of
photography, ultimately,
in the nineteenth century
where if you put in a
paper treated to collect
the light it would fix the
image on to the paper. But
in the seventeenth century
painters were starting to
use these in various ways
and the way I think
Vermeer was using a camera
obscura was not to trace
an image or to project an
image onto a canvas that
he could then draw over
but he used it as an optical
device, as an experimental
device, to learn about
how light works to help us see.
And that's why when we look at
his wonderful paintings from
his later periods we get the
sense that we are eavesdropping
on a scene, that we are seeing
something that's really in
front of us, because he painted
the way the site works for us.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: And it
allowed him to see things
that he wouldn't be able
to see with the naked eye
that the color white had
several different shades
and that to capture light
you have to do it a
certain way, use several
different colors of paint.
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER:
Exactly because again
there's no documentary evidence
that Vermeer or any of the
painters in Delft at the time
were using camera obscura's.
We know they were
using lenses, we know they were
using mirrors, we do
know that other painters in the
seventeenth century and later
were using camera obscura's
but for Vermeer we have to look
at the paintings themselves
and they do provide evidence for
his looking through a camera-
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY:
Because you get this great
detail that you don't get
in other paintings. 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Yes
and he starts painting
phenomena that are not
visible to the naked eye
as you just said. For one
thing not only are colors
more concentrated and
jewel like when you look
at them through a camera
obscura but you notice
different tonal values as
you mentioned with the
white looking differently
in different lights.
Your jacket is white here under
the light, if you went into a
dark room it wouldn't look
white anymore although we
would still see it as white
because our mind compensates,
we know it's the same jacket
but through a camera obscura
it would not look white in
a darker surrounding and
Vermeer started painting
that way. There are wonderful
paintings where the top of
the fur at the top of a jacket
is a bright white and lower
down in the shadow he paints
it with browns and greys.
Similarly with the naked eye
everything is in focus when
we look because our eyes,
the little muscles in our eyes
are constantly adjusting so
right now I'm looking at
you, your in focus,
the cameras also in focus but
as we know when we use an
actual photographic
camera, even our phones,
there's one plane that the
camera can focus on and
everything in front of it
and behind it is a little
bit blurry. And Vermeer
started to paint that way,
for instance in The Lace
Maker, there's thread in
the table in front of the
girl who's working on a
bit of lace and the thread
is so impressionistic,
it's like a blur. And
that's what he would see
through a camera that he
would not see with a naked eye.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: Now,
you mentioned I was very
surprised to learn that
Vermeer painted only about
forty-five paintings in
his lifetime. 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: We think
it's only about forty-five.
There are only about
thirty-three or thirty-five
extist that we know of depending
on if you count some that
some people consider a Vermeer
some people do not and we
know of a few additional to that
that existed at one point that
we've seen entries for in old
auction catalogs but that we
no longer know where they are
and then there probably
were a few more. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: van
Leeuwenhoek, over time,
he became to be acknowledged
as the, as the, I guess the
father of microbiology
and he got a lot of recognition,
interacted with some of the
leading scientists and
other minds of the time.
Did Vermeer have any such
interactions as well?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Vermeer
was known in his time outside
of Delft and people collected
his paintings, he had a patron
we think, who ended
up owning most of his paintings.
But he was known outside of
Delft. Later though I would
say in in the decades after
his death he became less
well known and some of- 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: Which
one? 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Vermeer.
And some of his paintings were
thought to be by somebody
else and it really was only in
the nineteenth century that
Vermeer was rediscovered
perhaps because of the invention
of photography where people
would look at his paintings and
see a very sort of photographic
eye there and he became
appreciated and of course
now revered by many
people. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY:
Constantijn, is it, Huygens-
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: We
can say Huygens,
in Dutch it's different.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: OK.
Was the, I won't use my Dutch-
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: That's OK. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: He
seem to be a third major
player in the book. What
role did he play in the
other two men's lives? 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: He
knew both of them.
We know, we have documentary
evidence that he knew
Leeuwenhoek, he supported
Leeuwenhoek and his
scientific work. He was a
diplomat in the Dutch
Republic. He was an
ambassador and involved in
all sorts of political
machinations. But he was
also an art enthusiast and
an amateur natural
scientist so he would walk
around with one of these
microscopes in his pocket
if he ever needed to pull
it out and look at something.
