Vermeer Centrum Delft

The Vermeer Centre offers a visual voyage of discovery through the life, work and city of Johannes Vermeer. The visitor steps into 17th century Delft, sees samples from Vermeer’s oeuvre, goes in search of his mentor and the stories behind the paintings.

If you want to meet the master of light and feel yourself in Vermeerś times, have a look to this website where the visitor will be very well-informed about the latest news on the painter.

Here you have some of the points of interest available on the page:

The Vermeercentrum

The Painter Vermeer

Visitor information

Now at the Vermeercentrum

Exhibits

Education

Tours and Activities

Shop and Café

Organisation

Press

WEBSITE: http://www.vermeerdelft.com/195.pp

View of Delft II

Some landscapes in art

I have found a blog in the Internet that is about landscapes in art. It is a colection of articles about different paintings in which landscapes are depicted. I have linked this post with the article about View of Delft. In it, we find a reflection about some points of the painting by Vermeer. The writer talks about painting techniques shown in the picture, and analyzes the painting’s history and impact.

There are also some quotations of books and other writers.

References:

- Some landscapes: View of Delft [online] [17-05-09] WWW Page: http://some-landscapes.blogspot.com/2009/02/view-of-delft.html

View of Delft I

View of Delft, by Johannes Vermeer, a guided art history tour through this painting

This is a webpage full of detailed information about the paint of Vermeer. I use it in my presentation of the picture. In the web, you can fine information about the way the painting is done and information about how Delft is depicted in the picture. There is also information about what has changed in the city. And there are link through the text that link you to more details, that will appear at the top of the text.

There are also references to other paint by Vermeer and to other analysis and interesting webpages of View of Delft. You can also email the author of the analysis.

References:

- The ‘View of Delft’ by Johannes Vermeer, a guided art history tour through this painting [online] [17-05-09] WWW Page: http://www.xs4all.nl/~kalden/verm/view/Vermeer_main.html

Welcome to the world of the arts

This is my first and real contact with the blog, and from now on we will all share Vermeer and his paintings as a common point to write about and elaborate this page.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632 – 1723)

. . . my work, which I’ve done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men. And therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (Letter of June 12, 1716)

 

He was a friend of the painter Jan Vermeer (1632-1675), and the microscope may have inspired Dutch artists of the period in their endeavors to reproduce the surface textures of cloth, insects, fur, feathers, glass, and mirrors.

Did Antonie van Leeuwenhoek model for Vermeer’s paintings?

            

The Geographer (detail)

             

The Astronomer (detail) 

Portrait of Leeuwenhoek(detail) by J. Verkolje
1686

Many critics have asked if the young men who appear in The Geographer and The  Astronomer (which seem to be the same man) represent Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. A detail of J. Verkolje’s portrait (above 3rd picture) of the scientist dates 1668 when he was  54 years of age. If  Van Leeuwenhoek did indeed pose in Vermeer’s paintings, he would have done so when he was approximately 32 seeing that the two paintings are generally dated near 1668.

Arthur Wheelock, curator of Northern Painting in the Washington National Gallery and noted Vermeer expert, believes that not only did Van Leeuwenhoek sit for Vermeer’s two paintings but that they may have even been commissioned by the scientist himself. On the other hand, John Michael Montias, noted Vermeer expert and author of Vermeer and his Milieu, sees no particular resemblance between “the elegant, distinguished-looking scholars portrayed in The Astronomer and The Geographer and the course- featured Van Leeuwenhoek.” In Verkolje’s portrait, Van Leeuwenhoek  has a nose similar to Vermeer’s man but his face seems broader although this discrepancy could be explained by the difference in age.

Resource: http://www.essentialvermeer.com

vermeer’s legacy to Delft

Johannes Vermeer is one of the best known artists from the Dutch Golden Age. His name is inextricably linked with Delft, the city in which he was born in 1632 and where he lived and worked all his life. His paintings found their way all over the world; only seven of his works still remain in Dutch museums.

