A 2013 documentary titled Tim’s Vermeer tells the story of an inventor and art enthusiast—the titular Tim—as he attempts to reverse-engineer The Music Lesson by seventeenth-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. Tim sought to test a controversial hypothesis circulating in the art world that Vermeer’s uncanny ability to capture gradations of light and color in his paintings could be attributed to his use of a camera obscura. Vermeer, the theory goes, employed this rudimentary projection device in conjunction with a mirror to provide a steady point of reference as he captured images on his canvas, contributing to the photo-realistic effect of his work.