Young Woman with a Water Jug
by Jan Vermeer
Painted about 1662. Vermeer is thought to be one of the first artists to use a camera obscura--a box with a small hole or lens that projects an image onto translucent glass. With the use of the camera obscura, Vermeer was able to paint photograhically accurate perspective and three-dimensional depth through the use of close, slightly out-of focus objects and tiny ovals of bright paint on highlighted edges called discs of confusion, which do not occur naturally and weren't named until seen on early photographs.