Famed for his mastery of light, there is more to Vermeer than meets the eye. As a true Delftenaar he made full use of the technology available to him in the form of the camera obscura or so called ‘goggle box’. Fellow Delftenaar Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was a friend of Vermeer’s and had a very large influence on him through his knowledge on lenses and their use in this technique. Through the eyes of Vermeer it can be seen an interesting and beautiful picture of the life and history of the city.

Koos de Wilt studied law and history of art. He has worked in law and publicity, and having founded several publishing companies and having written a number of books, he now makes films and publishes in newspapers and periodicals. He is currently the director of the Vermeer Centre in Delft.

resource: http://www.tudelft.nl

Vermeer in other works

In the following website [http://www.answers.com/topic/jan-vermeer?cat=entertainment] I have found a list of events to which Vermeer is related to. Besides the publication of Tracy Chevalier The Girl with a Pear Earring and the film of the same name, Vermeer seems to be related to other painters, writers, enterprises or even singers. From the list provided in the webpage I have extracted the lyrics of a song dedicated to Vermeer. It was composed by Bob Walkenhorst, the guitarist and principal songwriter for The Rainmakers. The album is called The Beginner and it was released in 2003. Here it goes:

Jan Vermeer

I wish I could dance like Jan Vermeer
He sold his soul for a bucket of light I hear
And he's drunk in Delpht, painting the town
He likes to see the world a little upside down
And he laughs at me across three hundred years
I wish I could dance like Jan Vermeer

I wish that you loved me like Jan Vermeer
Down at the Riksmuseum you were all in tears
Touched your love with a sable brush
But at the silent auction think I said too much
Put your heart on the block for the highest bidder
Sold to Jan Vermeer

I'm watching you with Jan Vermeer
I got a private eye and a dying ear
Got a camera obscura, a frosted glass
I got chiarascuro out the ass
And you're betting I'm sweating just sitting here
While you're tearing up the tapestry with Jan Vermeer

I wish I was famous like Jan Vermeer
He went from worthless to priceless in less than a year
I been from worthless to priceless and back again
I crack my back on the rack trying to stretch my skin
I think 2300's going to be my year
I'll be framed and hung like Jan Vermeer

References → http://www.answers.com/topic/jan-vermeer?cat=entertainment & http://www.sundancewebservices.net/rm/beginner.html 

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.

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.

 

What happened after Vermeer’s death?

After Vermeer’s death his widow Catharina undertook a series of legal and financial actions, probably to prevent bankruptcy. These are recorded in extensive documents. On 27 January 1676, she pledged two paintings by her late husband to the baker Hendrik van Buyten, in lieu of payment of ‘the sum of 6 I 6 guilder and 6 stuivers …owed to van Buyten far delivered bread.’

Two weeks later, on 10 February, Catharina contracted to sell ‘26 pieces, large paintings and small, far the sum of 500 guilders’ in order to satisfy another of her shopping bills. It has often been maintained that these twenty- six paintings must have been works by Vermeer. It seems most unlikely, however, that Catharina would have sold twenty-six of her late husband’s works for the sum of 500 guilders, when only two weeks earlier the mere pledge of two of them satisfied a creditor with a 600 guilder claim. The documents suggest that she owned only a very few paintings by Vermeer, and that she took every measure possible to retain ownership of them. This would explain why, on 24 February, she sold ‘a painting by …her late husband, representing the Art of Painting’ to her own mother, Maria Thin, ‘in partial settlement of her debt’.

A few days later, on 29 February, an inventory was made of the contents of the house on the Oude Langedijk, probably because of a threatening bankruptcy. Catharina’s property was listed separately from her mother’s. It included some framed drawings, and twenty-four paintings-among them   heads by Fabritius and Hoogstraten, ‘a large painting of Christ on the cross’, ‘alle containing a bass fiddle with a death’s-head’, and another representing ‘Cupid’. The last three are surely the same paintings Vermeer depicted in the background of some of his own works. Significantly, no paintings by Vermeer himself are mentioned. “

None of these measures were effective: on 30 April the High Court of Delft declared Catharina bankrupt. She stated that she was ‘charged with the care of eleven living children. Her husband, having been able to earn little or nothing in the years since the war with the King of France, was forced ‘to sell at a great loss the paintings he had bought and in which he traded, in order to feed the aforementioned children, thereby falling so deeply into debt that she was unable to satisfy all her creditors (who are not willing to take into consideration her great losses and bad luck caused by the war).’

