VERMEER AND THE CAMERA OBSCURA

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

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

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

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

The Concert

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

Dialogues with the past: The Art of Painting

Dialogues with the
past

 

‘All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.’

Edgar Allan Poe.

 

I had gone to Vienna, and once in the city I had felt
compelled to visit its museums. That morning I had planned to go to the
Kunsthistorisches.

Walking through the galleries of the Kunsthistorisches,
I ran into the painting.  I had been
looking for it since I entered the building: in fact, I confess that this was
one of the attractions of the trip. I had an urge to see that picture; I do not
know why; when I had first seen this picture, I had not been sure then, either.

I remember I had had to do some homework at the
University on a picture by Vermeer, talking about some of his paintings. I had
chosen that picture without any particular reason: I felt that I could find
enough information on this painting and I could easily write a few pages on it.
It was not the one I liked most by the artist, but I chose it anyway.

When I first see an artistic creation, for example, a
painting, I like it or I don’t. I like it if it attracts me for some reason:
this might be the colours or textures that the artist has used, the characters
that appear, or the use of light in the painting. In short, what matters to me
is that it affects me for some reason. If this happens, I stop and analyse in
detail the creation that I have before me. If not, I step to the next table.

With this work, The
Art of Painting, also known as Painter
in His Studio or The Allegory of
Painting, I had not felt anything when seeing reproductions on any website.
But when I had had to stop and examine it out of obligation, for my homewoek, my
feelings toward it changed.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum is imposing, with its
atriums, columns, high ceilings, immense galleries, granite and marble
everywhere, and a cafeteria to rest after so much art, but this time I could
not rest. I needed something more, needed to see this painting. I had coffee
and began my search.

I went through a few rooms; I wandered down the
aisles, looking at pictures but there were none that I wanted to fix my eyes
on. I just wanted to be in front of this painting.

After a long while, or so it seemed to me, the moment
arrived: finally and suddenly I had the painting before me. I had not wanted to
look at the museum guide: it gave me greater pleasure searching aimlessly. Each
room meant a new start and a longing look all over the walls. This took time,
but in the end I saw the picture: it is not a large piece, but for me it filled
the space. I stopped, I looked, I slowly got closer. Then I stood and contemplated
it.

I slowly got closer. I stopped thinking: drifting. I
didn’t know where my mind was: where my imagination was leading me. I got
closer and closer.

At the beginning I looked at the whole painting. Soon
my eyes were engaged by details here and there, but without focusing on any in
particular, as trying to apprehend all of them at the same time would have been
impossible. It was almost a gorging on sensations, on shapes, on colours, which
although already known, now looked different to me: in front of me was the real
painting. Moreover, other inner emotions were emerging: it is impossible to
compare a digital reproduction with the real thing.

I calmed down and I started to enjoy it. My sense of
time and space altered. I was in front of the painting and my imagination
started to run wild. I don’t know if my eyes were opened or if they were opened
already. I now felt as if I was part of the picture. I was involved now on
every detail of the studio. I saw the chair next to the curtain. It was empty:
it was like the ones my granny had at home. But without knowing why I preferred
to sit on the floor; on the right of the artist, but apart. I was able to have
a good view of the scene that way. Morning was galloping fast and daylight was
coming fully through the window. Clio was quiet.

Clio, the Muse of History, was in front of me. I could
not stop thinking about the meaning of fame: fame and knowledge throughout
centuries. I do not remember my thoughts now, or maybe I do, but they are worthless:
I was living one of those important moments of my own history and that was the
crucial thing.

The studio was spacious. I noticed the curtains’
colour and the printing on them. Now I stared at the fabrics on the table and
the mask on top of it.

At that particular moment, the artist was starting to
sketch the eyes of the model. This is the element of a person’s portrait that
has always seemed to me essential in order to capture the face and the essence.
I wanted to see what he was capturing; get an intuition of what History meant
for him. But the model had her eyes half-closed; she was looking down ant that
is how she portrayed her.

Why Johannes do you
paint me young when I’ve seen the birth of light?

Why with eyes down?

If I should be
ashamed of my own past…

If you should be ashamed
of yours…

Is not life joy and
thrill?

Why not a happy smile
in my eyes?

 

The light coming through the window in the painting
was more intense every time I looked at it. Time was passing by without me
being conscious of it. I started writing with the painter’s hands. My retreat
was his painting, but it seemed that he found refuge in my writing: one and the
same thing.

I was scribbling about every detail of the model’s
face, just as Johannes seemed to have painted it, with meticulous strokes. In
fact, I was painting every detail of her face with Vermeer’s hands. His hands
were mine.

 

My face does not
reflect my age

No traits, no
testimonies.

Why, Johannes, why?

I own all the
knowledge of having lived fully

My every act so
famous

You do not reflect
that

Light, Johannes, more
light.

You light me!

It was growing dark when he, or I, was finished with
the whole face. I felt a tap on my shoulder. I was startled, but it was the
security guard, telling me that the museum was shut now and I had to leave.

Beside me, another woman was standing in front of the
painting. He touched her shoulder too. I looked at her, puzzled and complicit.
She looked back, just for an instant, then she smiled and looked away.

