An Introduction to Vermeer’s The Lacemaker

The Lacemaker , the painting I chose in order to do my presentation as well as to write the tale, is a painting by the famous Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). It was completed between 1669–1670. Nowadays, we can find it in the Louvre Museum, Paris. The work shows a young woman dressed in a yellow shawl bent in concentration as she sews the threads of a dress. At 24.5 cm x 21 cm (9.6 in x 8.3 in), the work is the smallest of Vermeer’s paintings,but in many ways one of his most abstract and unusual.

Regarding technical description, the support is a slightly open, plain-weave canvas. The thin, gray-brown ground contains chalk, lead-white, and umber. The red; pink and light blue areas were painted wet-in-wet. Brushmarks impart texture to the background paint, and impasto touches are found on the highlights. X-radiograph shows a pentimento: the knee was lower so that a triangle of wall was visible under the tabletop. The blue in the tablecloth is discolored. The flattened tacking edges along the left and right sides have been retouched. At the same time, it’s important to mention that things such as tools and threads were painted accurately adding all details.

Concerning the activity that the painting represents, it’s easy to assume that the girl it’s working on lacemaking. This was one of the greatest extravagances in the history of clothing. True lace was not made until the late 15th and early 16th century. In Vermeer’s painting, we can clearly see that the girl is making bobbin lace, which is one kind of lace.

Finally, we realized that unlike other artists, Johannes Vermeer used to sign all his paintings in different ways. The most common are the ones which appear in A Lady Standing at the Virginal,The Girl with a Pearl Earring, Woman with a Pearl Necklace, The Glass of Wine, The Girl with a Glass of Wine and so on. On the contrary, the less common ones appear in The Procuress, The Art of Painting, The Astronomer and Diana and her Companions. So, as you can see the signature of this painting is clearly among the most common ones.

References:

• The Lacemaker (Vermeer). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lacemaker_%28Vermeer%29

• The Lacemaker by Johannes Vermeer.
• http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/lacemaker.html

Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid”

With the purpose of showing you the presentation I did on Vermeer’s The Milkmaid,  I have decided to post it by by using Slidshare, the tool we learned to use last year. Hope you find it interesting!

Slide 2: Background

Johannes Vermeer  was a Dutch painter born in Delft on 31 October 1632. He specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a slightly  successful genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.

Since that time, Vermeer’s reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Slide 3: Painting Technique

The Milkmaid, sometimes called The Kitchen Maid, is an oil-on-canvas painting of a “milkmaid”, in fact a domestic kitchen maid, by the Dutch painter. It is housed in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, which esteems it as “unquestionably one of the museum’s finest attractions”.

This painting has “perhaps, the most brilliant color scheme of his oeuvre”, says the Essential Vermeer website.

Slide 4

One of the distinctions of Vermeer’s palette, compared with his contemporaries, was his preference for the expensive natural ultramarine where other painters typically used the much cheaper azurite.

Along with the ultramarine, the lead-tin yellow is also a dominant color in an exceptionally luminous work. The white walls reflect the daylight with different intensities, displaying the effects of uneven textures on the plastered surfaces. The artist here used white lead, umber and charcoal black. Although the formula was widely known among Vermeer’s contemporary genre painters, “perhaps no artist more than Vermeer was able to use it so effectively”, according to the Essential Vermeer website.

The woman’s coarse features are painted with thick dabs of impasto. This technique consists on leaving the paint on an area of the surface very thickly.

The seeds on the crust of the bread, as well as the crust itself, along with the plaited handles of the bread basket, are rendered with dots. Soft parts of the bread are rendered with thin swirls of paint, with dabs of ochre used to show the rough edges of broken crust.

One piece of bread to the viewer’s right and close to the Dutch oven, has a broad band of yellow, different from the crust, which Cant believes is a suggestion that the piece is going stale.

The bread and basket, despite being closer to the viewer, are painted in a more diffuse way than the illusionistic realism of the wall, with its stains, shadowing, nail and nail hole, or the seams and fastenings of the woman’s dress, the gleaming, polished brass container hanging from the wall. The panes of glass in the window are varied in a very realistic way.

The woman’s bulky green oversleeves were painted with the same yellow and blue paint used in the rest of the woman’s clothing.

