Vermeer’s Women portrayed looking out directly at the viewer

Most of Vermeer’s paintings are never depicted looking out directly at the viewer. In fact, only three of his paintings portray women looking out at the viewer. This is the case of Lady Standing at a Virginal, A Lady Writing and the Lady Seated at a Virginal.

Lady standing at a Virginal

Lady Seated at a Virginal

A Lady Writing

Most of his contemporaries never depicted women looking out at the viewer and, only Gabriel Metsu in his painting Woman writing a Letter represents the woman looking out at the viewer as she writes. In this case, it is said that he was probably influenced by the Vermeer’s A Lady Writing.

Gabriel Metsu’s Woman writing a Letter

 

References:

• Essential Vermeer. The complete interactive Vermeer catalogue. Retrieved on May 15,  2011, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/lady_writing.html
• Understanding a Lady Standing at a Virginal. Retrieved on May 21, 2011, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/standing.html
• A Lady Seated at a Virginal. Retrieved on May 21, 2011, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/standing.html

VERMEER AND THE CAMERA OBSCURA

The camera obscura is an optical device that projects an image that is in the surroundings on a screen. It was use to make paintings, and it was one of the techniques that led to photography. It consist in a box or a room with a hole in one of its sides. Light passes through the hole reflecting the object from the exterior in one of its walls.

“It has sometimes been suggested that Vermeer might have used a camera of a rather different kind, which certainly existed in his time, but which was only manufactured in large numbers in the 18th and 19th centuries, and which took the form of a closed box, with an external translucent screen. The observer is now outside the box, not inside it. Both Canaletto’s and Reynolds’s cameras were of this type. One problem compared with the room-type camera is that the image is viewed under ambient light and so seems subjectively less bright. Fox Talbot and the French pioneers of photography, Niépce and Daguerre, built the first photographic cameras by modifying commercially produced camera obscuras of this general type.”

But why some people think that he used this technique in his paintings? Well, there is no documentary evidence of it. The only things that we have to support this idea are his paintings. The first person suggested that was Joseph Penell, when he observed the painting of “officer and laughing girl”. The figures seem to be very close, but if we look at the officer’s head, it can be observed that it is bigger than the head of the girl. Nowadays this way of paintings is very common, but in the 17th century, it was an innovation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/vermeer_camera_01.shtml .Retrieved on May 20, 2011, at 10:30
Camara oscura, from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1mara_oscura .Retrieved on May 20, 2011, at 10:30

The Little Street: Analysis of the Details in the Painting

Vermeer painted his work entitled as The Little Street between 1657-1661, and is currently located in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. According to the information available at the essential vermeer webpage, the support is a fine, plain weave linen, with a thread count of 14 x 14 per cm² The original tacking edges are present and marks from the original strainer bars are 3.5 cm. from the edge on all sides. Of the two lining canvases one is probably attached with glue/paste, the other with wax resin.

What is most striking about this painting in particular is the amount of details that Vermeer included as to achieve a more realistic scene. Vermeer made it possible to achieve such realism due to the layering technique that he used in many of his works. Layering starts with an underpaint layer which covers the whole canvas so that it changes its white tone. Then it is necessary to form the basis for the main objects. These patches follow a dark to light order and once the layer dries, the edges of the patches are knitted together so that sharp details are included.

It is interesting how Vermeer was able to create very life-like bricks, but he did not paint them one by one of course. What he did was to first paint a large brush a more or less uniform layer of reddish, almost brown, paint. Then he introduced in different places tinges of grey to avoid giving a mechanical aspect. Once this layer dried, he defined the mortar between the bricks using a light grey colour. Finally, some bricks were brightened and others darkened so that a sense of relief was created.

In all his paintings it is evident that Vermeer was very good with light and so we find here. The light coming from the sun to the left is reflected in the clouds so that we can see a brighter colour. The blue used here is blue azurite, the most common blue found in the palette of 17th century Dutch painters since it was cheaper that the blue pigment made from the lapis lazuli. However, in order to get a solid blue it was necessary to apply several coats of azurite and for holding the azurite pigment grains firmly in their place they used glue.

The rows of cobblestones which slowly converge towards the vanishing point are essential to create that sense of depth. This is important because otherwise the painting would be all flat as the main building. Moreover, Vermeer includes details that help create this sense of depth in the painting. There is a soapy water stream that runs down from the servant’s wash basin along the wall. Directly in front of the main building’s doorway is a shallow platform decorated with ceramic tiles.

The effect of three dimensionality is heighthened by the maid washing. All the rows lead to this figure which we may consider one of the main focuses of the painting. Here we can see a maid washing laundry over a wooden barrel at the end of an alleway. A boom stands nearby. In the end of the 17th century, sweeping and booms had solid associations with spiritual cleanliness and purity. In fact, the concept of domestic virtue was essential to the Christendom and Dutch nationhood.

