Yes, there was a Documentary on cable a month or so ago, hosted by Penn and Teller as to how Vermeer could paint so realistically. The ‘expert’ came up with the idea that he used a device called a ‘camera obscura’ along with a mirror to correctly match the colors of a scene or portrait.
Very interesting if you can find it on cable......
https://www.sonyclassics.com/timsvermeer/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim‘s_Vermeer
I believe it is called camera lucida.
I did see this, can’t remember where.
The artist David Hockney wrote a book about artists (specifically Vermeer) using the camera obscura. He demonstrated that the human eye doesn’t see things the same way a lens, or a device like the camera obscura does, so if certain artifacts appear in a work, it’s a pretty clear indication that the human eye wasn’t the only thing used to record the scene. He also pointed out that Vermeer was a friend of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who was famous for his discoveries with the microscope, but was also a lens crafter - a good person to know if you might be interested in getting better detail and focus from a camera obscura.