Vermeer´s Video.

I found this video on the internet, more exactly on the ”youtube.com” in which it shows some of the most famous Vermeer´s paintings. The page is the following one: Vermeer´s video.

The Lacemaker (in deep description).

The Lacemaker , which is the painting that I chose, is another small scale painting, nearly dwarfed by its impressive wooden frame.

Unlike the more contemplative figures in Vermeer’s work, the subject here is very active, intensely focused on a physical activity. As opposed to the full-figure compositions, where furniture and drapery act to facilitate or deflect the viewer’s visual entry, The Lacemaker brings the subject dramatically to the foreground. As a result, the viewer is drawn into a powerful emotional engagement with the work. Although the composition is quite shallow, there are different depths of field that draw the viewer into the canvas. The forms nearest the eye are unfocused, which encourages the viewer to pass on to the more distinctly defined middleground.

The intimacy is accentuated by the small scale, personal subject matter, and natural composition. The lacemaker’s total preoccupation with her work is indicated through her confined pose. The use of yellow, a dynamic, psychologically strong hue, reinforces the perception of intense effort. Contrasts of form serve to animate the image. For example, her hairstyle expresses her essential nature – both tightly constrained and, in the loose ringlet behind her left shoulder, rhythmically flowing. Another strong contrast exists between the tightly drawn threads she holds and the smoothly flowing red and white threads in the foreground. The precision and clearness of vision demanded by her work is expressed in the light accents that illuminate her forehead and fingers.

The diffused ocular effect of the foreground objects, especially the threads, was definitely derived from a camera obscura image. Vermeer used the informal, close framing of the composition suggested by the camera obscura to accentuate the realistic, immediate impact of the painting. Contemporary Dutch painting portrayed industriousness as an allegory of domestic virtue. While the inclusion of the prayer book pays fealty to this theme, it is a secondary concern to the depiction of the handicraft of lacemaking, and, in the highest sense, the creative act itself. Once again, Vermeer succeeded in transforming a transitory image into one of eternal truth.

 

Vermeer’s Palette.

The number of pigments available to the seventeen century, Dutch painter was few indeed when he was compared to those available the modern artists. While the current catalogue of one of the most respected color producers (Rembrandt) displays more than a hundred pigments, less than 20 pigments have been detected in Vermeer’s oeuvre. Among these few pigments only ten seemed to have been used in a more or less systematic way.

In Vermeer’s time, each pigment was different in regards to permanence, workability, drying time, and means of production. Moreover, many pigments were not mutually compatible and had to be used separately. The following study examines the history and origin of each pigment and how they were employed by Vermeer and his contemporaries as well as essential aspects of the artist’s palette.

All Known Vermeer’s Pigments were:

It is extremely unlikely that Vermeer had on his palette in any given work session all the pigments that were available to him. Painters were known to use specific palettes set out each day according the passage to be painted. The wooden palette to the left represents the seven principle pigments which Vermeer commonly employed: 1 White lead; 2 Yellow ochre; 3. Vermillion; 4 Red madder; 5 green earth; 6 Raw umber; 7 Ivory black

 

Where were Vermeer´s children?

It is difficult to imagine that the father of 11 children was not in some way or another influenced by their presence. Many critics have noticed the apparent difference between Vermeer’s perfectly-ordered interiors and what may have been the artist’s daily life with a brood of children. Where are the cradles, beds and chairs, according to the inventory taken after his death, spread out over the house?

Contrary to many Dutch genre painters such as Jan Steen, Nicolaes Maes and Gabriel Metsu whose pictures literally overflow with children, Vermeer gave them only two small, but poetic parts to some of his plays.

The problem is not as difficult as it may seem. Simply put, Vermeer’s paintings were not intended biographical statements. Even though they do represent contemporary settings and modes, they were not meant to reflect the conditions of his personal life. Vermeer worked within established and well defined genre categories and some critics believe that the artist wished to express the arrogant values associated with traditional history painting.