Infrared reflectography has showed that Vermeer had initially included a seated woman doing handwork at the entrance of the alleway. He later painted her out probably because she obstructed the passageway and ruined the effect of three dimensionality.

The grape vines are closely related to the importance of domestic virtue mentioned before. Since Antiquity, vines have symbolized fidelity and marriage, and in this context domestic virtue. Vines could be seen in a great number of Dutch cityscapes through the Dutch light was so weak that the grapes failed to produce drinkable wine. The curious blue colour of the foliage has been attributed to the loss of a transparent yellow glaze painted over the blue leaves which originally would have given the leaves their proper green colour.

Sources:

• The Complete Interactive Vermeer Catalogue. Retrieved: 18:30, May 22, 2011 from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/little_street.html
• View of Houses in Delft known as The Little Street. Retrieved: 18:33, May 22, 2011 from  http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/vermeer/little-street/
• The Little Street at the Rijksmuseum. Retrieved: 18:34, May 22, 2011 from http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_assets/SK-A-2860?id=SK-A-2860&page=3&lang=en&context_space=&context_id=
• Johannes Vermeer’s The Little Street. Retrieved: 18:38, May 22, 2011 from http://www.xs4all.nl/~kalden/verm/stra/Stra-Hoofd-FE.htm
• Glazing in the Art of Johannes Vermeer. Retrieved: 18:39, May 22, 2011 from http://glazing.fws1.com/index.htm

The Concert

This semester, I have been working on The Concert painted by the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer (c. 1664). In March 1990, it was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. According to the BBC, exactly 21 years on, the Gardner robbery remains the largest single property theft of all time; artworks, including Vermeer’s ‘The Concert’, estimated $500 million have never seen again.

In the 17th century, music was an integral part of Dutch life in every rung of society. Musical gatherings, such at the one represented in the The Concert, were not only a pleasurable way of entertainment, but also an accepted way to promote social contacts particularly with the opposite sex, otherwise, highly regulated. Although there is no evidence that Vermeer drew the present composition directly from another work, there exists an almost infinite number of loosely arranged musicians, which formed a popular genre called the “merry company.”

Johannes Vermeer was a genius in the use of colour and light, the bright yellow of the young girl’s silk jacket catches the observer’s attention. While artists produced colours through multi-layered techniques, Vermeer worked principally with the primary colours: blue, red and yellow. Areas of silvery grays and subtle browns enclose measured areas of the primary colours; such as, the wonderful lemon jacket resonates against the gray background wall. The costume of nearly every key figure is painted with primary colours; on the other hand, secondary figures are rendered in dull or secondary hues.

It is worth mentioning, the painting that hangs in the upper right side. This picture, The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen, most likely belonged to Vermeer’s mother-in-law, Maria Thins. It portrays a young female prostitute, a bearded man who is the client and an older woman, the procuress, who points to her opened hand demanding the money. The composition parallels the group below; thus, the older singing woman to the right would be the procuress, the seated lutenist, the client and the seated harpsichordist the prostitute.

Sources

• The Concert (Vermeer). (2011, May 9). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:28, May 12, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Concert_(Vermeer)&oldid=428168696
• Boston art theft remains biggest unsolved mystery (2010, March 19) BBC. Retrieved May 4, 2011 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8573210.stm
• The Concert. In Essential Vermeer. Retrieved 17:42, April 15, 2011, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/concert.html

Blame Vermeer, by Vincent O’Sullivan

A woman of thirty pours the inch or so of milk
left in a jug, sets the jug high on a shelf
inside a small cupboard because the children
from next door are to stay the night, she’ll
not risk their picking at its precious glaze.
She takes her ring from beside the tap,
slips it back onto her third finger.
She hears steps on the path.
Something
will happen after every painting for a long
time yet. It may have been war,
a sudden wrenching of implacable grief,
diseases arrived from the unburied,
children clattering in only days until
they are shunted east.
And the stranger
announcing, ‘There is something here,’ and her hand
on the lip first then the jug’s smooth curving,
it was lifted, so Jug & Woman
may have been the title again as it was and was
how many hundred times in that small
kitchen, its imagined canvas, the deluging back
of ordinariness so lovely, to what can one
compare it? And the steps always arriving.
It will happen next.

Sources:

Vincent O’Sullivan, Blame Vermeer 
(Victoria University Press, 2007)

A poem related to “The Lacemaker”

Her hands know what to do:
they dance, winding the threads
around their tiny maypoles, trying
each knot with surprising speed under
the deep calm of that broad, honest face,
suspended like a benevolent moon
over this delicate task.

She is not delicate. Body and bosom
are full-fleshed; her heavy ringlets will uncurl
by sundown. Wool and wood, metal hooks
and folds of yellow fabric are rich
with gravity and mass —- things
solidly of this world.