Later that night, in the friend’s house where I was
staying, the door bell rang. It shocked me: who the hell was it? It was the
small hours, and everything was so dark at 3 am. Reluctantly, I opened the
door. A beam of light entered the hall. I went out to see who was running down
the stairs. I could recognize something familiar. Was not she Clio, the model
of the painting? Was not she the muse I was looking for?

Please stop, listen
to me:

I like you, Clio.

I’m glad you came.

I loved you fucking me.

T H E  E N D

—————-

——————–

————————————

Conclusions

If this is English for Special Purposes: are we supposed to be writing a short story? Yes, we are. We are writing a formal analysis of the painting too: learning some technical artistic language in between. I really enjoyed the painting much more when I studied the facts behind the symbols. It came very useful to have the web-based contributions of my peers at a click in facebook or delicious.

I came to this painting, and the more I look into it the more questions come to my mind. I shall treasure this little Vermeer for years to come. I wish to see the real painting sometime.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 Sources

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Valeriano Bozal (2003). Vermeer: el gran “voyeur”. Descubrir el Arte,
nº 48.
Consultado 20.03.2011 en
http://almendron.com/arte/pintura/vermeer/vermeer_01.htm

Jonathan
Janson (2011). An essential Vermeer bookshop. Consultada
20.03.2011 en http://www.essentialvermeer.com/books/books_vermeer.html

–

Department of Modern Languages and Basque Studies
Universidad de
Deusto

A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window

With a small dimension of 83 x 64.5 cm (32 3/4 x 25 3/8 in.) this oil on canvas is nowadays hung on theGemäldegalerie, in Dresden. It was painted by the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer circa 1657 and it marks the beginning of his mature period.

As can be seen, it depicts a young woman reading a letter in the corner of a relatively large room. The corner is lit by an open window on the left side, as many of Vermeer’s paintings. It is said that the painter was influenced by his contemporary Pieter de Hooch, though the latter placed his figures on the foreground rather than on the background. The photographic precision present in this painting, as well as in others, has suggested that Vermeer made use of a camera obscura to work on his works. This device help him to create images that seem a frozen reality to the audience -the human beings depicted look like dissected  or stuff people still in time, preserved for our observation.

It could be possible to describe many characteristics of this painting but the following are the ones I find more interesting:

Johannes Vermeer has often been regarded, together with Rembrant, as a master of light. This always enters obliquely through a window. The light falls on the objects that first catch our eyes: the girl, the letter, fruits and curtain - giving them a sense of stillness.  The audience would like to escape the room, breath some fresh air and look to the street. It acts as a symbol of escape; will she climb down the wall and meet that who wrote the letter?

It is on that window through which light enters that we can see the reflection of the girl’s face. “X-ray images show that the head of the young girl was originally positioned slightly in front and below its present place. In the original profile, the head was turned slightly away from the viewer. That position accounts for the comparatively full-faced reflection we now see in the window.”  On the profile of the girl, it can be said that it matches with that of the woman on Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, being it the one of Vermeer’s wife.

The fruit bowl on the front, which shows apples and peaches, is similar (probably inspired by) to that in De Bergh’s Still Life with Fruit in a Wan-Li Bowland a Roemer. A study has discovered that Vermeer also placed a roemer to the right of the bowl but that it was lately painted out in favour of the green curtain. Apples and peaches could underlie the meaning of a love affair.

The green satin curtain does not clearly belong to the space of the scene. “It hovers slightly over the painted surface hung from a curtain rod which runs across the upper border of the composition.” Though it was possible to find this kind of curtain in the Dutch household, it can only be understood as a illusionist technique that was popular among painters who belonged to the Delft School. “There are also precedents for this in religious painting, indicating that curtains also added an effect of mystery and surprise to a scene, and contributed to its lifelikeness in that it confused the painted with the real space. “
Finally, it is quite important to know that there was once a painting of Cupid on the background wall “just above and to the right of the young woman”. The painting would clearly suggest to the audience that the letter was of amorous nature. Sadly, it was painted out by the painter before he finished the work. Moreover, the vanishing point ofthe painting’s perspective would have been a crucial pictoric element in the painting of our analysis.

The picture here presents the actual picture depicted in Vermeer’s painting Lady Standing at the Virginal.  

I would like to finish the article with the presentation I made in class. 

Sources:

• Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. (2011, January 22). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13:57, April 28, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Girl_Reading_a_Letter_at_an_Open_Window&oldid=409390386
• A Girl reading a Letter by an Open Window. In Essential Vermeer. Retrieved 16:02, April 28, 2011, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/girl_reading_a_letter_by_an_open_window.html
• …understanding “A Girl reading a letter by an open window” in Essential Vermeer . Retrieved 17:00, April 28, 2011, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/open.html
• Vermeer’s floating rooms of Light, by Peter Morrell. Retrieved 17:03, April 28, 2011, from http://www.homeoint.org/morrell/misc/vermeer.htm
• Johannes Vermeer. In Dutch DNA 2011. Retrieved 10:05, April 29, 2011, from http://www.dutchdna2011.com/dutchdna2011/en/dutchheritage/dutchmasters/johannesvermeer.jsp

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” Johaness Vermeer

Due to the fact that this will be my last article, I have thought that it might be better to leave the curiosities and best parts to the end. In this article I am going to talk to you about some interesting things I have found about my painting and I hope you enjoy them.

