1. Museum visitors can see paintings by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Jan Vermeer, but you cannot see how he achieved his remarkable effects. Most of his paintings showed simply furnished household rooms. The people and objects in these rooms seem so real that the paintings resembled photographs. Vermeer’s use of perspective and light would also contribute to the paintings’ realism. Some art historians believe he used a gizmo called a camera obscura. This machine projected an image onto a flat surface so you could draw it. For most experts, Vermeer’s possible use of technological aids does not make his totally fabulous results less impressive. It is agreed by art historians that the paintings are masterpieces. Vermeer’s paintings are admired even more now than they are in his own lifetime.