In the autumn the biologist Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, not yet famous for his work with the microscope, was appointed trustee ofher estate. Angry objections were voiced to Catharina’s prior disposal of paintings to certain creditors, such as her mother, which was interpreted as prejudicial to the interests of the other creditors. Despite strong protest, her mother was instructed to relinquish The Art of Painting for sale at auction.

from:
by Albert Blankert, Vermeer: 1632-1675, London, 1978, pp. 10-11

Peter Webber, director of Girl with a Pearl Earing

A love of art brought them together. In Peter Webber’s debut feature film, Girl With A Pearl Earring, a passionate, yet unconsummated love develops between the Seventeenth century Dutch painter Jan Vermeer and a beautiful maid in the service of his household. Founded on a mutual interest in the creative process that lies behind painting, and energised by a deeply personal exchange between artist and sitter, object and observer, the film delves deeply into what it means to look closely and to see.
[...]

Future Movies: What drew you towards the project initially?
Peter Webber: The ear-piercing scene. I had been reading the script thinking this is a nice, polite little period piece that I will never make in a million years and then I read the piercing scene and I suddenly realised that this is not the movie that I thought it was. There was suddenly something rather dark, slightly perverse and obsessive about that scene. It really unlocked something in the film that I hadn’t seen before and changed my mind entirely about what it could be. At that precise moment it turned into something that I wanted to make… so that was it: Perversity!

Having said that, the film is set in a very beautiful world and I love Vermeers’ painting. I wasn’t desperate to make a film about Vermeer from the outset, in a way I was scared about that side of things, but I saw that it was a fascinating tale about power, about sex, about the relationship between money and art and it was all interesting stuff.

FM: Did you have knowledge of 17th Century Holland before you embarked upon the project?
PW: As it happens I did. I had studied history of art at university so I had done my prerequisite study of the 17th century Dutch genre painters; I knew my Rubens from my Rembrandt, I knew my Vermeers and I also knew my Hobberma’s and my Terborchs and all the rest of them so I was adequately prepared. I certainly had the basis, the period wasn’t a mystery. It was great to be able to get back to that, and to be able to say to the producer: “I need to go and look at some paintings”, so he writes the cheque for the air tickets and the hotel. There are worse ways to earn a living.

FM: Did you draw on Vermeer’s work to help create the film’s visual style?
PW: Yeah completely, but we also tried to be aware that not everything should look like a Vermeer, which is why we looked at a bunch of other painters as well. We kept a specifically Vermeer like look for the studio and the attic but the rest of the world is culled from a variety of different Dutch genre painters, some of whom I have just mentioned.

FM: It’s funny because many people have noted the obvious associations with Vermeer, but I think the overall look of the film is more reminiscent of Rembrandt because you’ve used chiaroscuro lighting so heavily.
PW: Yes, that’s true mostly because it’s a very dramatic way to tell a story. You look at Rembrandt and you think that the work could almost be stills from a 17th century film noir, and that’s the sensibility that Eduardo Serra (Cinematographer) and I share. We like darkness and that’s the kind of things European filmmakers do. In America they tend to light from the top down; start with everything being lit and bring it down from there, but in Europe I think we go the other way. There’s a lot of darkness in this film, in fact there was almost too much to begin with. When the first graded prints were produced we realised we had gone a little bit too far, so we pulled it back. If it had been up to me and Eduardo I think we would have left it that way but we had to let the audience in a little bit to see what’s happening.
[...]

FM: What led you to cast Scarlett Johansson in the role of Griet?
PW: She’s amazing! I spoke to 150 girls and she was the most amazing amongst them. I met a lot of good actresses along the way but there was only one who could really do the kind of job that I needed them to do to make the film that I wanted to make. It’s a tricky thing because when we made the film she wasn’t the Scarlett Johansson as she is now; it was “who?” “Oh, the girl in Ghost World”. Now everyone knows who she is and it will be much easier to get Scarlett Johansson movies made in future, as it should be. When you’re casting you look around, you try and cast someone going on your gut instinct, it’s not a precise science and God knows we can all get it wrong on occasion, but we lucked out this time round.

