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27.11.2018 Vermeer's in the Context of the of Painting (part 2)

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home vermeer catalogue glossary painting technique vermeer events vermeer bookshop Vermeer 's Painting in the Context of the Dutch VERMEER: CONTEXT Golden Age of Painting (part three) cultural backdrop: classicism & the hierarchy of subject matter subject matter in dutch painting, Vermeer 's Subject Matter artistic training & technique vermeer 's subject matter Vermeer 's choice of subject matter was of capital importance to his concept of art. No matter how Vermeer news masterfully his works are depicted, it would be incorrect to assume that he painted for the sake of painting vermeer 's subject matter: women and that subject matter was secondary to aesthetics. His range of subjects, although not large, provided a Facebook reservoir of images that permitted him to reach deep and experiment universal emotions. His are Vermeer FAQ arresting for their lack of clear-cut narrative, for their externalization of seemingly inconsequential moments.1 Art bookshops Not a single still life, nude, oil study, finished or preparatory drawing, copy,2 etching or engraving by Vermeer slideshow Vermeer has survived. All 36 (?) surviving paintings must be considered finished works, executed according to the high standards set by the artist, except perhaps, for the four heads (tronien) whose degree of finish, Digital images although aesthetically effective, is more abbreviated in respects to those of the interiors and landscapes. About Nor is there any evidence that Vermeer collaborated with other artists or artisans. The artist worked slowly, The Emergence of Dutch Painting producing two, three or four highly finished pieces a year. His production is very limited even when compared to artists who painted small pictures in a similar time-consuming mode. Some landscape painters from: of Art website are know to have depicted more than one thousand works in their lifetimes. http://www.nga.gov/collection/ gallery/dutch.shtm The unusually slender dimension of Vermeer 's opus testifies to the artist 's elevated ambitions. Every The emergence of the Dutch school of component of theme and composition are so meticulously calculated that he could paint no more. painting in the early seventeenth century is one of the most remarkable phenomena in More than half of Vermeer 's entire artistic production had been absorbed by a single patron, the rich the history of the visual arts. The Dutch Pieter van Ruijven (1624–1674). Only a patron could provide economic protection to an artist who worked Republic, a small country that had only become a political entity in 1579 and was so slowly. It seems plausible that Van Ruijven3 had styled himself as a patron of the arts along the lines of still suffering from the effects of a long and his distant cousin François Spiering (c. 1576–1630) who had paid 500 guilders of the right of first option on arduous war with Spain, would hardly seem the works of , the most sought-after painter of the late . In the free-market climate of to have had the resources to nourish and such long-term arrangements between collectors and painters were rare. sustain its artistic traditions. Nonetheless, in every respect, the Dutch seem to have drawn Vermeer 's paintings were referred to in his own times with terms such as "perspectives," "little dandies" strength from adversity; they profited in (jonkertjes),4 and "a gay company" (Een vrolyk geselschap).5 The term "little dandies," meaning well- terms of trade, political awareness, religious tolerance, wealth and above all, self-esteem. dressed figures painted in small scale, was also used describe works by and Eglon van They were proud of their achievements and der Neer. were determined to provide for themselves a broad and lasting foundation that would Vermeer worked in the following categories: define their unique social and cultural heritage. 1. history painting - 2 surviving works The political and religious attitudes of the 2. brothel scenes (boortelije) - 1 surviving work period are not readily apparent in the work of Dutch artists. The still lifes, portraits, 3. views of a daily life (genre) - 27 surviving works landscapes, seascapes and genre scenes that characterize this school of painting are 4. landscape - 2 surviving works surprisingly lacking in information on the 5. - 4 surviving works major events of the day. Nevertheless, the philosophical bases from which artists worked are clearly the same as those History painting governing decisions in contemporary Although history painting was no longer the dominant art form in the Netherlands a number of Dutch history political, military and religious activities. This ideology was essentially threefold: that painters prospered in Vermeer 's time. A few, such as Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt (1567–1641) or Cesar God 's work is evident in the world itself; van Everdingen (1616/17–buried October 13, 1678) and Jan de Bray (c.1627–1697), had attained that, although things in this world are mortal prestigious commissions from the court at and financial success. Van Mierevelt and his and transitory, no facet of God 's creation is burgeoning studio churning out hundreds of portraits and allegorical subjects to suit the conservative, too insubstantial to be noticed, valued, or aristocratic vision of the court of The Hague. Vermeer 's foray into the history painting tells us something represented; and that the Dutch, like the ancient Israelites, were a chosen people, about his lofty ambitions and, likely, the type of training he received although neither the whereabouts nor favored and blessed by God 's protection. the master with whom he studied are known. Underlying the essential realism of Dutch Other than the and her Companions and Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Vermeer is known art, thus, is an allegorical view of nature that to have painted a Jupiter, Venus and Mercury and a Visit to the Tomb. The art historian Arthur K. Wheelock provided a means for conveying various messages to contemporary viewers. The Jr. has also attributed to Vermeer a youthful copy the Saint Praxedis originally painted by the Italian painter Dutch, with their ingrained Calvinist beliefs, Felice Ficherelli. This attribution has not been accepted by many in the Dutch community. were a moralizing people. While they thoroughly enjoyed the sensual pleasures of In the first of the two canvases, the , the treatment of light is conventional and life, they were aware of the consequences of the three-dimensional spaces is anything but coherent. The planimetric organization of the painting 's wrong behavior. Paintings, even those surface shows little, if none, of the sophistication of his later works. Nonetheless, these few years of artistic representing everyday objects and events, often provide reminders about the brevity of incubation were not without significance for his pictorial evolution. life and the need for moderation and temperance in one 's conduct. Subjects Although important from an art historical point of view, had the two surviving history paintings not been by drawn from the Bible, mythology and the hand of Vermeer, it is likely they would fade into the panorama of competent Dutch history painters ancient history, likewise, were often chosen which enthuse art historians more than the art going public. for their moralizing messages or for establishing parallels between the Dutch experience and great historical, literary and political events of the past. http://www.essentialvermeer.com/dutch-painters/context/context_03.html#.W_0sE-hKhPY 1/8 27.11.2018 Vermeer's Painting in the Context of the Dutch Golden Age of Painting (part 2) Bordeeltje The bordeeltje genre which dealt in mercenary love had long been popular with Netherlandish artists. In the sixteenth century, the pictorial tradition of the brothel was closely associated with the New Testament parable of the Prodigal Son (Saint Luke 15:11-32) who squandered his inheritance on wine, women and song. However, like many other traditional genre themes, during the first decades of the seventeenth century, the brothel scene became gradually distanced from its religious origins and took on a life of its own.

