Vermeer´s life.

 

We don´t know much about Vermeer´s life. Some sources say that he was baptized in Delft the 31^st October 1632; he was the second son and the only male. His father was born in 1591 in Antwerp (Belgium). In 1611, he moved to Amsterdam.

Johannes Vermeer was considered to be a Baroque painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of ordinary life. It is important to say that his entire life was spent in the town of Delft. Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, the Netherlands. Delft is primarily known for its typically Dutch town centre and also for Vermeer´s, Delft Blue pottery.

Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial painter in his lifetime. He seems to have never been particularly wealthy, perhaps due to the fact that he didn´t produce many paintings, leaving his wife and eleven children in debt at his death. Vermeer didn´t paint much for the public market; most of his paintings were for promoters that appreciated his art. Maybe this is the explanation for his low artistic production. One of his promoters was Hendrick van Buylen, a baker probably the same to whom the French nobleman Balthazar Monconys had visited, and when he died, he found a note in his diary saying: “In Delft, I met the painter Vermeer who didn´t have any power in his paintings. But in the baker´s house we could see one which had cost a hundred pound, but it real value, in my opinion, was six pistols”

Another Vermeer´s protector was Jacob Dissios, proprietary of the printing house in Delft.

Vermeer´s last years were darken by the dramatic and terrible economic situation. He accumulated debts and he was obliged to solicit a credit for the prize of 1000 florins (European coins). The reason of his ruin was the war between France and Holland.

Vermeer was buried the 15^th December 1675. He was really ill and he couldn´t continue living anymo

Ekphrastic Poetry

• What is Ekphrastic Poetry?

It is the conversation between two pieces of art. The writer interprets a work of visual art and then creates a narrative in verse from that represents his or her interpretation and reaction to that painting, photograph, sculpture or other artistic creation.

• How can we use this method?

Claire told us yesterday that we could use this writing method in order to create our essay on the corresponding painting we have.  It is a kind of writing in which you write whatever comes to your mind in a moment and then without thinking on that just write another piece. She told us we could write for example about the yellow curtain in almost all paintings and the paragraph after it about the feeling of the woman.

As I understand Ekphrastic Poetry is a mixture of different pieces of writing all talking or describing the same painting. But how can someone make sense out of that?