[...]

FM: Do you think that the relationship between Vermeer and Griet is more about companionship than love?
PW: In a way that’s one of the questions that the film is trying to answer: What is love? What different kinds of love are there? Companionship is part of it, but only a small part of it. There’s the recognition that they see the world in the same way, that they see the world through the same eyes; it’s the kind of feeling you get when you meet a kindred spirit. After that comes a swelling obsessive feeling for each other, that is made all the more intense by the fact that it can’t be consummated.

These are only a few extracts of the whole interview with Peter Webber. Should you want to read the complete interview, take a look at this link: http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/filmmaking.asp?ID=63

The “Camera Obscura”

 

The “Camera Obscura” which literary means “dark room” has been known since the time of Ibn al Haithem, an Arab scholar. It is a 19th century optical device and was usually used by artists such as Johannes Vermeer. This devise was used to make quick sketches in the field by the use of a pinhole in a window blind that forms an inverted image of an scene on an opposite wall of a dark room This process was first described In 1568 by the Venetian Daniel Barbaro. He suggested that “the image would be improved by covering it with a disk having a small hole in the centre, a very early reference to stopping down a lens to increase the depth of focus”. In 1685, Johann Zahn invented the box form of Camera Obscura. This was used for sketching. The tracing paper of the “Camera Obscura” was placed on the missing glass inside the folding hood and the image was reflected onto the paper by a 45° mirror placed inside the box.

 “This example is in the historical apparatus collection at Transylvania University, and is of the form used by William Henry Fox Talbot for his experiments with photography in the 1830s.”

FROM: http://physics.kenyon.edu/EarlyApparatus/Optics/Camera_Obscura/Camera_Obscura.html

Other Guitar Players

When searching the web about Vermeer´s “The Guitar PLayer” I realized how many paintings of a guitar player there are and I found them interesting to show them here. Take a look!

 ”The Guitar Player” By: Jacob van Schuppen

“The Old Guitar Player” By: Pablo Picasso (1903)

“The Guitar Player” By:

“Guitar PLayer” By: Minko Oleg (1996)

“The Guitar PLayer Cadaques” By: Pablo Picasso (1910)

“The Guitar Player-New Orleans” By: Val Bradley (2001)

“The Guitar Player” By: Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1755)

Did Vermeer Ever Paint his Wife Catharina?

Did Vermeer ever paint his wife Catharina Bolnes? Were his sitters professional models, friends or relatives? Although no evidence survives that would connect any Vermeer’s sitters to known individuals, the artist’s style of living and working habits suggests he may have used his wife, daughters, even a maid to pose for some of his paintings. Gerrit ter Borch, a fellow Dutch artist whose discreet genre interiors probably inspired some of Vermeer’s own compositions, frequently employed members of his own family as models, in particular his step-sister Gesina. Alejandro Vergara, who curated the Vermeer and the Dutch Interior exhibiton (2003, Madrid) feels that “the tenderness with which Ter Borch portrays this woman on numerous occasions indicates his fondness for her.” From a practical point of view, not having to pay models for long hours of posing may have represented a significant economic advantage.

Critics have dedicated only passing comments about the identity of Vermeer’s sitters. Other than the lack of historical evidence, the scarcity of in-depth inquiry in regards may be due to the fact that it is generally believed that Vermeer’s interiors are not biographical statements: that is, they are not portraits. Consequentially, the eventual individual identity of the sitters is of little importance to our understanding of Vermeer’s art since it was irrelevant to Vermeer’s artistic intentions.