Yet in this light that pours
from some high window,
passing beneficence of a northern sun,
those solid things seem fragile:
the light will shift; she will lift her head
and stretch and sigh, the quiet
around her rippled like a pond´s surface,
and this graced moment gone.

Gathered on what we see,
filtered through lace, gleaming
on hair and polished wood, what we see
is always the light.

Mistress and Maid

Mistress and Maid was painted around 1666 and 1667  in oli canvas. Nowadays it is located in The Frick Collection Museum, in New York. The general overview of the picture shows the figures of two women which is emphasized by the dark background.One of the most prevalent themes in Vermeer’s paintings from the late 1660s is the letter writer. Unlike his earlier representations of women with letters, where he isolated one individual with the letter, these later versions all include a maid with her mistress. The introduction of the maid adds a new element to the theme: the expectations and anxieties that surround the arrival of a letter.

The objects in Mistress and Maid are all in the lower left quadrant of the canvas. There is a table covered with a blue cloth and holding a letter box and bottles of ink, a sheet of paper with about ten lines written on it, and a pen held by the mistress sitting at the table. There is also a small white sheet of paper held in the right hand of the maid, who offers it to her mistress. The table occupies exactly half the space of the picture plane and the mistress the other half.

On the left is the maid, standing behind the table, a head higher than the seated woman. The background, like the clothes of the maid, is dark. There is nothing, no wall, on which to hang the paintings or maps that we can find in more than half of Vermeer’s paintings. The maid does what Cupid does in Woman Standing at a Virginal, she holds in her hand a blank white letter which entails the main mystery of the painting.

Detail of the letter in “Mistress and Maid”

Cupid with a letter, detail of “Young Woman Standing at a Virginal”.

It is as though the messenger, here the maid, has come down from the wall and stepped out of the frame to share the mistress’s space and, therefore, to communicate with her. In Mistress and Maid, no one looks out of the main action that is taking place,  there is no empty chair, no element which might distract our attention. The two women are related to each other by the letters each of them are handing and also by their speech.

The letter the woman is writing is clearly unfinished, and the one the maid offers is unread. The writing of the one letter has been interrupted by the need to read the other, rather as a speaker is interrupted by the need to listen to another speaker. In the exchange of letters, writing approaches speech, which involves the mouth as writing does the hand.

Sources:

Mistress and Maid, Essential Vermeer. Retrieved 17:26, May 22, 2011, from  http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/mistress_and_maid.html

Understanding the Mistress and Maid, Essential Vermeer. Retrieved 17: 18, May 22, 2011, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/mistress.html

Johannes Vermeer, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:24, May 22, 2011, from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer

Related Works (The Maid Asleep)

View of an Interior, or The Slippers

 

created: around 1658

This painting created by Samuel Van Hoogstraten is a subtly moralistic piece, a fascinating exercise in perspective, and a painting of poetic calm. This work was attributed to Samuel Van Hoogstraten even his other Works were complitely painted in a different way.

 

The Idle Servant

 

 created:  1655

This painting is created by Maes and it is complemented by the room beyond, where it is possible to see three figures sit at table. The painting is one of the earliest interior of its kind with a view into another room. This device was further developed in Delftin the work of de Hooch in the later 1650s and by Vermeer during his painting career. These painters may have been influenced by Carel Fabritius.

 

Melencolia I

Created: 1514

This great painting is a creation of the German Renaissance Master Albrecht Dürer. This painting is an allegorical composition which has become the subject of many interpretations. One of the most famous old master prints, it has sometimes been regarded as forming one of a conscious group of Meisterstiche with his Knight, Death and the Devil (1513).

Sources:

Jan Vermeer paintings prints reproduction, Retrieved 09:00 May 12, 2011, from  http://www.artunframed.com/jan_vermeer.htm

Essential Vermeer, Retrieved 10:54, May 10, 2011, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/

Johannes Vermeer,Retrieved 12:00, May 10, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer

Officer and laughing girl

This picture was painted by Vermeer, a Dutch painter from the baroque era. It is not very clear the year in which this work was painted, but, since the costume of the girl in the painting and the techniques used are similar to those of the Girl Reading a Letter by an open window, this painting is generally dated about 1658, shortly after the other. The technique used is oil on canvas, and the size of the painting is 19 7/8 x 18 1/8 in. (50.5 x46 cm.). Nowadays, this painting is part of the Frick Collection, inNew York.

Vermeer seem to have adopted his subject matter from Pieter De hooch. This painter painted a number of interior genre scenes of soldiers and women at tables. Furthermore, in some of these paintings, he tended to situate the soldier so that the viewer looked over his shoulder; this viewpoint gives an informal appearance to the scene.