In 1658, the 26-year-old Vermeer painted his first dated work, Procuress, different in atmosphere, execution and subject matter in respects to the history works. It is not known why the young artist changed so abruptly his artistic course and embraced the so-called bordeeltjes subject. Perhaps, after expected commissions from the Johannes Vermee r nearby court of The Hague failed to materialize, the 1656 Oil on canvas, 14 3 x 130 cm. young painter may have wished to be more in tune with Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dres den his times even though the motif had already been exploited for decades.

Although the subject of prostitution seems entirely out of key in respects to his later production, it should be remembered that Vermeer was brought up in his father 's inn where drinking, shouting and betting must have been the norm. Sex peddling, if not witnessed directly on the premises of Mechelen, must have been unavoidable to some degree for anyone who moved about urban centers.

The Procuress, which had close precedents in the Loose Loose Company Company by Van Baburen (see image left) and A Concert by Jan Gerritsz van Bronkhorst, is perhaps the first of a 1623 Oil on canvas, 11 0 x 154 cm. long line of borrowed compositions on which Vermeer Gemäldegalerie, Mainz would re elaborate his works according to his own

sensitivity.

Particularly notable is the Delft painter 's detached treatment of the hot-blooded convention. Although the cocky and/or drunk rake makes no secret of his intentions —his hand is unceremoniously plopped flat upon the young prostitute 's breast—never was a member of the world 's oldest profession was decked out with such fine lace, chaste headgear and a dress pulled so tightly around the young prostitute 's neck that it leaves literally The Procuress everything to be imagined. Compare Vermeer 's rendition

Gerrit van Honthorst to The Procuress by Gerrit van Honthorst (see image 1625 Oil on panel, 71 x 104 cm. above), one of the most successful exemplars of the

Centraal Museum, Utrecht motif.

Recently restored, Vermeer 's Procuress now exhibits a chromatic intensity that bridges the tempered palette of his early history paintings with the brilliant color schemes of the two interior genre scenes which soon followed, and the Officer and Laughing Girl.

Genre In any case, Vermeer abandoned the bordeeltje motif even more hastily than he had abandoned history painting turning to scenes of every-day life, or what modern art historians call "genre."

Vermeer painted 26 genre scenes. Only one represents a member of the lower class, The Milkmaid. In Vermeer 's time, interior pieces were commonly identified as "merry companies." Two, or perhaps three of his genre scenes can be considered allegorical: , The and . The latter was very likely a commissioned by some religious individual or group.

Today, all of Vermeer 's interiors are referred to as genre paintings, or more specifically, genre interiors. The term "genre," which in French means "kind" or "type," was established the late 18th century by French academic theorists (the word genre was probably used in this sense for the first time toward the end of the 18th century by French writer Quatremère de Quincy). Different than a history painting that represents a decisive moment of a written narrative, either Biblical or Classical, with identifiable figures, a represents a situation with anonymous people. In many genre paintings, certain common objects (e.g. musical instruemnts, bird cages, foot warmers slippers or brooms) are deliberately pictured for the symbolic meaning they might give to the situation. Genre painting enjoyed enormous popularity in Northern Europe, particularly in the seventeenth century.

In Vermeer 's times, there was no such catch-all definition to describe scenes of daily life. Pictures were defined more specifically. There were merry companies "gezelschapjes," conversation pieces "conversaties," character heads "tronien," brothel scene "bordeeltjes" or guard room scenes "kortengarden." Despite their middling status in contemporary theory, these kleyne beuzelingen (little trifles) were produced in great quantity and frequently fetched large sums. http://www.essentialvermeer.com/dutch-painters/context/context_03.html#.W_0sE-hKhPY 2/8 27.11.2018 Vermeer's Painting in the Context of the Dutch Golden Age of Painting (part 2)

The most popular motifs of genre painting evolved considerably over the span of a few generations. Compositions and subject matter were reiterated, juggled about, fused and updated. Some styles became more sophisticated. The of took the opposite direction taken by many Dutch painters, who abbreviated techniques in order to increase their output, dedicating the utmost energy to achieving a virtually microscopic level of detail and balanced compositions. While many Dutch works could be purchased for 10 or 20 guilders on the open market those of fijnschilders could fetch 500, 1,000 or more guilders, the price of an average house. Only the economic elite could afford works. By the 18th century, the popularity of genre painting in the Netherlands was eclipsed somewhat by a taste for larger- scale decorative works. It was customary among painters of high finish to charge for the time he worked on a painting, using and hourly rate.