In any case, critics have seen Catharina’s likeness in one painting or another. The most frequent candidates are the Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, and Woman Holding a Balance.  She has the same high brow, straight nose and wide-spaced eyes and also appears to be pregnant in two of the pictures. In less than two decades, Catharina is know to have bore Johannes 15 children, a few of which did not survive infancy. However, modern scholarship has not come to agreement to the fact that these, or any other women in Vermeer’s paintings, were portrayed while they were carrying children.  Pregnant women were probably not considered beautiful from a an esthetic point of view and pregnant women in Dutch 17th c. painting occur only rarely. Would Vermeer, who seemed entirely content to work within the established framework of contemporary themes and compositions, have addressed such an unconventional  theme such as that of a pregnant women?

Another candidate is the young woman dressed in the characteristic lemon yellow morning  jacket who looks out directly at the viewer from A Lady Writing. It has been noted that the painting, more than others, “possesses a singularity and mood that points to it being a portrait.”Arthur Wheelock, in the Johannes Vermeer catalogue, wrote: “The problem of identifying the sitter, however, seems insurmountable. The most likely candidate is that she is his wife, Catharina Bolnes, who, having been born in 1631, would have been in her early-to-mid thirties when Vermeer painted the work. While it is difficult to judge the age of models in painting, such an age does seem appropriate for this figure. Little else, however, confirms this hypothesis.”

Extracted from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/women’s_faces/catharina.html 

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING: Differences between the novel and the film.

 

 

Every time a novel has a film adaptation, the original plot suffers little changes that only the readers of the book can see and usually, makes them get quite disappointed. However, that was not the case of the Girl with a Pearl Earring adaptation, which was a very accurate adaptation of the novel that left satisfied most of the readers.

 

Despite of this, there are some little differences between the novel and the film that would be interesting to point out:

 

• Firstly, in the novel when Griet is sexually attacked by van Ruijven, the one who stops him is Cornelia, Vermeer’s daughter, by asking them what they were doing. While in the film, the one who stops the incident is Catharina, by calling out for Griet.

• Secondly, in the novel Griet decided to leave the Vermeer house by herself, after the painting is discovered by Catharina. In the film, Catharina orders Griet to leave the household.  

• Finally, in the novel it is abundantly clear that Griet has married Peter, and has had children with him. Nonetheless, in the film nothing is mentioned about Griet and Peter’s marriage, let alone children.

 

As a curiosity, just mention that the rags Griet receives the pearls in at the end of the film, are almost the same colors she describes the clouds are earlier in the film. She says they are yellow, blue and gray, and the rags are yellow, blue and white.

 

 

Vermeer´s signatures. Take a look!

Directly from: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/signitures.html

DIANA AND HER COMPANIONS
c.1653-1656
38 1/4 x 41 3/8 in. (98.5 x 105 cm.)
The Mauritshuis, The Hague

CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF MARY AND MARTHA
c. 1654-1656
63 x 53 7/8 in. (160 x 142 cm.)
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

THE PROCURESS
1656
56 1/2 x 51 1/8 in. (143 x 130 cm.)
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

A MAID ASLEEP
c. 1656-57
34 1/2 x 30 1/8 in. (87.6 x 76.5 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A GIRL READING A LETTER BY AN OPEN WINDOW
c. 1657-1659
32 1/4 x 25 3/8 in. (83 x 64.5 cm.)
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

VIEW OF DELFT
c.1660-1661
38 1/4 x 46 1/4 in. (98.5 x 117.5 cm.
The Mauritshuis, The Hague

THE LITTLE STREET
c. 1657-1661
21 1/16 x 17 1/8 in. (53.5 c 43.5 cm.)
The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

THE GLASS OF WINE
c. 1658-1661
25 1/8 x 30 1/4 in. (65 x 77 cm.)
Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

THE GIRL WITH A GLASS OF WINE
c.1659-1660
30 3/4 x 26 1/8 in. (78 x 67 cm.
Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick

WOMAN WITH A PEARL NECKLACE
c.1662-1665
oil on canvas
21 1/8 x 17 1/4 in. (55 x 45 cm.)
Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

THE GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
c.1665_1667
oil on canvas
18 1/4 x 15 1/4 in. (46.5 x 40 cm.)
Mauritshuis, The Hague

THE ASTRONOMER
1668
oil on canvas
19 3/8 x 17 3/4 in. (50 x 45 cm.
The Louvre, Paris

SCARLETT JOHANSSON (The other Griet)

 

Scarlett I. Johansson was nominated to the Golden Globe Award for her role as the girl with a pearl earring in the film with the same title.