The brilliant blue of the skirt or apron has been intensified with a glaze (a thin, transparent top layer) of the same color.

Slide 5: What does the painting suggest?

Despite its traditional title, the picture clearly shows a maid   (a low-ranking servant) in a plain room carefully pouring milk into a container  on a table.

Also on the table are various types of bread.

She is a young, sturdily built woman wearing a linen cap, a blue apron and work sleeves pushed up from thick forearms.

The painting is strikingly illusionistic, conveying not just details but a sense of the weight of the woman and the table.  With half of the woman’s face in shadow, it is “impossible to tell whether her downcast eyes and pursed lips express wistfulness or concentration,” wrote Karen Rosenberg, an art critic for The New York Times.

“It’s a little bit of a Mona Lisa effect” in modern viewers’ reactions to the painting, according to Walter Liedtke, curator of the department of European paintings at The Museum of Modern Art, and organizer of two Vermeer exhibits. “There’s a bit of mystery about her for modern audiences. She is going about her daily task, faintly smiling. And our reaction is ‘What is she thinking?’”

Slide 6: Relationship Picture-Poem

In this last slide, I have analised the relationship between the picture of “The Milkmaid” and the poem that went with it in our books and we have been looking at in class with Claire:

The poet takes us back on time to what has been done. It is not a static moment in time.

The picture shows a rude woman, not a delicate or fine one. Everything she touches is hard, crude. There is no flattery at all.

She is holding the jug as if it were a baby, as if she were bathing him.

The maid is an earthy woman, not a delicate one, but she turns into kind of holly or precious when the light shines on her. Light transforms her actions onto something holly, full of grace and admirable.

References:

• Johannes Vermeer. Britannica. Retrieved: May 2, 2011 at 21:00 from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/626156/Johannes-Vermeer
• Johannes Vermeer. The Milkmaid. Retrieved. May 2, 2011 at 21:00 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milkmaid_(Vermeer)
• Johannes Vermeer. Retrieved. May 2, 2011 at 21.00 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer
• Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/
• English for Specific Purposes. Orange Book.

Some facts about “Diana and her Companions”

In this painting, Diana can only be recognised by the crescent moon she is wearing in her hair and by the hunting dog that is sitting next to her. Because of her characteristics as a goddess, she has also   been identified with Artemis   (goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness and virginity; and she brought and relieved disease in women). As it can be seen in the picture below, both of them carry bows and arrows representing their nature as female hunters.

As for the nymphs, two of them are simply resting on the rock and another one is cleaning Diana’s feet using a brass water basin. This water basin has Christian undertones, since it may be suggesting that Diana is cleaning herself both physically and spiritually; even if some critics have also argued that it may be symbolising death. In addition, there is a fourth nymph who keeps herself apart and contemplates the scene from a certain distance, as if she were trying to hide something. She is Callisto, and what she is hiding is her own pregnancy, indeed. The problem is that when Diana chose her nymphs, she made them all take the vow of chastity. Obviously, Callisto broke it when she became pregnant. Diana is not aware of this issue in the scene, but the legend says that when she found out about Callisto’s pregnancy, Diana turned Callisto into a bear and expelled her from the court because she felt betrayed. Therefore, this is the reason why Callisto is dressed in black, and her dressing clearly contrasts the brightness on the foreground – which is emphasised by the women’s bright dresses – with the darkness on the background. As it can be noticed, there is nothing one can see on the background of the painting apart from a tree and absolute darkness.

Apart from that, it can be observed that Diana is placed in the middle of a circle created by the nymphs. The circularity of the painting is then conveying the idea of unity, balance and repose, at the same time that it suggests that the relationship between the goddess and her nymphs is quite close and comfortable. However, Diana has never been described as a relaxed goddess, but as the opposite. She is characterised by her bad temper and this is made evident in the moment when Actaeon breaks in. This is the true Diana, and not the one portrayed in this particular scene. She could have imagined that a masculine figure is about to appear though, since there is a thistle between her and the dog. This plant is the first that blooms in spring, and it also a symbol of masculinity. However, everything points at the fact that the goddess was not aware of this little detail, since her reaction may have been different if she knew that a man was going to interrupt her sacred moment. Unfortunately for him, Diana has also human characteristics, and this put an end to the hunter’s life.