Genre themes, often inspired by earlier Dutch works, remained popular in the oeuvres of French artists Jean Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), and Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732– 1806).

It is generally held that the first true genre interiors were painted by Willem, Buytewech, or "Gheestige Willem" (Witty Willem) as he was called. Although crude in comparison to Vermeer 's quietist haute-bourgeoisie interiors, Buytewech 's ground-breaking interior spaces of the late were replete with wall maps and groups smartly dressed damsels and dandies, more or less wiling away their youth in frivolous pastimes. Brightly colored figures occupy a shallow interior, "pressing on us their enjoyment of music, wine and those notorious aphrodisiacs, oysters. But rather than communicating an obvious narrative, the figures are posed in attitudes of merriment, swagger and romance." 6

During the decades that followed, interior painting slowly became more refined.

Merry Company Buytewech 's merry companies evolved into the Willem Buytewech hushed interiors of Gerrit ter Borch with one or 1620 Oil on canvas, 65. 4 x 72.6 cm. two figures quietly engaged in refined activities Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest such as letter writing or letter reading (no doubt love letters with a Petrachan slant). Buytewech 's garish palette gave way to Ter Borch faint powder blues and pinks and Vermeer 's impalpable grays, sky blues and light lemon yellows. After a full 50 years, the happy chaos of Buytewech 's mixed-up compositions were replaced by Vermeer 's quietist, pas pro toto interiors.

The pursuit of lifelikeness, a preoccupation of Northern painting since Jan van Eyck, can said to have reached its technical apogee in the last decades of the 1600s and 1670s when Vermeer was active.

Landscape "By mid-century, it [landscape] was the most widely produced and collected category of painting and, on average, one of the most affordable. While landscape encompassed numerous modes, from the pastoral to the allegorical, its least assuming theme was its most innovative: the local land."7

In general, it can be said that monetary value coincided with a hierarchical order and the size of the paintings. Larger historical paintings receiving the most amount and small floral paintings receiving the least. The convenient price and availability of landscape paintings made them the art form of the middle-class.8

Vermeer painted two landscapes which have suruvued, or more precisely, one , theThe and one streetscape, The Little Street. A surviving document informs us another streetscape existed.

The View of Delft is Vermeer 's largest and most time consuming work of his oeuvre, except perhaps, the elaborate Art of Painting. Since nothing has come down to us concerning the artist 's intentions in regards this (or for that matter, any other work) art historians have felt obliged to somehow fill the gap. Walter Liedtke believes that the view could have been commissioned by Vermeer 's patron, Pieter van Ruijven who had collected more than half of the artist 's artistic production including the View of Delft. Furthermore, the art historian points out that Van Ruijven 's collection the two small-scale streetscapes already mentioned as well as three architectural paintings by Emanuel de Witte, including a patriotic view of William the Silent 's tomb in the which Vermeer spectacularly highlighted in his View of Delft. Van Ruijven would have also been aware of the historically proclaimed relation between an artist 's reputation and the fame bestowed on his city. Dutch citizens strongly identified not only with their republic, but with their city of birth as well. Their civic pride is testified by innumerable Dutch many of which are so similar to one another that they are virtually indistinguishable expect a few characteristic church towers or large civic buildings.

Curiously, even the earliest reference to The Little Street describes it as a "house" rather than a "street." As in few other Dutch townscapes, the intimacy of domestic life prevails over mere architectural features. In those times, Vermeer 's house was not the kind of luxurious townhouse that was going up on the fashionable Oude Delft but a modest house from a distant past which had somehow resisted the misfortunes of the city, old but not dilapidated. To anyone who gazed upon the Little Street in seventeenth- century Netherlands the now unfamiliar Dutch term, schilderachtig, would have come to mind. Schilderachtig, which means "picture worthy" or "worthy of painting" corresponds fairly well to today 's "picturesque." However, in the seventeenth century, Italian concepts of art, one of which was that the worth of a painting was indivisible from the value of its subject, continued to weigh heavily upon European http://www.essentialvermeer.com/dutch-painters/context/context_03.html#.W_0sE-hKhPY 3/8 27.11.2018 Vermeer's Painting in the Context of the Dutch Golden Age of Painting (part 2)

painting. Accordingly, an old woman, a dilapidated farmhouse, a village peasant scene or Vermeer 's humble house would have drawn sneers since only grand Biblical or historical narratives were truly worthy of great art.