First of all I would like to tell you if you know how big the painting is. Why am I telling you this? Well, because when I began working on it, I thought that it was pretty big, however, it was not until later that I realized how small it is. You can see it below:

Johaness Vermeer- 17th century

You might now probably be thinking the same as me. How can it be so small? I think that this happens because usually we chack the online and they look bigger than what we think and when we realize how small they are, we think that it is impossible. The paintings size is: 65 x 77 cm.

Another curiosity is that when I first began working on “The Glass of Wine” I was not sure, whether I was doing the right painting, due to the fact that there is a very similar painting of Vermeer “The Girl with the Wine Glass”. You can see below that in fact, they look very similar:

Johaness Vermeer- 17th century

Johaness Vermeer- 17th century

As you can see, the name of the paintings is very similar and the tiled florr and the stained glass are both very similar. Important to meantion is the fact that wine appears in both paintings, as well as the same wine pitcher. We can see that although it is true that a third person has been introduced, the man is not wearing a hat, the woman does not have a headdress and we can see her face. Many of the characteristics remain similar: the window is open and as we have said in a previous article, this was a symbol of temperance; the wine, which was a forbidden pleasure and a painting hanging at the back of the wall.

Finally, I just want to insert a song related to the 17th period so that you can get an idea of what kind of music was listened and played.

\”The Lady Nevils Delight\”

To conclude, I just want to add that I hope you have get a wider overview about the painting of “The Glass of Wine” as well as about the period because sometimes, when we learn about an artist the period has an important influence. If you hve any doubts, just write some comments I am pleased to help you.

References:

• Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wine_Glass
• The complete interactive Vermeer Catalogue, http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/glass_of_wine.html
• The complete interactive Vermeer Catalogue, http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/music/10-GLASS-Lady%20Nevils%20Delight-smp.mp3

Woman with a water jug

Woman with a Water Jug, also known as Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, is a painting finished between 1660–1662 by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in the Baroque style. It is oil on canvas, 45.7cm x 40.6 cm, and is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

This painting is one of a closely related group painted in the early to mid 1660s where the artist appears to be moving away from an emphasis on linear perspective and geometric order. He seems to be moving to a simpler form using only one figure and emphasizing the use of light.

The picture is taken from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/young_woman_with_a_water_pitcher.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_with_a_Water_Jug

The Virtual Reconstruction of the picture

This virtual reconstruction of the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher provides a reasonable hypothesis of the artist’s original pictorial concept. The same map which appears today once occupied more of the background and reached behind the standing woman. Today, if one observes carefully, a barely perceptible shift in tone along the original left-hand edge of the map may be noted. Likewise, the silhouette of the back of a Spanish chair with lion-head finial has left an observable pentimento(NB: a pentimento is an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting) underneath the young woman’s outstretched arm.

The changes in composition likely were made during an early phase of the painting procedure, called underpainting, before color and detail had been introduced even though the now-excluded chair seems to have been brought to a good degree of finish. In the simplest terms, an underpainting is a monochrome version (usually brown or neutral gray) in which the artist fixed the layout of the composition, created volume and distributed darks and lights in order to produce an overall effect of illumination. With a minimum of time a great part of the artist’s pictorial ideas could be envisioned. The parts of the painting which did not match the artist’s expectations could be corrected with relative ease.

The virtual reconstruction of this work is based on naked-eye observation and infrared reflectograms which reveal hidden levels of dark paint in the case they contain black pigment. The painting can be virtually reconstructed to an acceptable degree since we know the real dimensions of the two objects that Vermeer altered.

The final composition appears less cluttered and more focused on the central figure of the woman.

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/young_woman_with_a_water_pitcher.html

Describing the details of the picture

The Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands
published by Huyck Allart (active c. 1650-1670)
1671

This wall map of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands was published by the Dutch cartographer Huyck Allart. The only known example of Allart’s map, which bears the date of 1671, is preserved in the University Library, Leiden. The copper plates used to print the map (originated in the beginning of the century) were acquired from an earlier source. Although Allart’s map is identical in its geographical contents, a few decorative cartouches seen on Vermeer’s version were added to give it a new look.

Originally, Vermeer had placed the map directly behind the young girl. Its vertical edge ran down just to the left of the point where the young woman’s cap meets the shoulder covering.

No convincing iconographic interpretation has been given to the map even though it plays a fundamental role in the composition. Other than for scientific purposes, maps were widely used as a decorative element in Dutch homes and were published in great quantities.

This kind of hanging rod (called rollen) was depicted in countless times in Dutch genre interiors of the time. The weight of the lower hanging rod maintained the map flat and the curious spherical balls on each end kept it from rubbing against the damp wall. In simpler homes, they were simply attached with tacks. Maps were usually glued on cloth to give them more consistency.

In Vermeer’s picture, the hanging rod has a curious blue tone produced by the presence of natural ultramarine. Natural ultramarine, the most costly pigment of all, was used throughout this composition in an almost obsessive quantity, but it is not sure if Vermeer intended it dominate to such a degree or if the pigment has intensified over time. The position of the ball that nestles in the angle of the girl’s headdress was not casual. It appears in the same position in his Woman with a Lute (detail above) of the same period.

This window seems to be the same as the one represented in Vermeer’s earlier Music Lesson. The window frame hinges to the left which means that there is a second frame behind it even though one would imagine that the young girl is very near to the back wall.

Some observers have wished to see the young girl opening the window in order to water flowers outside, although it is unlikely that such a precious gilded-pitcher would have been considered appropriate for such a menial chore.