Vermeer’s principle biographer was John Michael Montias. He maintains that even though the lack of disorder represented by such a large family may seem conspicuous; he says about the artist’s that the “subjects and the way he handled them are rooted in much earlier experience and were invariant to the things that happened to him in his adult years.”

            

Curiously enough, Vermeer directly portrayed children only two times in 35 paintings, once in The Little Street (picture) and another time in The View of Delft (picture) where a young girl can be seen with an infant in her arms to the extreme left of the foreground. There are however, more than a few indirect representations of children in other paintings. A painting-within-a-painting of Cupid appears either partially or entirely in three other works and we can also see that children are represented on the tile baseboards in The Milkmaid , A Woman Standing at a Spinet and A Lady Seated at a Spinet.

These decorated baseboards, fabricated in Delft, were commonly found in Dutch houses and were widely exported. They protected the lower part of the white-washed walls from passing mops. However, even if Vermeer’s miniscule renditions of the children that populate them do express something of the children’s naive simplicity; they were most likely included as a comment on the principle theme of the picture. In the case of the Lady Standing at a Spinet, the little Cupid on the tile directly to the left of the lower portion of the woman’s silk gown, subtly reinforces the representation of the large-scale painting of a Cupid which hangs on the back wall in an ebony frame.

The figure just to the left of the woman’s gown is similar to the fishing Cupid in a print from Hooft’s Emblemata amatoria. “Hooft’s emblem plays on the conventional comparison of courtship to fishing. In Vermeer’s Cupid tile, the fishing rod is visible, the proportions of the figure are consistent with Cupid, and the dark shape on his back can only be his stubby wings. (The same figure may be repeated on a tile to the right, partially obscured by the virginal’s leg.) Prints like that from Hooft’s book often served as patterns for tiles. Contemporary viewers who were familiar with these recurring designs on their own walls would readily have identified the Cupid in Vermeer’s tile.”

 

Albert Blankert (interview).

 

Searching on the Internet, I have found a very interesting interview to Albert Blankert. The first thing we must do, is to know who is he and what he did.

So, Albert Blankert is among the most authoritative contemporary Vermeer scholars and has written extensively both on Vermeer’s art and Dutch painting. His volume Johannes Vermeer van Delft, 1632-1675 contained a critical catalogue and an important chapter on Vermeer and His Public in which for the first time attention was drawn to a group of collectors of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries who viewed Vermeer not as much as a “sphinx” but a s a “first class painter.”

Moreover, a selection of twenty-four of Prof. Blankert’s previous articles (1967 – 2002) concerning Dutch painting from the 16th to the 18th century would be published  in February 2004 by Waanders, Zwolle. Half of them are now translated from the Dutch for the first time. The publication will have 350 pages and 350 illustrations, many of which in color. So, here I put a piece of he interview which was made the 11^th of April 2005.

 

Essential Vermeer:   Your book “Vermeer of Delft” (1975) made a fundamental step towards understanding Vermeer’s painting within a historical context. In this volume, you carefully examined the artist’s stylistic evolution, the complexities of iconographical meaning in Dutch mid-17th c. genre painting as well as Vermeer’s fame among collectors and connoisseurs during his lifetime and in the period following his death.  Since then, a vast number of publications have explored the artist’s life and work. With which results of modern scholarship do you feel most comfortable?

Albert Blankert: The idea that there would be a lot of “symbolic meaning” in Vermeer’s paintings seems to have completely lost all of its erstwhile paramount attraction. In how far have I in the past been an adherent of that idea? I would like that my own ideas have been consistent and here the changed consensus offers interesting food for thought.

Essential Vermeer: Vermeer’s works have given rise to an enormous variety of interpretations. Arthur Wheelock’s concept of Vermeer’s Neo-Platonic classicism contrasts with Walter Liedtke’s belief that the underlying sense of calm and order in the artist’s works are consequences of the local artistic traditions of Delft. For Bryan Wolf, Vermeer’s studio represents “a place where Vermeer monitors the deep inner rumblings of the psychic and aesthetic landscape…” while Mariët Westermann finds Vermeer’s interiors “expressions of the value of introspection. Lawrence Gowing asked himself if the artist was “almost an idiot… a walking retina drilled like a machine” or rather a man of “god-like detachment, more balanced, more civilized…than any other painter before or since.” Why do you think Vermeer’s paintings, seemingly so straightforward, create such diverse interpretations? And, in your opinion, are there ways to reconcile them?