What do Vermeer 's genre paintings mean? For centuries it was believed that Dutch painters, Vermeer included, represented real-life situations to the best of their ability and little more. However, modern art historians argue that such narrow view of a Vermeer 's production does not do justice to the artist 's complex agenda or the seventeenth-century mind set in which the artist created his works. As the Dutch art historian Eddy de Jongh wrote, scholars "usually do not doubt Vermeer 's intention of investing his work with meaning. The question is merely what that meaning was and, above all, whether it still can be deciphered."9 In Vermeer 's time, subject matter was not disparaged, even though it was frequently determined by market opportunity, nor had it become a handy excuse to perform experiments in paint and visual perception as for Cézanne and the moderns who followed. The idea that an artist could have arranged multiple figures in an anonymous landscape such as Cézanne 's Large Bathers for the sake of aesthetics interest was inconceivable in Vermeer 's time.

Inspired by Erwin Panofsky 's revolutionary study of iconography in Italian art, the Dutch iconographic movement (spearheaded by De Jongh) postulated that Vermeer and his fellow Dutch painters were not only talented all-eyes-and-no-brain realists after all, but thinkers who cleverly incorporated hidden messages in their illusionist images in order to "instruct and delight." De Jongh connected the Dutch moralizing tendency, manifested in immensely popular emblematic literature, to contemporary works of art claiming that certain common objects such as stockings, muscial instruments, bird cages, bubbles or arrows, often stand for other things and even for abstract ideas. Dutch thought was characterized by an "enormous fascination" with analogies, metaphor, paradox "as well as anything that was (or appeared to be) multilayered or open to a variety of interpretations."10 For example, De Jongh was the first to hypothesize that the background Cupid painting-within-a-painting of Vermeer 's late Lady Standing with a Virginal was deliberately inserted to comment on the scene which unfolds below via a well know emblem by Otto van Veen that displays a similar Cupid holding an upheld card. The emblem 's motto, "Perfectus Amor est nisi ad unum," states that perfect love is but for one lover. Thirty years later, however, De Jongh would, admit with the intellectual honesty that distinguishes his thought, that he was uncertain exactly how the painter intended the inserted moral to function. Was Cupid 's message a confirmation of the young musician 's solid moral standards or was he "confronting her precisely because her conduct was not above reproach"? Could Vermeer have directed the moral to the viewer of the painting instead of the musician or, perhaps, "left all the interpretations open inviting the viewer to make a choice, or a combination of choices."

Since the fifteenth century, when theorists sought to elevate the status of the painter by contending that he dealt in "ideas" worthy of the philosopher or the poet, the lesser genres of Dutch painting had suffered in comparison with Italian history painting. "While the Italians were credited with powers of generalizing and abstracting, the Dutch were typically seen as content to engage in what Reynolds termed the "mere mechanical labour of copying."11 In its heyday, iconography 's explanatory appeared particularly compelling because it challenged the hitherto unquestioned habit of considering Dutch paintings mirrors of contemporary life. Bestowing narrative value to Vermeer 's works made them more worthy of intellectual appreciation.

One of the weak points of the iconographic argument, lamented even by its founder De Jongh, is that there exists no t a single period text that deals in any detail the concept "hidden meaning" in reference to genre painting. Moreover, there is no way to show that "a moral purpose, even if it can be shown to have been explicitly declared by painters or collectors, was more than a pretext for the gratifications" 12 offered by the painting 's illusionist image. In too many cases, symbols appeared to have had multiple meanings, often contradictory, making once-and-for-all interpretations near impossible. De Jongh later widened his own theory to include the possibility of deliberate ambiguity and multivalence. The most sustained period discussion of genre painting by de Lairesse in, "Handelende van 't antiek en 't modern" ("Of things antique and modern"), part of de Lairesse 's exhaustive examination of history painting of in the Groot Schilderboek, makes no mention of concealed meaning or any kind of meaning at al. On the contrary, the theoretician laments that "modern" painting accomplishes little more than representing what meets the eye without any attempt to improve or ennoble it.

Some art writers have come to resent the fact that iconographers have brought many to believe that pictures should be looked upon as puzzles, or as "a ciphered text…or a skeleton hidden in a cupboard…always there waiting to be found, somehow behind the painting…" as if, "the painted work had committed a crime…"13 If Dutch paintings were reminders that pleasure is fleeting and death inevitable, "one begins to wonder why so many people were eager to buy them. It is hard to believe that what has been called the first mass-consumers' art market in Europe was mainly driven by a collective appetite for moralizing..."14

Vermeer as a Describer In 1984, Svetlana Alpers, albeit quietly, declared intellectual war on the idea that Dutch paintings could be read like texts. Her major contention is that Dutch painting could be summed up as an "art of description." In Dutch culture, she hails, information could be perceived, assimilated, used and enjoyed in purely visual terms; that is, without the interposition of language. It could not be understood within the terms of the dominant Italian "textual culture," which, instead, sought emblematic, allegorical or philosophical meanings in a serious painting.15 Thus, the meaning of seventeenth-century Dutch art is not to be sought beneath the pictorial surface but is made visible on it. According to Alpers, Vermeer 's View of Delft provides a perfect example of how Dutch painters described "a world that continues beyond the canvas," spread out, "staining the surface with colour and light, impressing itself upon it."