References:

• Diana and her Companions. Essential Vermeer. Retrieved: May 11, 2011 at 15:30 from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/diana_and_her_companions.html
• Johannes Vermeer. Britannica. Retrieved: May 11, 2011 at 15:36 from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/626156/Johannes-Vermeer
• The Greek Goddess Artemis. Goddessgift. Retrieved: May 11, 2011 at 16:00 from http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/greek_goddess_artemis.htm
• Actaeon. Encyclopedia Mythica. Retrieved: May 11, 2011 at 16:00 from http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/actaeon.html

Diana and her Companions

‘Diana and her Companions’ (1655-1656) is a painting by Johannes Vermeer that can currently be found in a gallery of The Hague. It is Vermeer’s only surviving mythological scene, inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses (book III, 138-252). Diana, the virgin goddess of hunt and emblem of chastity, has gone hunting early in the morning, and the painting shows the end of her day; the moment in which she is having a rest in her favourite stream with her nymphs. However, this scene reflects an unusual moment before the climax of the story; this is, before Actaeon (young prince and son of the herdsman Aristaeus) breaks in. Both Diana and Actaeon have been hunting separately the whole day, but Diana will punish Actaeon for interrupting her sacred and intimate moment.

It was a bright spring day, and the animals were beginning to emerge from their burrows. Diana decided that it was a perfect day to go out hunting with her nymphs so that they could catch some tasty food for dinner. The woods were full of animals in early spring, therefore, Diana knew she would be successful in her hunting. After being out with her nymphs for the whole day, the nightfall began to appear and Diana stopped at her favourite stream to relax and to have a bath. This is the moment portrayed in the painting. Two of the nymphs are resting on the rock; another one keeps herself apart and contemplates the scene from a distance, and a fourth one is cleaning Diana’s feet using a brass water basin to prepare her for the bath. The brass water basin may have Christian undertones, implying that Diana is cleaning herself both physically and spiritually; however, it could also be related to death. Diana can only be recognised by the crescent moon she is wearing in her hair and by the hunting dog, since there are no other elements related to her hunting ability – such as a bow, arrows or dead animals. She is placed in the middle of a circle created by the nymphs, catching the viewer’s attention and presenting the idea of unity, balance and repose.

Nevertheless, this is not Diana’s most common side. She seems calm and thoughtful in the painting, but in mythology, she is described as cruel and vindictive. She even transformed Callisto, who is present in the scene, into a bear and expelled her from the court because she betrayed Diana by getting pregnant (which is a bit hypocritical if one notices that Diana herself is also pregnant). In the painting, it is the nymph in the black dress that seems to represent Callisto, since she remains on the background attempting to go unnoticed by the viewer; hinting that she is already hiding her pregnancy. This contrasts with the presence of the dog, which is probably representing loyalty and faithfulness; although it could be interpreted as a reminder of Actaeon’s tragic fate as well.

Actaeon appeared when Diana was nude, bathing. This was a sacred moment that no man could interrupt, but the presence of the dog and the thistle are already suggesting that a masculine figure is about to appear. Actaeon did not expect to contemplate that scene, since he went to the stream only to quench his thirst. Diana noticed he was watching, and full of anger – which shows her true personality -, she casted a spell on him. She threw some water drops on him and transformed Actaeon into a deer. Out of fear, he started to run as fast as he could, but fate was against him. His own hunting dogs attacked Actaeon and devoured him, after having mistaken him for a hunting prey. The nymphs knew about Diana’s angry character, so they simply made their own way to the palace and got ready to enjoy the food that they had hunted that same day.

References:

• Diana and her Companions. Essential Vermeer. Retrieved: May 11, 2011 at 15:30 from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/diana_and_her_companions.html
• Diana and her Companions. Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. Retrieved: May 11, 2011 at 15:35 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_and_Her_Companions
• Johannes Vermeer. Britannica. Retrieved: May 11, 2011 at 15:36 from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/626156/Johannes-Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer & Modern Poetry

For all of us who have been working on Johannes Vermeer and constantly retrieving information on his life, background and artpieces, it is not  new that his influence still pervades on modern arts. While looking around the net in search for precisely that, his influence in modern arts, I stumbled upon this poem written by Ira Sadoff and published in the renowned The Virginia Quarterly Review: A National Journal of Literature and Discussion, and which I already shared with you on Facebook and Delicious, yet I thought it would be adequate to post it on our blog as well since it inspired me when trying to write my story on the painting I chose: A Girl Interrupted at her Music. Here it is, enjoy:

When her mother entered the room, he did not
look up. The young girl’s pale skin turned
white as the shawl she wore. He was pointing
to a figuration of counterpoint, or so
he said. But there was something in the room
of the body giving off light, light was moving
toward the window instead of from its source.
And though his hand still clutched the back
of her chair, the mandolin was covered by sheets
of music, the glass of wine had not been
touched. Though the air in the room seemed
lighter by the old woman’s leaving, nothing
so heavy as speech would be uttered between them,
for there were still lessons to be learned,
what was to be played would soon be played out.

References:

• Ira Sadoff (1976). In ‘The Virginia Quarterly Review’ (pages 112-113). Retrieved 17:38, February 2011, from: http://www.vqronline.org/articles/1976/winter/sadoff-vermeer-girl-interrupted/

A Girl Interrupted at her Music: ‘It’s all about the details’

One of the unique features of Dutch painting is its interest in creating realistic scenes of everyday life which, paradoxically, contain symbolic content indicating that there is more to the picture than what meets the eye. Right now, I would like to analyze what I consider to be the most outstanding elements or details of this painting. 

In order to do that, I have signalled in this picture, all the specific details that I will be considering.

First of all, we have a leaned, multi-paned window. I have included a modern drawing of that those windows were supposed to look like. The design was a complex pattern of interlocking squares. Although the window is almost invisible at first sight, it is, along with these black and white marble floorings, one of the most characteristic features of Vermeer’s interiors.

Secondly, we can observe a birdcage on the side wall. Conservators claim that the birdcage is an addition by a later hand since it is more freshly painted than the rest of the elements and, what is more, it was not part of Vermeer’s original design. Birdcages were a popular feature in Dutch painting and had various symbolic meanings such as the inprisonment of love. In my opinion, this later hand might be giving us a clue of what is happening between these two people.

In this painting, Vermeer included three examples of Spanish chairs. They were elements that belonged to the well-furnished houses of the well-to-do Dutch that I mentiones in my last article. In this picture, we can see one of the Spanish chairs in much more detail and we can also observe the carved detailing:

The thin-necked vaseis most likely a wine jug made in Delft, which was one of the principal centers of porcelain production in the Netherlands. They were trying to make imitations of Chinese porcelain with little success; however, they succeeded in making thin, light earthenware decorated in blue in the Chinese style, and they succeeded so much that their products were even exported to China. Also, in its heyday, more than thirty potteries operated in Delft.

The Cupid painting in the back wall might be there in order to reinforce the idea of amorous courtship. Vermeer experts point out that the Cupid might indicate that love is in the air; however, the painting inside out painting is in such a bad state that is it almost impossible to decipher the true story behind the Cupid painting. Nonetheless, there are several theories going around, and one of them assures that the hanging painting corresponds to this one that I am enclosing, although, of course, this is just conjecture:

The wine glass is depicted in such discretion that it could easily go unnoticed. However, it was introduced in order to enhance the theme of seduction. In fact, wine-drinking and music-making, both overlapping sujects in Vermeer’s interior designs were associated in the 17th century with love. Manners books established that wine should be drunk in two or three times. Here, the glass of wine stands untouched as if to underline the efforts on both parts (the cavalier and the lady) to maintain composure.

Another feature to take into consideration is the girl’s red garment. This element is perhaps the one that has suffered the most through agressive restorations, and nowadays looks flattened and without much substance. Most likely, Vermeer employed the technique called ‘glazing’ to achieve its cherry-red colour. Also, the type of headgear worn by the young woman (the linen cap) was partly ornamental and served to protect the hairdo before and after dressing. The Low Countries had been famous for cloth manufracture since the Middle Ages. It remained the most important part of the Dutch industrial economy.