Albert Blankert:   Do not we all agree on the “underlying sense of calm?” Apparently we are unable to refrain from further commenting on it, which we all do according to our own idiosyncrasies.

Essential Vermeer: In your finely articulated study of Vermeer’s pictorial themes (“Vermeer’s Modern Themes and Their Tradition” in Johannes Vermeer, 1995) you have pointed out some of the difficulties of interpreting iconographic significance in Vermeer’s painting. Some recent scholars have advanced the idea that Vermeer, as well as other Dutch genre artists may have been intentionally ambiguous in regards. What are your current feelings about Vermeer’s use of iconography?

Albert Blankert:   Vermeer most often aimed at presenting us with a straightforward ”happening” but could not avoid that these have or imply connotations and ambiguities, that he subsequently put to excellent use. You find all on that in the article “Vermeer’s Modern Themes” that you mention.

Essential Vermeer: Some scholars have recently begun to view Vermeer’s work in close association with the scientific and philosophic inquiry of his time. In particular, Robert Huerta in a recent publication * perceives this kinship, as did John Constable, who saw painters as natural philosophers attempting to discover the laws of nature and used their paintings as experiments toward this end. What do you think of this development?

Albert Blankert:   It is most intriguing that Spinoza was Vermeer’s exact contemporary and belonged (broadly defined) to the same milieu. The possible link between Vermeer’s work and the revolution in science that took place during his lifetime also is a puzzling issue. These considerations are not new and I doubt that recent speculations would offer truly new insights.

Essential Vermeer: In the Dissius auction of 1696 in which 21 painting by Vermeer were sold, one lost painting was described as “ In which a gentleman is washing his hands in a see-through room with sculptures, artful and rare.” While it is only obvious we can in no way deduce the painting’s appearance, both the “washing” theme and composition (suggested by the “see-through room”) might be related to other works by contemporaries (De Hoogh, Ter Borch and Van Hoogenstraten) and to a few of his own works (“A Maid Asleep,” “Young Woman with a Water Pitcher” and “The Love Letter”. Does the “speculative side” of Albert Blankert wish to offer any thoughts in regards, however tentative?

Albert Blankert:   Most of what I arrived at is summarized in a short paragraph in my article “Vermeer’s Modern Themes “. I often encouraged students with a talent for drawing to use it for devising a tentative reconstruction of the painting. I got images that differed a great deal from one another. None of them was in the least convincing.

Essential Vermeer: Even though modern scholarship has made great strides in defining the artist’s life and his artistic role within his contemporary cultural milieu, Thorè’s definition of the artist as “the Sphinx” still seems valid. Terms like mysterious, sublime, elevated, enigmatic are still regularly employed to describe the quality of his work. But what do these terms really mean? Why do you think otherwise reasonable commentators resort to this kind of description which has almost religious overtones?

Albert Blankert:   We appreciate, like, admire, love Vermeer’s work a very great deal. We want to express all this in words and find them insufficient, so we sing, jubilate, dance, scream, paint, drum, yes, similar to what we do for a loved one or for a god, what is the difference? Personally I find that we should observe utter restraint, but in how far is that a rational stance?

Essential Vermeer: Do you have plans for further publications about Vermeer? If so, would you be so kind as to indicate the direction your work will take?

Albert Blankert:   Yes and no.

Essential Vermeer:  Which single piece of music best puts to music Vermeer’s painting?

Albert Blankert:   Mozart and Vermeer have a lot to do with each other.

 

Women represented as pictures. (turbans, pearls…)

Vermeer has represented especially young women integrated in narrative context, even if this context is not clearly defined. The representation of the plot is suggested by an attribute, like, for example, by a music instrument. Apart from those paintings, there are some of Vermeer´s works that lack of some elements, giving the impression of being paintings. This is a reworked impression due to the fact that these women are painted in the foreground.