On close inspection it can be seen that the depiction of the glass was broken down into exquisitely shaped abstract patches of opaque paint forming a sort of mosaic of delicately balanced color. Blue ultramarine was used in this area extensively and has even be lightly layered over the lead molding which had been first defined in a neutral gray.

As Vermeer expert Walter Liedtke eloquently wrote: “the woman’s hands and forehead are rendered as if their anatomy were unknown, in the blurred shapes suggesting slight movement and the intensity of daylight. Compared with Vermeer’s other women of the 1660′s, she is somewhat inexpressive, which partially accounts for her universal appeal. She is an icon of domesticity, an intangible figure from a gentleman’s dream.”

A similar white cap to the one worn by the young woman in this painting was represented in four other paintings by Vermeer and in a countless number of Dutch genre paintings of the time both tied and open. It was partly ornamental and served to protect the hairdo before and after dressing. In the inventory of Vermeer’s wife, Catharina Bolnes, three such caps were listed “drye witte kappen” although it was also called a hooftdoek in Delft. It was typically made of white linen, sometimes of nettlecloth or cotton.

One of the most striking technical passages of this painting is the distinctly blue hue of the headdress’ shadows. Vermeer had already exploited this particular effect in his earlier Girl with the Wineglass. Painters of the time invariably used a straightforward mixture white tempered by black or black and umber to create the shadows of white objects and the introduction of the costly ultramarine blue is considered unique to Vermeer’s oeuvre. The headdress takes on freshness and radiance not to be seen until 200 years later when the French Impressionists began to experiment with a similar technique for rendering shadows with clean colors rather than neutral grays.

A similar yellow bodice with black braiding appears in other Vermeer’s including The Music Lesson (see detail left) and A Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. A similar garment may also be worn by the old women sewing in the open doorway of the Little Street. Marieke de Winkel, Dutch costume expert, points out that this type of garment was usually worn in daily circumstances and that it was sometimes called a schort except in Leiden where it was referred to as a wacht. Only a few examples of these bodices have survived.

Although Vermeer was influenced deeply by the themes, compositions and illusionist qualities of the fijnschilders (fine painters) Gerrit Dou and Gerard ter Borch, it is surprising to see how loosely he applied paint in comparison to their truly microscopic renderings.

This gown, rendered with shades of natural ultramarine and black, is painted so broadly that neither the material nor the play of light on its folds can be made out. The artist seems most concerned with conveying the simplicity and purity of its reassuring, bell-like form. Both contours are subtly blended with the white background. In Vermeer’s single-figure paintings of the mid-1660s, detail is always subordinated to the exigencies unified whole and texture is suggested rather than described.

Spanish Chair
1st half 17th century
Purplewood, varnished black, oak and pine,
upholstered in green cloth
105 x 44,5 x 41,1 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Although only a small portion of the chair appears in this composition, it seems to be very similar to ones seen in his earlier works, Officer and Laughing Girl and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. These so-called Spanish chairs probably derived their name from the use of leather instead of cloth as was common practice in Spain. They were so prized that their makers’ regarded themselves as a distinct and superior group within the craftsman guilds. Similar chairs can be seen countless times in genre interiors of Vermeer’s time.

The gilded pitcher and its basin constitute one of the most exquisite passages in the artist’s oeuvre. Its beauty and delicacy would seem to justify one critic who asserts that while Vermeer painted not a single still life, some of the world’s most beautiful still lives are contained within his interior compositions. The pitcher appears as if it had been materially decomposed and then recomposed with the liquid light of the painter’s palette.

Although viewers invariably are stunned by the apparent realism of the objects of the still life, the basin’s rim is not continuous as it passes behind the pitcher and it can be noted that the reflection of the rug’s underside does not correspond with the design of the rug itself. A radiographic reflectogram, which reveals hidden layers of paint, also shows that Vermeer had originally intended the basin to be wider and of a different shape.

The model for pitcher may have been owned by Vermeer’s mother-in-law Maria Thins. Vermeer expert John M. Montias believes that it was probably the one Maria gave to her daughter Catharina in one of her testaments. He argues that a gilded jug was such a rare and valuable object that it is doubtful there could have been another in the Thins household.

The ornate jewelry box and the bright blue cloth draped over the chair counter-balance the strongly centralized composition. A few pearls timidly peep out of the open box and a light blue ribbon gracefully falls forward, perhaps the fastener of the pearl necklace. The box and its content are usually associated with the morning toilette even though recent criticism has stressed that Vermeer tended to avoid conventional narrative. Tones of ochre and brown suggest rather than precisely define the surface decorations of the box.

The red velvet lining has faded somewhat although it is more intense along the edge of the canvas where it has been protected by the picture’s frame. This area most likely had been glazed the deep transparent ruby-red pigment called madder lake over an orange-toned layer of opaque vermilion in order to achieve a deep luminous red.