The cavalier bends over the young lady and puts the music sheet in her hands. Although his eyes are lowered, experts say that his amorous purposes are apparent. Vermeer might have drawn inspiration from paintings such as Teasing the Pet by Frans Van Mieris even though Vermeer reworked the whole body language and facial expressions so as to show a much more restraint atmosphere. The similarities and diferences between the two paintings can be observed in the following pictures:

The last ‘detail’ I want to point out is looking out of the picture. In order to explain my point, I would like to quote Arthur Wheelock, a Vermeer expert:

Most Dutch genre painters included scenes with specific actions. However, Vermeer’s attempts at depicting movement or activities such as laughing and drinking resulted in artificial poses. In this painting, Vermeer arrived at the solution for this problem: the momentary interruption. This device allowed him to suggest movement without the need for specific gestures or facial expressions. She, rather than concentrating on the music they hold, looks out at the viewer.

Alberti, who invented linear perspective, suggested that artists might include a ‘commentator’ to guide the viewer of the painting through the painting  and to tell him exactly where to look. This sort of ‘insider’, who straddles two worlds (inside and outside the painting) is simultaneously in the work but not in the work. These pictorial commentators were a common motif in Dutch paintings. This can be appreciated in Van Baburen’s Loose Company, a contemporary of Vermeer (on the left). The young lady who looks out of the picture in A Girl Interrupted at her Music seems to have more on her mind than the protagonists of Loose Company. Her gaze is far more enigmatic than that of her smiling counterpart in The Girl with a Wine Glass (on the right), also by Vermeer.

Our lady seems unwilling or unable to tell us something and, in my opinion, her story cannot be fully understood. Nevertheless, the elements that I attempted to explain and analyze in this article might give us a clue of what is going on in this painting.
Ariane Sande

References:

• Topics and facts about the painting. (2010,2011). In Essential Vermeer. Retrieved February 19, 2011, from:  http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/girl_interrupted_in_her_music.html.
• Understanding A Girl Interrupted at her Music. (2010, 2011). In Essential Vermeer. Retrieved February 19, 2011 from: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/interrupted.html.
• “La lección de música interrumpida”. (October, 2009). In Museo del Arte. Retrieved February 26, 2011, from: http://museodelarte.blogspot.com/2009/10/la-leccion-de-musica-interrumpida-girl.html.
• WHEELOCK, Arthur J. Johannes Vermeer, 1995. Yale University Press. Retrieved March 2, 2011, from: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/interrupted.html

A Girl Interrupted at her Music: Understanding the painting

As I mentioned in my last post, my new article will deal with the background against which A Girl Interrupted at her Music was created.  First of all, I would like to consider the issue of courtship.  Courtship was a very popular motif and Vermeer made use of it in several occasions. However, the facial expressions of the protagonists do not give us a clue of what they are thinking or feeling. Therefore, we have to draw our own conclusions.  Is this a scene depicting a scene of amorous courtship? Is this merely a music lesson?

The well-to-do Dutch had very well-furnished houses. Many included elements such as carved furniture, glassware, exotic carpets or porcelain. All of these elements can be observed in our painting, and that  conveys the idea that the lady and the cavalier belong to the haute bourgeoisie of the times. Englishmen used to say that the furniture was so clean and in good order that Dutch houses appeared to be designed for an exhibition rather than for a living space. The concept of the Dutch room will be referenced back when analyzing the painting in upcoming articles.

In the 17th century, the association between music and love was a metaphor for an amorous relationship. In fact, music-making  was one of the activities which permitted young people to freely associate with each other without the presence of parents or older guardians. On the table, there lies a cittern, one of the most popular instruments of the 17th century and also one of the most frequenly depicted by Vermeer. A cittern sounds a bit like the virginal and it was used for accompanying the singing voice or for dancing music. The people Vermeer chose to represent would have ideally belonged to the haute bourgeoisie, who normally collected songbooks, one of which can be observed on the table. Songbooks played an important role in modern courtship. For instance, young musicians had a vast choice of foreign and local songbooks, which were called liedboeken or collections of love songs. These books frequently reflected the local culture containing references to favourite meeting places for lovers, taverns and so on and so forth.

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Until the 1630s, outdoor garden parties where young men and women caroused playfully had been a very popular motif. This can be observed in The Garden Party by Jan Steen, a contemporary of Vermeer. However, the key innovator, Willem Buytewech lost interest in this successful garden motif and decided to bring people indoors. He depicted the haute bourgeoisie as surrounded by luxury furnishings and decorative items such as wall maps. This is the trend that Vermeer will follow in order to create his famous interiors.