Nowadays, numerous paintings are intellectual activity and occupation suggesting attributes of constitutive significance and vice versa. Not all the representations that correspond to the shape of the painting have to be interpreted as a conscious and individualized characterization. Precisely, in the called “historical painting”, it is very difficult to decide if the individualized intention is prior or if the model “owns” only its exterior for another aim of representation.

 

A clear example to see and to understand all this is the painting called “The Girl with the Pearl Earring”. With a dark, neutral background, with a tendency toward the black, which makes possible a big contrastive effect, the girl side face looks toward the spectator. Her mouth is a little opened and this means that the girl, as it occurs in most of the Dutchwoman paintings, speaks to the spectator. Her head is lightly inclined, explaining the sensation that the girl is lost in her dreamful thoughts; however, at the same time, she fixes her look to the spectator.

She is wearing a brown yellowish jacket, without any applications; against we can distinguish the bright white of her neck blouse. The next contrast can be found on the blue turban she is wearing, from which extremity falls, in a veil´s shape, a yellow cloth on the shoulders. Here, Vermeer works with simple colors, nearly pure, reducing the pictorial tones.

The girl´s headdress seems exotic. Turbans were in Europe, and on the XV century, a very important and useful accessory. On the Turkish wars, the foreign way of life and the exotic cloths used to show a big fascination. In this Vermeer painting, we can say that the most important thing to remark is the big pearl earring that hangs from the girl´s ear. With its golden highlights, the pearl distinguishes among the dark area of her neck.

Apart from this painting, some similar effects happen with paintings like: “Girl´s Head”, “Girl with a flute” and “Red Hat Woman”:

 

        

 

Vermeer, through the eyes of the Art History.

 

While Vermeer’s personality eludes us, a look at his professional attitude brings a bit more satisfaction.

 

The portrait that historians have painted of Vermeer has varied according to the interpretation of the scant. A century ago, historians like Bredius and Hofstede de Groot tended to cast Vermeer in a tragic light: they believed he lived in poverty and died in distress, at the same time, ignored by his contemporaries. During another period, historians perceived him as an artist totally lacking in ambition. And during a third period, more recently, exemplified by P. T. A. Swillens and John Michael Montias, they see Vermeer as a man dedicated to his art but somewhat a recluse, with the major cultural events of the United Provinces.

In order to define Vermeer’s art and understand it within the context of Dutch painting, every known fact of his life, no matter how insignificant was, has been passed through a fine comb. Recent scholarship tends to focus on the relations that the painter entertained with members of the Dutch cultural elite, even though some of these relationships are probable but unproven. The artist’s “elitist“ subjects and refined facture of his canvases, together with his ambitious artistic agenda and even the upward direction of his marriage, have convinced art historians that Vermeer was a sort of good courtier who conversed his work at the highest social level.

For example, one of the richest citizens of Delft,  called Pieter van Ruijven, had collected almost half of Vermeer’s output, an extraordinary painter/client relationship in any age. We know that the artist received visits from well-heeled gentlemen: like, for example, the French connoisseur Balthasar de Monconys and Pieter Teding van Berckhout.

During his life, one of Vermeer’s compositions found its way into the hands of Diego Duarte, an immensely rich Antwerp jeweler, once more, a friend of Huygens. Duarte’s inventory reports a “Young Lady playing the clavecin, with accessories” (perhaps the” Lady Seated at a Virginal”). To give some sort of idea of the stature of Duarte’s collection, it is enough to know that he possessed more than two hundred paintings by masters such as Holbein, Raphael, Titian, Rubens and Van Dyck. Duarte was an accomplished musician and also a composer.

Even if Vermeer had gained access to the circles of elite collectors, he died in poverty. In part, his demise was his own doing. Having sold the good part of his slim production (truly slim by any standard) to one single collector in his native Delft, his fame was destined to remain substantially within the city walls of Delft. In a sense, a single work of art, no matter what its artistic worth may be, has very short legs. In those times, there existed no commercial art galleries and no museums where the public lined up to see paintings and specialized art publications were unheard of. If an artist wished to diffuse his images, the most efficient channel was through engraving and etching techniques.