Husband and Wife (detail)
Lorenzo Lotto
1523
98 x 118 cm
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

The richly designed Oriental carpets with their curious ornaments appealed greatly to European artists and may be considered an intersection of two civilizations. “European painting by the great masters from Giotto and Ghirlandaio to Holbein, Van Eyck, Lotto, and Vermeer constantly depict carpets from Turkey and Iran. Such paintings document the importance that the Oriental carpet had attained by this time as a quintessential symbol of cosmopolitan taste and affluence. So valued were these carpets that there were various attempts to imitate or adapt them in Europe.”* With the rapid expansion of the foreign trade of the Netherlands, colorful oriental carpets became very popular in the 16th and particular in the 17th century as decorative objects, laid on tables or chests. In Europe, these rare and costly carpets were generally used to cover tables, chests or trunks to minimize their wear. It has even been suggested that their colors influenced the palette of Venetian painting. In painters’ depictions they only rarely appear on the floor. Very few of the real carpets have survived.

We do not know if Vermeer represented the design and color of the carpets seen in his paintings with absolute fidelity. For example, the rug that appears in the early Christ in the House of Martha and Mary seems to be identical in design with the one represented in the Maid Asleep. They have in common a broad, light orange border ending in a fringe but the medallion in the former is colored yellow, in the latter green. It is not evident whether Vermeer used one rug as a model and painted imaginary variations on it or, less likely, whether he had two similar but distinct objects before his eyes.

* Nazmiyal News & Information on Antique Oriental and Persian Carpets
http://blog.nazmiyal.com/oriental-carpets-rugs/2006/07/25/

Play with colours. The use of natural ultramarine in Vermeer’s oeuvre

One of the most remarkable examples of Vermeer’s use of natural ultramarine can be found in Young Woman with a Water Pitcher. Although, as it might be expected, it was the principle pigment used to depict the folded blue drapery on the table, natural ultramarine was also employed to evoke the incoming daylight passing through the glass panes of the open window. Vermeer applied delicate admixtures of opaque and semi-transparent natural ultramarine and white over the warm tone of the canvas preparation in order to register the varying degrees of intensity of light as it plays on and through the surface of the uneven glass. Observed with care, we can see that even the dark brown lead molding has been painted with ultramarine. The contrast between the bluish glass and the warm-toned sunlit portion of the window frame is absolutely natural.

The headdress worn by the young woman presents an even more striking example of this technique. It appears to have been first modeled in shades of white and neutral gray. Once dry, delicate shades of genuine ultramarine and lead white were superimposed over the shadowed areas to render the candid transparency of the starched cloth inundated by sunlight. No other Dutch painter dared so much and yet these passages are striking for their absolute naturalness. Natural ultramarine is even found in the light gray paint of the background wall. The combined effect of the aged varnish and the blue in the wall mixture produce a subtle green undertone which may not have been the artist’s intentions.

Artistic transformation

In the early 1660s, Vermeer turned away from the hollow cube-type painting of Pieter de Hooch and other artists of Southern Holland to a new type of composition which had been successfully pioneered by Gerard ter Borch and Frans van Mieris, both extraordinarily successful in the genre of interior painting.

Vermeer’s former preoccupation with three-dimensional space, created by a complex orchestration of architectural features, linear perspective and overlap, suddenly gave way to four compositions of the incomparable simplicity. Each of these works presents a single female figure absorbed in some mundane activity captured unaware in a shallow middle ground inundated by natural light. Motifs, whether they be animate or inanimate, are treated impartially and stripped of any anecdotal detail which might distract the viewer. Contours are no longer uniformly sharp as in the early works but softly blurred and daringly simplified. The aesthetic result is a tender, luminous tremor unequalled by his contemporaries whose works seem motionless and frozen by comparison. The shapes described by the contours of the individual objects, which Vermeer notable Walter Liedtke eloquently terms “luminous silhouettes,” are gauged and aligned one to another on the painting’s surface rather than in depth as if they were a part of some grand, meaningful puzzle.

The surface qualities of the motifs lose much of their textural qualities assuming a curious optical character which many experts credit to Vermeer’s experimentations with camera obscura vision. Like few other artists, Vermeer was able to progressively adapt his painting technique to the new artistic vision. Gone are the uneven textures of the canvas surface and the knotty build-up of impasto paint. To evoke the new uncluttered optical world, form is slowly built up by applying sequential layers of thin, semitransparent paint. The canvas surface resemble the sheen of the luxurious materials worn by the artists models.

In each of the works, the figure strikes a pose that in reality could be held for considerable length of time in order to avoid coming into conflict with the inherent stillness of the painted reality. However, if attentively observed, the figure in the present work nonetheless leans to the right-hand side of the composition, a bit off balance in real life. Her unbalanced posture introduces a tension and expectancy into the rectangular composition. The “imbalance” is properly anchored by a strong, axial line which runs down from the vertical edge of the map through the standing jug (see left).

That Vermeer’s compositions are among the most highly determined in the history of easel painting is rendered more astonishing by the fact that they never interfere with the naturalistic reading of the scene.

“Negative space” and pictorial design

Vermeer’s sensitivity to pictorial design finds no parallel in Western art. Each and every element of the picture plane is determined with the utmost care in order to create a perfectly balanced, yet subtly dynamic composition, which, unlike abstract paintings of today, were not meant to appreciated in themselves but to focus and activate the scene which is represented. The value of a composition can be judged by how successfully it relates to the motif.

One of the highest achievements in Vermeer’s composition was the pervasive manipulation of the so-called negative spaces, or those areas of an image between the solid objects that are perceived as empty spaces. Normally, the viewer senses these negative spaces as leftovers. Their presence is not sensed as meaningful. Oppositely, Vermeer lends each one a clear simple, yet interesting shape capable of exerting its own visual power subliminally vying for the observer’s attention. For Vermeer the artist, everything component of a painting merits equal attention.