The last topic I would like to point out, is the fact that Vermeer inspires himself. A Girl Interrupted at her Music shares much with The Glass of Wine: both portray a gentleman attending a young lady in a moment of courtship, and the position of the couple is more or less the same.

Apart from getting inspiration from his own work, Vermeer also inspired his famous artpieces on painters such as Van Mieris or Metsu, also his contemporaries, and who also depicted scenes of courtship.

Now that we know a little more about the background that surrounded Vermeer and his creations, I will move on to consider, in my next article, the most outstanding elements or details found in A Girl Interrupted at her Music.

Ariane Sande

References:

• Understanding A Girl Interrupted at her Music. (2010,2011). In Essential Vermeer. Retrieved February 19, 2011, from:  http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/girl_interrupted_in_her_music.html.

“The Glass of Wine” Johannes Vermeer

Johaness Vermeer- 17th century

The artist of the painting “The Glass of Wine” is Johaness Vermeer (1632-1675). He painted “The Glass of Wine” between 1658-1660. The painting is also known as “Lady and Gentleman drinking Wine” or in Dutch “Het Glas Wijn” and it portrays a seated woman and standing man in an interior setting. Nowadays, the painting can be found in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. The work is typical of the genre painting (images of domestic life, views of households, courtyards…) of the Delft School developed by Pietr de Hooch around 1650. It is a painting of the Baroque style, which it is characterized by its great drama, deep color, intense light and dark shadows.

But what does the painting suggest? It is important to take into consideration that the predominant figure in Vermeer’s works is usually the female character. However, sometimes the male figure intrudes into a domestice scene. This painting as can bee seen, is set in a daylight burgeois room and there is a man encouraging a young woman to dring wine. Wine is in my opinion the central motif in Vermeer’s work due to the fact that it was a forbidden pleasure for women. If a woman was intoxicated on wine, it was considered as a kind of sin. Furthermore, alchool was the first steo towards whoring.

If we now have a thorough look at the painting, we can see that the lute laid aside and the scattered sheet of music add a sexual undertone offset by the couple’s heavy clothing. The emblem of the 27th century was “If music be the food of love” (taken from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”). However, as we can see, their bodies are hidden behind fabrics and folds. His body is covered with a cloak and as we can see, he has not taken his hat yet. Her body is covered under a heavy dress and she is also wearing a headdress. Moreover, as it can be noticed, there is no physical contact, the man is the only one looking at the lady but she cannot see him because of the headdress and the glass that she is holding as can be seen in the image below:

Johaness Vemeer- 17th century

As we have seen, there are characteristics that imply that the couple like each other, they feel a kind of desire, but at the same time, we can see that the heavy clothes mean that there is nothing between them. The open window is emblazoned with an emblem of temperance and it is important that we center in the window, because although it is open, there is not even a glimpse to the outside world. Scholars have suggested that the painting should be analized as a straightforward seduction.

To sum up, we have seen how one has to look carefully at the painting in order to be able to have a critical analysis of the painting, as there are many things related to sin, sex and temperance. In my opinion it is difficult to know whether the couple are attracted to each other or not because I think that their state of mind remais hidden and it is us, the ones who have to decide what kind of relation they have. Perhaps Vermeer wanted the viewer made their own conclusions as well as letting us being creative about it. If you want to learn more about the painting, I will write a second part about the painting technique, and finally, I will made a thir part with some curiosities that I have found.

References:

• Wikipedia,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wine_Glass
• The complete interactive Vermeer catalogue, http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/glass_of_wine.html

Vermeer’s Birth House

The multimedia encyclopedic is a very complete web site on Johannes Vermeer and his life in Delft.

By going to this page http://www.xs4all.nl/~kalden/ and pushing Vermeerś Birth House you will find a research overview of little known facts about the house were the painter was born. What is more, there are very interesting photographs and documents supporting the information given.