However, the conception of the scene is different from that of the Hooch since Vermeer brought his figures extremely close to the picture plane. He heightened the contrast of scale between the two characters (as we can see the officer looms large and the girl diminutive, almost remote) and intensified contrasts of light and colour. The effect is comparable to that seen in a wide angle lens or convex mirror. And it is one of the characteristics of Vermeer’s compositions that had led art historians to argue that he used a camera obscura.

Regarding the girl of the painting, some experts said that it is possible that the girl was Vermeer’s wife, Catherine Bolnes, although there is no proof. Her luminous face, her unabashed smile and glittering yellow satin bodice neutralize the austere presence of the cavalier. The gesture of her open hand, palm up, seems to extend her openness and desire for communication. The yellow bodice with black braiding that she wears appears in other Vermeer’s including The Music Lesson and the Girl at Reading a Letter at an Open Window. As we can see in this x-ray photograph, Vermeer originally painted her with a large white collar over her shoulders obscuring much of the brilliant yellow dress.

The red colour of military uniforms, such as the one worn by Vermeer’s soldier, had a practical function. In times of war the regulation of the colours and signs was essential to survival as each soldier could be more easily identified and avoid an attack his own troops in the tangle of a battle.

The black sash which hangs around the young man’s shoulder tells us that he is probably an officer. But more than his social identity, the viewer’s imagination is caught by his arresting visual and psychological presence. Vermeer, as many Dutch painters of the time, employed his officer as a device called repoussoir: the placement of a large figure (objects, such as curtains, were also commonly used) in the immediate foreground to dramatically increases the illusion of depth in the rest of the picture.

Vermeer frequently places contrasting forms, colours and textures of the motifs in his pictures to strengthen the picture’s narrative. In this work, we can almost feel a spark of uncertainty between the soldier and the seated young girl.

It is difficult to gauge his thoughts because he turns his back towards us. His whole figure is immersed in deep shadow and we can only see part of his face which does not tell us anything about his character.

On the other hand, it is impossible to ignore the young girl’s radiant optimism. Her expression is so positively charged that even the officer’s reticence is effectively dissimulated.

This painting contains one of the first examples of Vermeer’s precise sense of realism: the map on the back wall. Wall maps, which were popular forms of decoration in Vermeer’s day, are frequently found in his paintings, that is the case of, the art of painting (1666). This map of Holland and West Friesland was designed by Balthasar Florizs van Berckenrode in 1620. Fortunately one example of the map still exists, and it confirms the precision of Vermeer’s rendering.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

►http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/officer_and_laughing_girl.html.  Retrieved the 1st of May, at 10:30

►http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_de_Hooch .Retrieved the 1st of May, at 12:30

►http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/officer.html .Retrieved the 1st of May, at 12:30

►http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/vermeer/frick.htm .Retrieved the 2nd of May, at 10:00

►http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officer_and_Laughing_Girl .Retrieved the 2nd of May, at 11:30

PPT on The Maid Asleep

This is the presentation I made in class

Woman in blue reading a letter

This is the powerpoint I used in my presentation:

Chasing Vermeer & A Lady Writing

While I was doing some research, I came across this mystery novel which deals with the theft of one of Vermeer’s paintings: A Lady Writing, which is actually the painting I have been working on the whole semester.

Chasing Vermeer is a children mystery novel dealing with the theft of Vermeer’s A Lady Writing written by Blue Balliet and illustrated by Brett Helquist. The novel is set in Hyde Park, Chicago. The thief responsible for the disappearance of the painting claims that he will not give the painting back to the museum unless the community figures out which paintings under Vermeer’s name were actually painted by him. As a consequence, the community and, especially two children, Calder and Petra, start examining art more carefully in order to get the painting back.

The themes of this novel are various: art, chance, coincidence, deception, and problem-solving. What is more, Balliet asserts that the central message is that kids are powerful thinkers whose ideas are valuable and that adults do not have the answer to every single question.

As for its critical reception, Chasing Vermeer has received many positive reviews and, in fact, it has awarded in several occasions, for instance, the Agatha Award for Best Juvenile mystery novel in 2005 or the Chicago Tribune Prize for Young Adult fiction in 2004. In 2004, Warner Brothers bought the rights to make a film based on Balliet’s Chasing Vermmer.

I think that the author took a wise decision when he  realized he wantes to write a book about art devoted to children. I think the plot is well-built and, what is more, the way the reader in involved in the story through the hidden messages provided by the illustrations can be very entertaining for children, since it makes them participate in the story.

 

References:

• Chasing Vermeer. (2011, May 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:42, May 19, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chasing_Vermeer&oldid=427474268
• Chasing Vermeer. A mystery within as mystery. Retrieved, May 19, 2011, from http://www.ashlandschools.org/morgan_cottle/vermeer/