Alpers' point of view was initially well received. Didactic moralizing, teasing, humor and sexual innuendos that the iconographers had seen as typical preoccupations of Dutch painting, were out: science; optics, philosophy and the means by which pictorial illusion is achieved were in. Soon afterwards, writers began to http://www.essentialvermeer.com/dutch-painters/context/context_03.html#.W_0sE-hKhPY 4/8 27.11.2018 Vermeer's Painting in the Context of the Dutch Golden Age of Painting (part 2)

associate Vermeer 's name with Descartes and Plato, something that would have astonished even the artist 's most fervent admirers of past decades.

Alpers' position did not escape criticism. Ivan Gaskell wrote, "Her almost insuperable difficulty… is that without the interposition of language there can be, and indeed there virtually are, no texts which can be used directly to support the theory. Inevitably she must rely heavily on inference and analogy."16 The British art historian Nicholas Penny countered Alpers' argument with a down to earth argument: "surely the artists were doing what good shopkeepers had always done: they meant to entice and intrigue, to whet the appetite and to tease the eye, rather than to provide reliable information–for Martians–about pies, watches or lemons." In effect, applying Alpers' criterion to some of the Vermeer 's key works may be missing a good share some of the artist 's point. The Woman Holding a Balance, the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher and the Woman with a Pearl Necklace have all the air of having meant to be highly personalized "visions" that run deep beneath the canvas rather than "surface descriptions."

The Early Works In the late 1650s, Vermeer 's art takes a decisive and well-focused thematic direction. The transformation from a history painter to a genre painter seems not to have been an easy one. Nothing in his early works would have prepared him for the complex undertaking of orienting a figure within a realistic architectural space or depicting naturalistic light effects.17 In these works we can feel both natural solidity of the objects and the space, but not yet air, that divides them. Although his rooms are filled with light and space, the world he depicts is essentially a tactile one. Tactile too, is the application of paint.

The Glass of Wine (detail) According to many experts, Vermeer was a late-comer to the field of genre painting. The c. 1658–1661 Oil on canvas, 65 x 7 7 cm. most significant genre themes18 he was to Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kultu rbesitz, exploit time and time again had been pioneered Gemäldegalerie, by other painters of lesser talent such as Nicolas Maes (1634–1693), Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667). In particular, (1629–1684), one of the most beloved painters of the Netherlands, is believed to have pioneered the light-filled, left-hand corner of the room motif on which Vermeer built much of his oeuvre.

Historians have shown that Vermeer derived his compositions from those in circulation. After all, artistic originality did not have the same priority that it has today. Connoisseurs were capable of discerning nuance and craftsmanship which distinguished his works from the endearing, yet unsettling clumsiness of genre figures by De Hooch. However, even if Vermeer depended on his colleagues for his themes, he brought an intellectual and moral depth to genre painting which seemed foreign to the humane light-heartedness and friendly warmth prized by Dutch art lovers. As Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. has pointed out, "the challenge he seems to have set for himself in the late 1650s was to translate the classicizing tendencies of his early religious and mythological paintings into a con temporary idiom..." Thus, Vermeer 's foray into history painting was to serve him well to the end of his career. One of his most unusual talents consisted in his ability to perceive great potential in minor works of art.

Maturity: Works of the 1660s. In the 1660s, the rugged surface of the early genre scenes gives way to a sheen typical of works of the fijnschilders Van Mieris. Rather than the hollow, box-like spaces of the earlier interiors, Vermeer seems to concentrate on creating shallow envelopes of luminous space. The most characteristic compositions of this period portray single female figures absorbed in some silent activity, each one set in a subtly different lighting condition. Attention is focused on their intimate thoughts and emotions rather than on their social role. In these so-called "pearl pictures" the figures and ground are more tightly bound to the planimetric framework of the canvas than in the earlier box-like constructions.

Perspective no longer plays the same dramatic role in defining space that it did in the first interiors. As one Vermeer writer pointed out, rather than the illusion of tactile nearness, Vermeer pursues the illusion of distance defining the psychological space which divides the protagonist 's thoughts and emotions from those of the observer.

Through the distillation and purification of formal elements, unique in Dutch painting, Vermeer obtains the legendary effect of timelessness for which this particular group of works has long been noted. Every object assumes its place within a carefully balanced composition and the viewer feels that nothing could be added or subtracted without disturbing the painting 's stillness.

In the early 1660s Vermeer executed four small canvases eloquently named the "pearl pictures" by Lawrence Gowing which are among the artist 's most lucidly conceived yet enigmatic works: Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, Woman Holding a Balance, and Woman with a Pearl Necklace. The Young Woman with a Water Pitcher has been added to the group, obviously, not with the intention to revise Gowing 's well-known term, but because the painting bears important compositional affinities with the four other pictures.

The subject matter of the pearl pictures is restricted to the figure of a single woman, seen in profile, who momentarily engages in some discreet activity in a left-hand corner of a room, very near a window. While http://www.essentialvermeer.com/dutch-painters/context/context_03.html#.W_0sE-hKhPY 5/8 27.11.2018 Vermeer's Painting in the Context of the Dutch Golden Age of Painting (part 2)

persistent iconographical interpretations seem to have successfully illuminated the story behind the Woman Holding a Balance, the others have resisted interpretative attempts with more success. Nonetheless, a common theme that unites the women 's activities might be thoughtful reflection (or distraction).