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

The Woman with a Pearl Necklace

                           The Woman with a Pearl Necklace

 

  Introduction: 

     When looking to all the paintings of Vermeer, we find that they are moments which we experience in our lives and that what makes his paintings so beautiful and eternal. But what had attracted me in The Women with a Pearl Necklace is that we see in it an action which we do in everyday life, women and men. For some people, the lady is admiring herself, for others she is looking to the beautiful pearl necklace, but for others she is thinking of something else which may or may not have a relation with the pearl necklace. The painting may seem very calm and silent but in a way it talks to the viewer and breath into him many feelings. This painting in particular is putting us in the state in which we come to decide which way to take, which things we like, and what do we want to.patron, Van Ruijven

 

 Description of the Painting:

    The woman with the a Pearl Necklace portrays a woman gazing into a mirror while holding two yellow ribbons that are attached to a pearl necklace she wears. She stands behind a table on which there are many different subjects and a chair in the corner of a sunlit room.

 Comparing to other Paintings:

 

     In this painting, along with Woman in Blue Reading a Letter and Woman Holding a Balance, Vermeer made a composition in which he showed a single woman focusing on some kind of occupation. In each case, the woman is shown turning inward with her thoughts, and using some minor physical activity to give herself some countenance. In this case, she gazes into a mirror while holding two yellow ribbons attached to a pearl necklace around her neck. The distance between the lonely figure to the right and the mirror on the wall, next to the window to the left, is filled by a heavy table slightly to the fore. This part of the painting is very dark, with nothing more than a Chinese vase and a rug irregularly covering the table to occupy the space.

The falling light in from the left, dispersed by the creamy bare wall, shows the meditative young woman admiring her reflection in the small mirror.  The stillness and introspection of the models reflect the search for aloof withdrawal and serenity as taught by Buddhist writings. It is in this sense that we must understand and appreciate Vermeer’s creations during his maturity.  

      The Woman with a pearl necklace, now in Berlin, is one of the largest of Vermeer’s small, single-figure paintings, having a few centimeters more height than the National Gallery paintings, for example. It is probably the work listed in the 1696 inventory as “a young lady adorning herself, very beautiful”. Yet despite this and its size, it was priced at only 63 guilders, in contrast with the smaller but in many ways similar Woman holding a balance.

      Even within the restricted range and constant repetitions of Vermeer’s pictorial topography, these two most narrowly coincide. Only the Woman tuning a Lute, in the Metropolitan, New York, which is on the scale of the Woman with a pearl necklace, might be compared with them. All three show the window butted against the plain rear wall; the leading, where it is visible, is the clear version of the heraldic pattern seen in the other Berlin painting, the Glass of wine. All three have a similar heavy table placed against the window wall, slightly to the fore of the window. Two further similarities are shared by the Woman with a pearl necklace and Woman holding a balance: the carpet covering the table is rucked back to form an irregular range of ridges and valleys, at once exposing the bare table-top and obscuring the objects on it, and beside the window hangs a similar mirror. Oddly, perhaps, the mirror into which the woman with a pearl necklace is looking is smaller than that in the Woman holding a balance. In reproduction the two appear to make a pair not dissimilar to the two in the National Gallery, London. In reality, the difference in size means that they cannot have been intended as pendants in the strict sense. Nevertheless, as they both were, in all probability, bought directly from the artist by his patron, Van Ruijven, it may be that the second piece (whichever that might have been) was painted in the knowledge that the two works would remain in the one collection and be seen in a similar light.

 

References:

Retrieved March 17, 2009, from: 

http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/v/vermeer/03a/19woman.html

http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/v/vermeer/03a/19woman.html

http://www.mystudios.com/vermeer/19/vermeer-pearl-detail-woman.html

http://www.vermeer-foundation.org/Woman-with-a-Pearl-Necklace-(detail)-1662-64.html

http://www.paintinghere.com/painting/Woman_with_a_Pearl_Necklace_7109.html

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/timelines/timeline_vermeers_life_4.html

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/necklace.html

http://www.bibliotecadigital.ufmg.br/dspace/bitstream/1843/ECAP-7A3H7K/1/dissertacao_mestrado_miriam_vieira.pdf

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.”

 

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”:

 

        

 

My second ESP class at computers room

This is our second class with Joseba and we have been asked to write a brief presentation. Our first class with Claire was focused on “Girl with a Pearl Earring” but the subject also deals with other Vermeer’s paintings.

Last Tuesday we were watching a documentary of the BBC about some of his paintings. This helped the class to choose between one of them. Today, some people’s paintings were added to the pages of this blog. Finally, we hope to write and learn interesting things about this great Dutch painter’s work.