However, her acting carrer is much bigger and began with her film debut in 1994’s North. After appearing in several films during the late 1990s, Johansson began to be known to the audience for her performance in 1998’s The Horse Whisperer and 2001’s Ghost World.

She won the “Upstream Prize” for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her performance in 2003’s Lost in Translation. The same year, she was nominated for two Best Actress awards at the Golden Globes, one for drama (Girl with a Pearl Earring) and one for comedy (Lost in Translation). She was also nominated for Best Actress for both films at the BAFTAs (the British Oscars), and won Best Actress for Lost in Translation.

Johansson was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2004. In the same year, she starred in the films The Perfect Score, In Good Company and A Love Song for Bobby Long, the last of which earned her a third Golden Globe Award nomination.

In July 2005, Johansson starred with Ewan McGregor in Michael Bay’s The Island, making her debut as a female lead in a mainstream action film. In the same year, she starred in the Woody Allen-directed drama Match Point, which opened in December. Johansson received her fourth Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for the role.

Johansson’s next film, Scoop, once again with Allen, was released on July 28, 2006. The same year, she appeared in Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia, a film noir shot in Los Angeles and Bulgaria.  On January 14, 2006, Johansson hosted Saturday Night Live. Also in 2006, Johansson starred in a short film directed by Bennett Miller and set to Bob Dylan’s “When the Deal Goes Down…,” released to promote Dylan’s album, Modern Times. Johansson also appeared in the Christopher Nolan thriller The Prestige, which opened on October 20, 2006. She made a return appearance on Saturday Night Live on April 21, 2007, during which she did with Andy Samberg a new version of “Something to Talk About.”

Johansson next appeared in 2007’s The Nanny Diaries, starring alongside Alicia Keys, and 2008’s The Other Boleyn Girl, playing Mary Boleyn with Natalie Portman and Eric Bana. She has filmed her third Woody Allen film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in Spain with Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

Johansson has signed on for three new projects. She was cast as the femme fatale Silken Floss in Frank Miller’s noir comedy adaptation of Will Eisner’s comic The Spirit. She will also portray Mary, Queen of Scots in a film scheduled to begin production in March 2008, and appear as a pilates instructor in He’s Just Not That Into You, with Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Aniston, and Jennifer Connelly.

The woman in “The Guitar PLayer”

In http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/guitar_player.html# we can find a lot of information about Vermeer and his paintings, inspiration, techniques… Concretely about “The Guitar Player” I have found the following:

“John M. Montia, expert of Vermeer´s life and extended family, assumed that the yellow-jacketed guirl has the characteristic jaw formation of the Wrightsman portrait”. He also assumed that the girl in Vermeer´s eldest daughter, Maria, considering that the date in the picture (1671-1672) is right. This could be approximately when the girl was 17 or 16 years old. it is thought that it could also be a representation of Elisabeth, who was born in 1657, but it is less probable because she was under 15 years old when the picture was painted.

Vermeer “recalls the dangling curls of the young girl´s hair in the hanging braches of the idyllic landscape directly behind her head”. It is belived that his was a result of the convention of that time. A convention which considered the lady as a “masterpiece of nature to be admired, posessed and displayed”. This was a time in which women were likely to appear in poem, songs, paintings…

The Guitar Player

This article belongs to Aroa Rezola.

When, for the first time, we face a painting like this (The Guitar Player) we might not notice anything at first. What we see at first side is just an image of a girl who is just playing a guitar. Althought we do not see anyone else in the painting, it seems that she is looking at somebody. Her eyes seem to be focusing on something or somebody. Her fingers´ position suggest that she is procuding sounds. She seems to be playing for somebody who can be hearing and does not appear in the painting.

The girl playing the guitar expresses delicacy and softness. Behind her there is anothing painting (which is very common in Vermeer´s paintings). This is a painting of a landscape. Finally, on the right of the girl there is a table with two old books on the top of it and also a kind of rag.