Even by Vermeer 's standards, the scenes of these works are organized with exceptional economy utilizing a table with a single woman, a meager still life, a few carefully chosen props, a map or painting on the background wall and one or two chairs (infrared reflectograms reveal that the original version of Woman with a Pearl Necklace once displayed a large wall map behind the standing girl). All of the movable objects are structurally simple although some are adorned with elaborate decorative elements (ex. Turkish carpets and large wall maps).

Four of the five pictures show a slice of a window to the left and four display chairs (a second chair once occupied the lower left-hand corner of the composition of the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher). All the scenes are staged against a simple, white-washed wall set parallel to the picture plane. The particular hue and tonal values of the white-washed walls are key to establishing the direction, intensity and quality of the incoming light and constitute an unsung technical tour de force of the artist 's oeuvre.

But more than for their parts, exquisite as some of them may be, these works have invited scrutiny for the way in which these parts are artfully arranged. They bear prominent three-dimensional and, perhaps, planimetric compositional analogies, not only for the visual evidence that they exhibit today, but for some elements that were once part of the original compositions but subsequently revised or cancelled by the artist. Set side by side, the pearl pictures encourage comparison and perhaps disclose something about how the artist thought through one work after another, combining similar compositional elements with utmost care to obtain autonomous artistic statements. There is no evidence that Vermeer conceived these pictures as part of a group, intended to be hung and appreciated together..

Later Works By the 1670s, Vermeer had mastered every facet of painting technique and the excellent state of many of these works testifies to the fact. Overpainting is less frequent than before. Not a single compositional change has been discovered, either through microscopic analysis, infrared photography, or x-radiography, in The Art of Painting, one of Vermeer 's most complicated pictorial constructions.

Contours had become again sharp and paint is applied with the utmost economy. In some areas paint has been applied so thinly that the underlying ground can be clearly observed. This fact has lead some scholars to believe a few of the paintings, such as and the Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, were left unfinished. Vermeer 's brushwork increasingly frees itself from descriptive function and is so calligraphic that flirts with the virtuoso. Here and there a sense of brittleness becomes apparent especially appreciable in the modeling of the human forms.

The abstraction of form take on the utmost importance, so much that some parts of the paintings acquire an independent existence even though the stylistic idiosyncrasies which are characteristic of this period can no longer be explained by camera obscura vision or optical considerations. "The accents of color Vermeer used to indicate the folds of the woman 's dress or the exquisite decorative rose of the guitar in The Guitar Player, for example, are seen first and foremost as paint, and then only secondarily as descriptive of material texture." The Love Letter has the air of fine, exotic inlay.

The faces of some of the figures, such as that of The Guitar Player, appear conventionally rendered even though they remain agreeable. One has the sensation that the psychological introspection of the Girl with a Pearl Earring or is either no longer of interest to the mature artist or simply no longer requested by the market that favored the new, if somewhat artificial French style. Nevertheless, pictorial constructions of great subtlety and originality like and the Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid dispel notions of an artistic decline.

Tronien Vermeer painted in all four , the iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring, her "sister" Study of a Young Lady and two tiny panes of odd-looking women sporting somewhat outlandish hats. It is paramount to understand that none of these works were meant to function as a formal portrait. Tronies were not commissioned pieces. Tronies were probably sold on spec.

The term "tronie," which derived from the French "trogue," refers to "heads" or "faces" which had been popularized by and his followers. Even though the tronie represents a bust length single figure, it is not a portrait in the seventeenth-century meaning of the word. In contemporary usage, tronie might cover any picture of an unidentified sitter, but in modern art-historical usage it is typically restricted to figures who do not seem to have been intended to be identifiable. The tronie furnished the artist an opportunity to demonstrate his ability in rendering some kind of exotic garment or characteristic facial types that struck him in particular. The artist wearing exotic headgear, the dashing soldier or the "Turkish archer" were favorite tronies.

"The troni with its anonymous models doing and meaning next to nothing, was perfect for collectors who wanted an affordable proof of the mastery of a given painter. This master made himself recognizable by his personal style, his signature and sometimes also by depicting his own features. Van de Wetering explains that the production of personalized "collector 's items" was a new function of the 'tronie' that did not replace its earlier functions."19