The negative shapes, represented in the present work by the light gray background wall, and the positive shapes (the objects) interlock as if some sort of grand puzzle creating a sense of inevitable pictorial unity lending unsuspected resonance to the temporal gesture of the woman.

Technical description of the picture

The support is a plain-weave linen with a thread count of 14 x 14 per cm². The canvas has been lined and the original tacking edges have been removed.

The ground is pale gray and contains lead white, chalk, and umber. In the brightly lit areas of the wall is a thin gray layer, slightly paler than the ground, containing some ultramarine. Yellow ocher was added to this layer in the shadows and half-shadows. The left shaded side of the basin has a red underpaint that extends under the adjacent part of her skirt. It is visible as a red outline describing the top edge.

The composition has been altered. There once was a chair with lion’s head finials in the lower left foreground and the map on the back wall was located further to the left in line with the left edge of the woman’s headgear. The red velvet lining of the jewelry box lid has faded, though the color is still intense where it has been shaded by the frame. Abrasion along all edges and in thin-glazed shadows, as well as scattered flake losses, are present.

* Johannes Vermeer (exh. cat., National Gallery of Art and Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis – Washington and The Hague, 1995, edited by Arthur Wheelock)

Der Geograaf

The Geographer (der geograaf) is one of the few paintings in which Vermeer takes a man as the central and the only figure. This is an indoor scene from Vermeer to which we are accustomed. However, this is a potent image of the meditation and work of the scholar; it is the power of the human reason, the spirit of the enlightenment in a nutshell. This image was painted between 1668 and 1669.

It is precisely the energy that the main figure denotes in its pose one of the main differences with other paintings, works with female protagonists, in which the characters adopt a more passive or relaxed attitude. The Geographer seems to be focused on his ideas, probably he is diving into his thoughts about the “new” world that men were discovering by that time. We cannot forget that the real measures of the planet were being described, we might say they started to make correct guesses about the real dimensions of earth and therefore explorers and geographers were playing a vital role regarding the expansion of the recently independent Dutch empire.

A new scope for the human activity was already set, the aims of conquering every possible land and of establishing new trade routes were an important part of the Dutch nation, which was considered one of the wealthiest countries by that time. Since the year 1641 and for more than a century, only dutch ships were allowed to enter Japan and to commerce with them, for this reason and apart from the many colonies they have. The Empire was in a frank expansion and the flourishing middle class was the leading group in the country the main activity and source of the wealth were, as we have suggested, trade.

One of the first elements interpreted as an allegory of the greatness of the Dutch traders is the robe that the geographer is wearing. This garment was alien to europeans, it is in fact an imperial kimono; these were given as presents to the Dutch sailors who covered the route to Japan and they were a clearly distinctive mark of elegance and importance. Vermeer could have introduced this element as both a recognition for the activity of the mapmaker in his homeland and as symbol of national pride (Vermeer national pride is often identified within various elements inside his paintings). Together with the map, the kimono and the tools we find a terrestrial globe (showing the indian ocean, as some critics say), all these elements pay a complete homage to the local hegemony of the trading world.

Now, facing the picture, we cannot avoid to start to look at it from left to right, the same as if we were reading. It is commonly maintained that western paints are read as writings, that could be a general feature of the Western domination of the world. The starting point is the curtain even thought it does not draw much attention on it. It is used as a repoussoir, a device used commonly in two dimensional art. So then, if we departure from the curtain our eyes follow inexorably the line drawn by the scrolls in which the geographer depicts his knowledge of the world. The path is also determined by the sunbeams which find the vehicle in the Bright color of the paper. After the scrolls, light is driven towards the measuring dividers (the tool is not in a natural position due to artistic reasons) from where spreads all over the picture. Is this the point in which our eyes start to analyze the scene as a whole and we will focus on a different element depending on the direction we follow from the starting point of the dividers. Thus, our glance is driven first to the geographer’s head, there it was discovered with a deeper analysis of the canvas that the position of his head was rectified, the evidences show that it was pointing downwards in the first version but latter, it may be a response to the incidence of the light in the scene, it was painted looking forward. With this new position the picture confers the scholar a more mystic air and the light reflects directly on his absent face. There are also many hidden elements in the picture that I deliberately omitted, I consider that those are not so relevant to this specific picture as they are recurrent corrections or changes in Vermeer’s paintings.

My Story on “A Woman in Blue Reading a Letter”

THE LETTER

Every night Rainilda would dream of the letter. It was in her thoughts, on her mind, all day, every day. Every morning she looked out the window thinking that that particular day someone from the Dutch East India Company would bring her a letter from her beloved husband who was far away on the other sea of the world in the East Indies. Holland was fighting for control of the Spice Island but the Portuguese and their allies were resisting.

Days went by, weeks and months passed by and still she received no letter from her faraway love. She knew that any letter would take several months, perhaps nearly a year between she would get one but she still had hope. It was the hope of hearing something from Maarten that gave her the strength to continue to go on. However, she often got scared and thought the worst possible things that could had happened to Maarten.

