Dali versus Vermeer???

I could never imagine that Dali had painted the Lacemaker in his own original version. Besides, here you can see some kind of experiments with a rhinoceros and the Vermeer’s painting. (A mixture between a funny and ridiculous experiment) See this video:

• Youtube. http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk8wNNL5v9M

It seems that he wanted to represent the ‘fight’ between the rhinoceros and the Vermeer’s painting. At the end of the video, both Vermeer’s painting and Dali’s painting appear.

Who is that guy?

Henricus van Meegeren was the most famous forger ever known. It seems that his speciality was to falsify Vermeer’s pieces of art. Just with his falsifications of Vermeer he got a great fortune: more than half a billion dollars in today’s currency! One of his best falsifications was the painting ‘Emmaus’, which was the finest Vermeer ever made (in the photograph below we can see Meegeren painting the Vermeer)

It was himself who declared to be the forger of the ‘Emmaus’ as well as of other pictures of Vermeer, and besides, of other great Old Masters’ pictures. For example, ‘The Witch of Haarlem’ of Frans Hals (both shown below, the original and the fake).

His fakes were of a great complexity and very well done. That is maybe the reason why he became the best forger of the history, becoming known overnight as ‘the man who swindled Goering’. Although the museums avoid him, he ha a lot of fans who like to collect his works, fakes, under his own name. Finally, Meergeren died in 1947, after serving a year’s sentence for forgery. “Before his trial Han van Meegeren demonstrated his forgery techniques before an expert panel by painting his last forgery Jesus among the Doctors.” (Wikipedia. Han Van Meergeren. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren), see picture below.

It was a huge work for him to develop these techniques to being able to copy Vermeer’s pictures, precisely he deloped them throughout six years. Some of his fakes of Vermeer were Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, Woman with a Lute near a Window which he named Lady Reading Music and Lady Playng Music.

To know more about this fabulous painter and forger see:

• Wikipedia. Han van Meergeren. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren
• The Meegeren website. http://www.meegeren.net/index.php

This has also been the websites used for this article.

Vermeer’s Principle: a balanced life

In the picture Woman Holding a Balance the woman is standing by a table holding a balance with her right hand. The balance is estrategically placed in the middle, so the light flowing from the window illuminates the hand , and as a consequence concentrating the observer’s attention in the balance. The balance is empty and only the light fills its image.

This image of a pregnant woman holding a balance embodies one of the principles that Vermeer defended. He said that there was a need to lead a balance in life. Although nobody knows for sure Vermeer’s methods to paint, it is believed and proved that he used several methods that he tried to remain in mistery. The construction of this picture was carried out with extreme care: “Orthogonal lines to the vanishing point meet precisely at the woman’s finger.The frame behind her reinforces this focus” (National Gallery of Art. http://www.nga.gov/feature/vermeer/composition1.shtm)

If we look at the technique, we realise that there are many elements in the picture that put an emphasis in the skill and care that Vermeer had while painting. Some of these elements are highlighted in boxes in the following picture.

For example, there were some compositional changes as we can see in the balance. An infrared reflectography made by the National Gallery of Art showed that Vermeer changed the position and size of the balance in order to achieve a better final effect.

Besides, Vermeer used the technique of the camera obscura in order to create some optical effects. For example, some hoglights appear in the picture. They are painted in the pearl necklaces which are on the table. At that time (1660s) Vermeer painted the pearls in two different layers. At one side, he painted a diffused grayish glaze. And just beside that, he painted a thick stroke in order to create a spectacular highlight. These optical effects were usually achieved by using the already mentioned camera obscura.

One of the most important elements in this painting by Vermeer is the light. He used to mixed both dense impastos and thin glazes; “the effect of soft light is achieved through subtle modulations in paint handling” (National Gallery of Art. http://www.nga.gov/feature/vermeer/composition1.shtm). For example, the face is painted with imperceptable brushstrokes and a finely ground paint.

The paint on the sleeve of the woman changes according to the changes of light: where the light is soft the paint is thin, and where the light is intense the paint becomes thick.

The texture of wool of the jacket is very difficult to achieve. His method was to drag “a layer of coarse orange paint over yellow paint, leaving an irregular edge” (National Gallery of Art. http://www.nga.gov/feature/vermeer/composition1.shtm).

On the whole, just paying a little attention to the picture, we realise that Vermeer was very meticulous about painting with realism, giving optical effects to the painting.

Reference:

• National Gallery of Art. Johannes Vermeer. Woman Holding a Balance in-deph feature. http://www.nga.gov/feature/vermeer/index.shtm

“WOMAN HOLDING A BALANCE”

The picture of Vermeer Woman Holding a Balance, also known as Woman Weighing Pearls, is one of the most significant pictures of the Dutch painter. Because of that it has been really easy to find a beautiful composition about the picture:

Between light and dark,

between this world and the next,

between maidenhood and motherhood

she pauses, held in balance

like the balance she holds.

Her focus not the gold or

the weighing, but the justice to their still

of her scales, settling to their still

point in a steady hand,

and she herself unadorned,

a lily that needs no gilding

but the points of light that lie

on her veil like jewels on a crown.

If she raised her eyes, she would see

this luminous beauty, drop the scales,

and, like a blushing Eve, break

the balance and forsake

the innocence of her task,

but she does not.

If she turned, she would see

the Last Judgement, saints and sinners

weighed in the final balance, and,

called to think on ultimate things,

lose this moment-

but she does not.

Trained on the object, undistracted,

patient while the instrument swings

to its center and is still, she turns

this little task to prayer – if mindfulness is

prayer – to an exercise of love – if it is love

to be attentive to the thing of hand.

It is obvious that the painting on the background about the Final Judgement has a great meaning in the general meaning of the picture. The poem also makes reference to the fact that Vermeer’s wife (the model for the picture) is pregnant and because of that she is “between maidenhood and motherhood” (line 3).

Reference:

-Package of Materials of ESP (2007-2008): Girl with a Pearl Earring: An Interactive Study.

AN ALLEGORICAL PICTURE

One of the most important reasons why I have chosen this picture, Woman Weighing Pearls, is that it has an “extra” meaning. It is an allegorical picture. Firstly, as we can see in the background of the represented scene, there is a picture hanging on the wall. This important picture is the Final Judgement, which is in a black frame. This idea is connected with the fact that the woman of the picture is dressing like the Virgin Mary and she is pregnant, so both religious and spiritual ideas are present in the picture.

The woman is placed between the picture of the religious scene and the table which is full of pearls and jewelry. She is between the spiritual and the material possessions. Besides, according to different sources, one of the scales of the balance is empty which suggests that the woman “is balancing spiritual rather than material considerations” (Wikipedia).

Reference:

• Wikipedia. Woman Holding a Balance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman_Holding_a_Balance
• Wikipedia. Johannes Vermeer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer

My first step into the ESP Project

Claire has told us the other day that we should look for information about the famous painter Vermeer. I found it very interesting and although I had not heard about him before, I realised that his paintings are really works of art. Finally I have chosen the painting called Woman Weighing Pearls.

Last week I collected some information about this painting that seems to be really heplful for the project we are going to “built up” together. The fact that Claire trust us as writers for a prospective published book seems to be one of the great challenges of this last year before getting the degree.