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1. Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution, and New Haven: Press, 2004, 4. http://www.essentialvermeer.com/dutch-painters/context/context_03.html#.W_0sE-hKhPY 6/8 27.11.2018 Vermeer's Painting in the Context of the Dutch Golden Age of Painting (part 2) 2. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. believes the Saint Praxedis is a copy of a work of an Italian artist, Felice Ficherelli but few scholars have followed the attribution. 3. The research by John Michael Montias has shown that the overall net worth of Van Ruijven and his wife Maria de Knuijt 's estate, 24,829 guilders, was one of the largest in all of Delft at that time. See: John Michael Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1989. 246ff. See also Montias, "'Recent Archival Research on Vermeer" in Vermeer Studies, eds. Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker, Washington D.C., New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998, 93–99. 4. In a list of "present-day" painters and their subjects completed between 1669 and 1678 by Jan Sysmus, city surgeon of ,: "Van der Meer. Little Dandies [jonkertjes]…Delft. This information is drawn from, Albert Blankert, "Vermeer 's Modern Themes and Their Traditions," inexh. cat. Johannes Vermeer, eds. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Ben Broos, London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, 32. 5. See catalogue of Dissius auction of 21 paintings by Vermeer in 1696, catalogue number 9. 6. Willem Pietersz. Buytewech, Web Art Gallery, http://www.wga.hu/html_m/b/buytewec/merrycom.html 7. Mariet Westermann, A Worldly Art: The 1585–1718, New Haven and : Yale Universtiy Press, 1996, 104. 8. Peter C. Sutton, Masters of 17th-Century Dutch , : Museum of Fine Arts, 1987, 104–120. 9. Eddy de Jongh,. "On Balance," Vermeer Studies, in Vermeer Studies, eds. Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker, National Gallery of Art Washington D.C., New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998, 351. 10. Eddy de Jongh, "Frans van Mieris: Questions of Understanding," Frans van Mieris: 1635–1682, Zwolle, 2005, 46 11. Ruth Bernard Yeazell, "Merry Companies," review of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution, London Review of Books, Wayne Franits. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n02/ruth-bernard-yeazell/merry-companies 12. Nicholas Penny, "Paintings about Paintings," review of The Art of Describing, Svetlana Alpers, London Review of Books. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v05/n14/nicholas-penny/paintings-about-painting 13. Didi-Huberman, George. "The Art of not Describing: Vermeer—the Detail and the Patch." History of the Human Sciences, 1989; 2; 155. 14. Ruth Bernard Yeazell, "Merry Companies," reveiw of Dutch 17th-century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution, Wayne Franits, London Review of Books. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n02/ruth- bernard-yeazell/merry-companies 15. Alpers maintained that in Holland the visual culture was central to the life of the society and that the eye was a central means of self-representation and visual experience. While the English defined themselves most fully through theatre, "self-conscious" image making played that role for the Dutch. 16. Ivan Gaskell, reveiw of The Art of Describing, Svetlana Lapers, The Oxford Art Journal, v. 7:1 (1984), 57. 17. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Vermeer and the Art of Painting, New York and New Haven: Yale University Press. 1995, 39. 18. Unlike history painting, a genre picture does not generally refer to a written text. Rather, it relates to a very different area, to the popular, often crude and simplistic, metaphorical interpretations of the world. The genre scene always presents a situation which gains moral meaning through the introduction of key symbols. Many of the symbols were drawn from popular literature, proverbs or Dutch emblem books which were immensely popular at the time. 19. Groningen Lyckle de Vries, reveiw of Tronie und Porträt in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Hirschfelder, Dagmar, Berlin 2008. In: H-ArtHist, Feb 9, 2011 (accessed Nov 17, 2012), http://arthist.net/reviews/887

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Reflections of Vermeer’s Catholic Faith in His Art Published October 19, 2017

Molly R. Harrington, Reflections of Vermeer’s Catholic Faith in His Art , National Gallery of Art, https://purl.org/nga/documents/literature/essays/reflections-of-vermeers-catholic-faith-in-his-art (accessed Nov 27, 2018).

Even hundreds of years after their creation, Johannes Vermeer’s seemingly candid views of everyday life continue to speak to viewers. This relatable quality is often attributed to the lack of complicated religious or literary symbolism in these paintings from the Protestant Dutch Golden Age. Yet unlike many of his contemporaries, Vermeer was Catholic, despite the difficulties of practicing his faith during his lifetime. The officially Calvinist Netherlands outlawed public Catholic worship in the late 16th century, but up to one-third of the population remained Catholic. Authorities frequently tolerated Catholics, as long as they held Mass in small house churches in private residences. [1] As a result, Catholic patrons and artists, including Vermeer, developed new forms of devotional painting to convey their religious messages.

Although he was baptized in the Reformed Church, Vermeer probably converted to Catholicism just before his 1653 marriage to Catharina Bolnes, urged on by his wealthy and devout mother-in-law, . Vermeer and Catharina likely celebrated their wedding in a hidden Jesuit church in the predominantly Catholic village of Schipluy (present day Schipluiden), outside of Delft, to which Thins had connections. [2] None of the couple’s 11 children were baptized in the Reformed Church, so we can assume they were raised Catholic. Vermeer and his wife gave their children traditional Catholic names, including Franciscus and Ignatius after the Jesuit leaders Francis Xavier and Ignatius of Loyola. Their eldest daughter, Maria, married another Catholic, and their son Johannes attended seminary in Brabant, although it seems he did not become a priest. [3] Thins’s house in Delft, in which Vermeer and Catharina raised their family, was located in a mostly Catholic neighborhood called the Papenhoek (Papist’s Corner). Just a few doors down was another concealed Jesuit church that the family probably attended. [4]

Although he ultimately focused on secular genre themes, Vermeer painted a small number of religious works as well. His first dated painting, Saint Praxedis [fig. 1], is a

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Reflections of Vermeer’s Catholic Faith in His Art

copy of a work by Italian painter Felice Ficherelli that depicts the Roman saint renowned for burying the bodies of martyrs. [5] Both paintings show a kneeling Saint Praxedis squeezing a bloody cloth into a ewer, and Vermeer added to his work a crucifix, which the saint holds in her hands, perhaps to emphasize the connection between the blood of martyrs and the blood of Christ, which Catholics consume during the Eucharist. [6]