The other cause of Vermeer’s premature downfall was beyond his control. In his last years, the French army had repeatedly invaded the United Provinces bringing the Dutch economy to its knees. The art market, which is historically is the first to take the brunt of bad news, had all but collapsed.

Another recent view has also been put forth. Robert D. Huerta underlines the conceptual and methodological links between the Delft painter Vermeer and his near neighbor and exact contemporary, the microscopic Antony van Leeuwenhoek. Huerta’s study considers the close connections between painting and science during the seventeenth century. He argues that Vermeer’s use of the “camera obscura” parallels Van Leeuwenhoek’s pursuit of the “optical way,” and embodies a profound philosophical connection between these investigators. Thus, Vermeer’s informed observations enabled him to confront the same issues as other natural philosophers regarding the interpretation of unfamiliar images presented by instrumental systems (viz, the telescope, microscope, “camera obscura”).

 

“The Lacemaker” according to Mark Harden.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Searching on the Internet, I have found some interesting things about my painting. For example, these are some sentences that Mark Harden said about my painting called “The Lacemaker”. He describes how he thinks the painting is and he give us his own opinion.

 

 

 

Mark Harden: 

 

“”The Lacemaker” is another small scale painting, nearly dwarfed by its impressive wooden frame. Unlike the more contemplative figures in Vermeer’s work, the subject here is very active, intensely focused on a physical activity. As opposed to the full-figure compositions, where furniture and drapery act to facilitate or deflect the viewer’s visual entry, “The Lacemaker” brings the subject dramatically to the foreground. As a result, the viewer is drawn into a powerful emotional engagement with the work. Although the composition is quite shallow, there are different depths of field that draw the viewer into the canvas. The forms nearest the eye are unfocused, which encourages the viewer to pass on to the more distinctly defined middleground.”The intimacy is accentuated by the small scale, personal subject matter, and natural composition. The lacemaker’s total preoccupation with her work is indicated through her confined pose. The use of yellow, a dynamic, psychologically strong hue, reinforces the perception of intense effort. Contrasts of form serve to animate the image. For example, her hairstyle expresses her essential nature – both tightly constrained and, in the loose ringlet behind her left shoulder, rhythmically flowing. Another strong contrast exists between the tightly drawn threads she holds and the smoothly flowing red and white threads in the foreground. The precision and clearness of vision demanded by her work is expressed in the light accents that illuminate her forehead and fingers.

“The diffused ocular effect of the foreground objects, especially the threads, was definitely derived from a camera obscura image. Vermeer used the informal, close framing of the composition suggested by the camera obscura to accentuate the realistic, immediate impact of the painting. Contemporary Dutch painting portrayed industriousness as an allegory of domestic virtue, While the inclusion of the prayer book pays fealty to this theme, it is a secondary concern to the depiction of the handicraft of lacemaking, and, in the highest sense, the creative act itself. Once again, Vermeer succeeded in transforming a transitory image into one of eternal truth.”

Women in Vermeer´s paintings.

Most of Vermeer´s paintings that show women activities can be include in the criticism of addictions. With the demonstration of the mistaken behavior of the figures represented – following the funny way of the comedy- they tried to educate women to be virtuous, that is to say, so as what they thought and behaved agreed with the rules.

On the opposite case, the education through the “positive” model that presents the code of the official behavior on the base of an “exemplum virtutis” is limited in comparison.

 

The most famous of this group is “The Milkmaid” (top picture). This painting enjoyed very early of a special estimation, as the prize paid shows.

The serfdom is normally represented as laggard on the Holland pictures. On the other hand, we have some paintings as “A Maid piquing onions” (1646); the attributes of the onion (as aphrodisiac), and the chicken hanging (traditionally this is a sign of appetite) justify the lascivious interpretation of the painting. On the other hand, those sharpness don´t appear on Vermeer´s maid paintings. The action of pouring out the milk, which falls in wavy spouts in a mud bowl with two handles, is executed with gravity and attention (top picture).