‘I will send you a letter as soon as I get there my dear’, he kept telling as she saw him off at the port when his ship set sail for the East Indies. His words, as he waved goodbye, kept repeating in her ears and continued even in her dreams. Knowing the possible dangers of the bitter conflict that her lover was to face, Rainilda feared that he would never come back and that was very hard on her.

As every morning, she got up at 9 am and after having a nice breakfast, she sat in front of the window waiting for somebody from the Company to come. Day after day, week after week, no one with a letter came. Eight and a half months after Maarten had gone  away, an old man with a special bag came knocking at her door. She knew instantly what is was and thankfully snatched the letter from the man in excitement. Rainilda held on to the the precious letter in her hand. She broke the wax seal and quickly opened it. Maarten’s familiar writing reached out to her and said:

My Dear Rainilda,

It has been a long time since I had an opportunity to write you, and I am so happy to have the opportunity now. I am not certain that I will have a chance of sending this but I will write a few lines any how and try and get it off to let you know that I am among the living.

We advanced on Macassar but I have not time to give you the details of our expedition. I will write in a few days if I can get a chance to send it and write you a long one. I was quite sick three or four days while in Macassar, but have entirely recovered. We captured a good many prisoners while in there and killed a good many. We fought them nearly all day at Macassar on Sunday two weeks ago today. The Ambonese and Portuguese boasted that we would never get back to Ambon but they were badly mistaken because we are back again. We lost quite a few man out of regiment. I wish I had time to tell you more but I don’t want to worry you. I would like to write you so many things that would be very interesting to you I know; but you will have to put up with this little letter for the present. I am in hopes that I will get a letter from from you in a few days. I never wanted to see you half as bad in all my life as I do now. I would give anything in the world to see you and the baby. I have no idea when I will have that pleasure. We can’t get any news here – do not know what is going on over there in our beloved Holland. I am so nervous now as the savage Ambonese have started their onslaught on us and

She turned the letter over anxiously anticipating the rest. She suddenly realized that the hand writing was different. It was not as neat as the other one, and also it seemed it had been written in a hurry. She panicked. She was afraid of what was going to be said. After some minutes of hesitating, she decided to read on:

Dear Mrs. Van der Gelder,

This is your husband’s captain, I am so sorry to have to tell you that we came under heavy attack yesterday and that your husband along with other has been captured by the Ambonese and the Portuguese. He fought brilliantly and we fear for his life. With great pain in my heart I have to tell you that we have been trying to do our best to find them but nothing looks clear enough so far.

At this moment Rainilda dropped the letter and cried for hours. She felt so heart broken. Life had no sense suddenly. She started thinking how brave and kind her husband was. He had told her that that would be his last time he would go to war. He promised her to bring lots of money back and that, after that they would settle down and raise the child. All these memories brought her real pain. At one moment her heart filled up of hatred; she had told Maarten that she didn’t want all that money he promised her and that she rather life with fewer money but not having to fear for his death every day. However, the lovechild in her reminded her, the child that Maarten knew nothing about,  she had to go on living, no matter what.

Rainilda knew the letter was not over. She had to finish reading it, but she was to afraid to read the final part. After some rest, and when she felt strong enough again she got the letter and continued reading it. She realized that the hand writing was different again. She got really scared again but decided to read it.

My dear love,

This is Maarten again. I was captured by the Ambonese who suddenly attacked us from the jungle. They slaughter most of my men but we ran into the jungle. However, they managed to capture us. We were horribly treated and only the possibility of a ransom for us saved our lives. We hardly had any food to eat or water to drink. My hand is wounded and that is why you probably haven’t recognized my hand writing. We are short of paper and I want this letter to reach you even though I fear I won’t get to send my letter off. Write often I will get them some time. I will write every chance, do not be uneasy when you do not get letters because it is  often  impossible even to write and finding someone to take them to Ambon and then onto a ship. Give my love to your mother and all the friends. My love and a thousand kisses to my own sweet Railinda. How my heart yearns for you. In spite of the distance, you are still near and dear to me. Goodbye my own sweet wife, for the present.
As ever your devoted and loving Husband, Maarten.

Rainilda put the letter down, relieved, and thought about the next letter from Maarten.

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher 2

Dear classmates this post is only to let you know that I have just published my article about Young Woman with a Water Pitcher. I hope you like it!

http://vermeer0708.wordpress.com/young-woman-with-a-water-pitcher-2/

A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window

This oil on canvas was created in 1657 and it is a genre (an interior) scene. Nowadays it is housed in Gemaldegalerie (Berlin). This painting depicts a corner of a room where there is a young woman reading a letter by an open window. We can see an Orienatl rug and a bowl of fruit on a table. If we focus our eyes on the window we see the reflection of the girl’s face. In the right side of the painting we see a large green curtain and there is a bare wall in the back.

Some critics say that the first time we look at this painting we focus our eyes first on the window, then on the chair and finally, on the letter. The frame of the window drives our eyes to the chair that it is placed below the window, and this one drives our eyes to the letter the girl reads. The angle of the bowl of fruit and the girl’s forearm are parallel so we relate them visually.

 

 This painting seems to be a photograph since it has no movement. The lack of movement makes the viewer be a mere observer of the scene, they cannot participate in it.