So he was very interested
in Leeuwenhoek's work
and helped introduce him to
the Royal Society and to other
scientists. We don't know
definitely whether Huygens
knew Vermeer but we do know
that he would go to artist's
studios, he was an early
supporter of Rembrandt before
other people recognized how
great Rembrandt was and
it's almost definitely the
case that he knew Vermeer
so he's a major player in
my book first because he really
exemplifies the gentleman,
who of the time, who was both
interested in art and science
and didn't really see those
as two completely different
endeavors. And he's also
important because I think he was
a linchpin of a way for the two
of them to know each other.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: And
there seemed to be a lot
of these gentlemen, you
know, that science,
was a lot of science was
developed by amateurs.
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Yes.
My earlier book,
The Philosophical Breakfast
Club, is really about the
professionalization of the
scientist and so until the
nineteenth century all
scientists were amateurs.
But what was wonderful
about what was going on in
Delft and in the Dutch Republic
in the seventeenth century
is that even artists were
engaged in
scientific activities, like the
artists who were using the
magnifying glasses to look
at insects and flowers and
Leeuwenhoek would hire artists
to look through his magnifying-
look through his microscopes
and draw what they saw
because in those days
that's the only way to
tell other people what you
had seen is to have
someone draw it and then
send that over to London
to the Royal Society and
Leeuwenhoek said that
sometimes the artists
could see even more than
he could through his
microscope. And I think
that's because in the
beginning of his work in
microscopy the artists
were more experienced than
he was in looking through
lenses. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: You
conclude that Vermeer and
van Leeuwenhoek revolutionized
the way human beings see
the natural world.
What do you mean by that?
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: It was
the first time that people
realized there was more
than meets the naked eye,
which is revolutionary.
Previously people were
wearing spectacles. That
was a way to correct
imperfect vision. It had
never occurred to people
before that you could see
more, that there existed a
world, that you couldn't
see with the naked eye.
So of course Leeuwenhoek and
the other people looking
through microscopes saw
microscopic life, they saw
red blood cells, sperm,
all sorts of things that
you couldn't see with the
naked eye. And I see what
the artists were doing in
Delft as being quite
similar, especially Vermeer.
He was seeing what other
artists hadn't seen or maybe
what other artists hadn't
noticed or paid attention to
before. The way that shadows
are not gray or brown but
sometimes green and blue and
yellow and the way that colors
look different in different
lights, like the white fur
that we were talking about.
And the way that sometimes
a hand just looks like a
lump and not a perfect hand
depending on how you see it.
So in that sense I see both
artists and scientists of
the time changing our idea
that there is more
than meets the naked eye.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: What
do you want your readers
to take away from the
book? 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Many
things but I guess the one
message is that art and
science are not so
different from each other.
That even today artists
and scientists are both
trying to see the world in
new ways. And if you go
back, if you went back to
the seventeenth century
and you asked Vermeer or
Leeuwenhoek or the people
around them, are you an
artist or a scientist, I
think they wouldn't have
understood the question
because they were both
doing, they were all doing
the same kind of thing,
looking through whatever
new technologies were
available to them to understand
how we perceive the world.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: We've
got a minute left for you
to tell us what you're
working on next. 
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Well I
have a project in mind.
I am working on another book
that looks at how science
and other parts of culture
are connected and I am
concentrating on science
and politics and religion.
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: Wow. You're
making a lot of leaps here.
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: I like
to make leaps. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: I see,
I see. Well I've found this
book fascinating. There's
the science and there's a sort
of novelistic approach to it,
but it's very readable and I
think it would be very
accessible to a lot of people
who are interested in a subject
they probably hadn't
thought about before.
>>>LAURA J. SNYDER: Thank you. 
>>>SHERYL MCCARTHY: We're
out of time. I want to thank
Laura J. Snyder for
joining me. Eye of the Beholder,
a scholarly and eminently
readable book, has just
been published by
WW Norton & Company.
For the City University of New
York and One to One,
I'm Sheryl McCarthy.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪
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