So, according to recent theories, were Vermeer and other great artists.
They used a device which transported an image of a scene onto the canvas (can’t remeber the name right now, camera obscura maybe?) Teresa were other devices too hat many artists used. Van Gogh used a “drawing aid” in some of his paintings to get perspective right as he struggled with drawing.
The use of drawing aids for art is pretty common- more so,now that folks have computers and photoshop to experiment with- they can even try out different co,or schemes of a scene before committing to canvas.