Completed years later, Vermeer’s complicated Allegory of the Catholic Faith [fig. 2] features a woman representing Faith, as interpreted from a popular emblem guide, with her hand at her breast sitting before a makeshift altar with a crucifix, chalice, and Bible. [7] On the floor, a stone representing Christ, the “cornerstone” of Catholic faith, crushes a serpent representing Satan, and a nearby apple represents Adam and Eve’s original sin. [8] The large Crucifixion scene on the back wall is based on a work by Flemish painter ; a panting matching this description, along with a similar ebony crucifix to that seen on the table, belonged to Vermeer. [9] Such an overtly Catholic image, with no extant counterpart in his oeuvre, points to the possibility of a patron for this work, likely a member of the Jesuit community in Vermeer’s neighborhood. [10] Catholic artists frequently contributed devotional paintings for the churches they themselves attended—it seems that personal connections and the artist’s intimate knowledge of the faith were more important to Catholic patrons than a particular style. [11]

While Calvinists emphasized the role of God’s word and biblical text, Catholics believed in the power of images to guide meditation and aid in understanding religious messages. [12] This tendency to envision oneself inside a scene seems to have informed not only Vermeer’s outwardly religious paintings but also his contemplative genre paintings. Woman Holding a Balance depicts a woman balancing empty scales with her jewels laid on the table before her [fig. 3]. The painting on the back wall once again depicts a religious theme: in this case, the Last Judgment, in which Christ weighs the souls of the living and dead. Jesuit founder Ignatius of Loyola, in his immensely popular Spiritual Exercises, recommended inward reflection and the weighing of one’s own sins to prepare for the final judgment, and Vermeer’s woman seems to be taking part in this act of quiet meditation. [13]

Vermeer’s conversion to Catholicism played a defining role in his family life, provided subject matter early in his career, and secured him at least one large- scale religious painting commission. Even in his secular works, he managed to incorporate his faith by imbuing his genre paintings with a solemn, contemplative

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Reflections of Vermeer’s Catholic Faith in His Art

mood. This subtle quietude, inspired in part by his Catholic faith, continues to draw today’s museum goers to Vermeer’s paintings.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES

fig. 1 Johannes Vermeer, Saint Praxedis, 1655, oil on canvas, Private collection. Photo © Christie's Images / fig. 2 Johannes Vermeer, Allegory of the Catholic Faith, c. Bridgeman Images 1670–1672, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of Michael Friedsam, 1931, 32.100.18

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Reflections of Vermeer’s Catholic Faith in His Art

fig. 3 Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection, 1942.9.97

NOTES

[1] For a detailed history of Catholics in 17th-century Netherlands, see Charles H. Parker, Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge, MA, 2008).

[2] Thins’s sister Elisabeth became a nun, and in 1619, authorities broke up a celebration of Mass in the Thins family’s home chapel in Gouda, known as De Trapjes (the Little Steps). See Valerie Hedquist, “Religion in the Art and Life of Vermeer,” in The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer, ed. Wayne E. Franits (Cambridge, UK, 2001), 116.

[3] See Anthony Bailey, Vermeer: A View of Delft (New York, 2001), 63.

[4] Valerie Hedquist, “Religion in the Art and Life of Vermeer,” in The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer, ed. Wayne E. Franits (Cambridge, UK, 2001), 116.

[5] The obvious religious nature of the work led many scholars to doubt its

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authorship, but technical examination in 2014 proved conclusively that it belongs in Vermeer’s oeuvre. See Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “St. Praxedis: New Light on the Early Career of Vermeer,” Artibus et Historiae 7, no. 14 (1986): 7189; and Christie’s, “Johannes Vermeer: Saint Praxedis” (London, 2014), 140, http://www.christies.com/presscenter/pdf/2014/CATALOUGE_NOTE_Johan nes_Vermeer_Delft_1632_1675_Saint_Praxedis_lot_39.pdf (accessed August 11, 2017).

[6] Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “St. Praxedis,” in Johannes Vermeer, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1995), 86, 88.

[7] ’s Iconologia, an important emblem book for artists, was translated and reprinted in Dutch in 1644. Ripa describes Faith as having “the world under her feet” but does not mention a globe—this seems to have been Vermeer’s invention. See Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “St. Praxedis,” in Johannes Vermeer, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1995), 190.

[8] Walter A. Liedtke, “Allegory of the Catholic Faith,” in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/32.100.18/ (accessed August 11, 2017). Adapted from Walter A. Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2 vols. (New York, 2007).

[9] Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “St. Praxedis,” in Johannes Vermeer, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1995), 192.

[10] The Crucifixion and the glass orb have been connected to Jesuit literature and emblems, further supporting the painting’s Jesuit patronage. See Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “St. Praxedis,” in Johannes Vermeer, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1995), 192.

[11] Xander van Eck, “The Artist’s Religion: Paintings Commissioned for Clandestine Catholic Churches in the Northern Netherlands, 16001800,” Simiolus 27, no. 12 (1990): 7094.

[12] Daniel Arasse, Vermeer: Faith in Painting (Princeton, 1994), 83.

[13] See Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664,” Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, NGA Online Editions, https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/1236 (accessed August 11, 2017); and Eugene R. Cunnar, “The Viewer’s Share: Three Sectarian Readings of Vermeer’s Woman with a Balance,” Exemplaria 2 (1990): 518.

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