The look of the maid concentrated on what she has to do, is a sign of humility. The soberness of the room is very good adapted to this easiness of life and the behavior of the maid. The wall is grey and yellowish in which we can distinguish nails, fissures, holes… was originally decorated or illustrated with a map.

Giving this example we can say that Vermeer used to portray his paintings with a lot of women. He portrays them in a very special way. These women are usually forefront and are described doing domestic chores, like for example, lace making, pouring milk, reading a letter… Those paintings, even if they look simple, they all have a second meaning and a special feeling in it. According to what I have just said, we can observe paintings like those ones:

 

Views from the Delft.

 

Vermeer drew twice his city: Delft. The city views in Holland were not destined to the public market. The prizes that you paid for this type of paintings were often situated over the sceneries realized by change.

Vermeer tried to give a tone of unification to his paintings. The tones ochre and brown are there. These colors are intensified by red and yellow colors like the roofs, over to whom due to the situation of the dark clouds, the sun light incise in different grades. So, the front buildings are in the dark, while the rearward buildings are in the center or in the middle of the painting.

The dark buildings of the shore are full of tiny color points that shine and fizzles the material on the brick walls, dissolving at the same time its heaviness. This pictorial aesthetic is related with proportionate image by the obscure camera serve as a model for Vermeer.

His topographic vision of Delft can be defined as “abstract” because it reproduces the optical phenomenon in a lot of parts as it transmitted in the middle, with the highlights, refractions and absence of focus proper of this method.

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

Tracy Chevalier.

 

 

Last week, as my partners have already explained in some articles, in Claire´s class we read an interview with Tracy Chevalier. This interview is in our orange book and it talks about why Chevalier chose Vermeer´s work to write about. If we search information on the internet, we realize that there are plenty of things about this writer (interviews, ideas, opinions…). But, the question is: Who is Tracy Chevalier. I´m writing this article, because we don´t know anything about her; only that she wrote The Girl with a Pear Earring.

 

 

Tracy Chevalier (born October 1962 in Washington, DC) is a bestselling historical novelist. She is of Romande Swiss descent (with possible French Huguenotancestry) on her father’s side, and lives in London with her husband and son.

 

Chevalier was raised in Washington, D.C and graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland. After receiving her B.A. in English from Oberlin College, she moved to England in 1984 where she worked several years as a reference book editor. Leaving her job in 1993, she began a year long M.A. program in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Her tutors on the course were novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain.

 

Her most recent book, published in March 2007, is Burning Bright and concerns two children who become neighbours of William Blake in London in 1792. Her career began with the book The Virgin Blue but she became well known with her novel Girl with a Pearl Earring a book based on the creation of the famous painting by Vermeer. The film based on the novel received three Academy Award nominations in 2004.

 

As well as writing books, Chevalier is Chair of the UK’s Society of Author.

The Lacemaker. (poem)

The painting that I have chosen is called “The Lacemaker”and it was painted between 1671 and 1672 obviously by Vermeer. It is a very beautiful painting and I have found a very nice poem related to it.

 

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.

 

English for Special Purposes.

This subject, called “English for Special Purposes”, is divided in two parts with two different teachers: Joseba and Claire.   With Claire, the subject involves a study of the way painting is used and incorporated into literature and cinema. We are seeing and will see in detail the analysis of the very famous painter Johannes Vermeer and his paintings as “Girl with the Pearl Earring”. At the end of the semester, we will publish a book with all our works compiled in it.   On the other hand, in our first ESP digital classes we have learnt to have our personal blog. Our teacher, Joseba, told us to choose a painting from the painter Johannes Vermeer. We must choose one of his works because our task is going to be related with it during the whole semester. Thanks to the painting we have chosen, we will have our own references and sources. Moreover, we will have to search some poems and literary pages or documents related to our painting and even to the painter.   In my opinion, this subject seems to be very interesting because when I was in my last year of school, I learnt some Art and I learnt some Vermeer’s paintings. But as I didn´t see much, I would like to learn more about this painter and his works.