Johannes Vermeer was a master in the way he focused the light. He chose the places where set the light up carefully because the light drives the viewers’ eyes. This painting has five points of light that emphasize the most important elements of it:

* The window

* The curtain

* The girl’s face

* The bowl of fruit

* The letter

When the painting was analysed by X-rays a painting of a Cupid appeared on the wall. Since that moment many theories that try to explain why Vermeer decided to removed it have appeared. Some of them are:

*He removed it because it would call the attention of the viewers and he wanted them to observe the scene as a whole.

* Vermeer did not want the viewers to know the subject of the letter. Having a painting of a Cupid would tell them that it was a love letter.

We can also guess that it was a love letter if we look at the bowl of fruit that contains apples (remind the viewr of Eve’s sin) and peaches. Taking into account the removed Cupid the viewers come to the conclusion that it is a love letter and because of the bowl of fruit they imagine that the girl has an extramarital love relationship.

Alejandro Vergara claims that “the reflection of the girl in the window emphasizes the importance of the letter, which becomes the psycological axis of the painting.” The girl is reading alone in a room. The window is opened so she has the outside world in front of her but she did not care about it. Nothing but the letter is important for her.

The girl’s face matches with the one of “The Woman in Blue Reading a Letter”. Some critics claim that the woman of these two paintings is Vermeer’s wife, Catharina Bolnes. This theory can be true because when Vermeer lived this was considered a demonstration of affection. The girl’s face is blank so it does not provide the viewers with any type of information of what the girl thinks about.

Another important element of this painting is the curtain, that became popular in the mid 17th century. Vermeer placed a curtain because he wanted to provide the whole scene with intimacy. The viewers realize that they were watching a private scene through it. Vermeer was very good at defining the physical limits of the space of a painting. This was one of his strategy in order to separe the viewers from the figure. In this painting, the physical limits are defined through the walls, the curtains and the table.

The letter is an upper class element because in the 17th century only privilege people were able to write. The letter can be seen as a metaphore about the importance of privacy. The girl keeps her life private from the audience by ignoring it. The viewer is unable to know the feelings of the girl.

If we look carefully at the letter we realize that there is nothing written on it. This is another Vermeer’s strategy to separate the viewers from the figure of the painting because they cannot know what it is happening, only the girl knows the meaning of the letter.

In order to do this painting, Johannes Vermeer used trompe-l’oeil and impasto techniques. Through trompe-l’oeil the curtains appear to be three dimensions. Impasto was usually used to highlight the main parts or elements of the painting because it attrack the viewers’ eyes. This technique consisted of an application of a thick opaque layer of paint.

*Johannes Vermeer. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:07, March 15,2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer

*Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window by Johannes Vermeer. Retrieved 17:24, April 2, 2010, from žhttp://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/v/vermeer/02a/06gread.html

*A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window by Johannes Vermeer. In Essential Vermeer. Retrieved 20:15, April 10, 2010, from http://www.essential vermeer.com/cat_about/open.html

*Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window by Johannes Vermeer. In Virtual Vermeer. Retrieved 10:43, April 25, 2010, from http://www.virtualvermeer.com

*Private Correspondences. Retrieved, 15:03, May 2, 2010, from http://www.jmu.edu/writeon/documents/2004/herman.pdf

*Trompe-l’oeil. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved, 17:36, May 16, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe-l’%C5%93il

*Impasto. In Essential Vermeer. Retrieved, 21:02, May 16, 2010, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/details/details_girl_reading_at_an_open_window

The Little Street (story)

That is where they live. That is what they have. That is what they belong to. That is they and their lives. It is not a common neighbourhood in the suburbs of Wroclaw, in which each family has its independent life, they greet each other, they sometimes take a coffee together to talk about the problems of the neighbourhood and their children play together in the street. No, it is not, this neighbourhood is not like that. Apparently, it is a normal street in the suburbs of a big Polish city: a poor part of the city that is suffering the poverty of the post-war, in which we can see the typical tall and pointed buildings, usually in red or green, more common in these areas in red -which denotes poverty-. But it is not just that, this street is not just like that. This neighbourhood is a big family, in which all of them work really hard every day since the sun rises until the sunset. The Civil War has just finished, and they have to work hard to recover from it, to finish with the poverty they are suffering. Men go outside the neighbourhood to work in the countryside or in the city, or carrying things from one place into another, or wherever, they just spend the whole day outside working, from the very beginning of the day until the end, juts for a few coins, juts to buy the necessary food to survive and fed up their families. Women stay in the neighbourhood, working at home, taking care of their children, cooking, and sewing and weaving clothes, waiting for their husbands to come back for dinner and rest for the next day. Meanwhile, children help whenever they can, going shopping for their mothers or taking the lunch for their parents in the city. Humble and hard-working people, a big family fighting altogether against the poverty they are suffering, trying to leave back the damages of the war, looking forward into the future, in order to create a new neighbourhood, a new and better way of life for them, at least for their children and the upcoming generations.

However, it always exists the exception. That strange family, whose child never goes out, whose father is only seen early in the morning when going to work and already late in the night when coming back home, and whose mother just talk to the rest of the women when necessary. But it does not mean that they do not belong to this great family, they co-operate in everything, they help their neighbours and they work even harder than the rest of the people in the street; but they always work in silence, they do not share a close relationship with the rest of the neighbours; it is as if they spoke another language, or they were for another planet, another kind of creature, or from a very different culture. Their faces were becoming older and sadder each day, they were losing weight, they were unhappier as the time passed; they were like dying in a slow and painful way. But why? The Civil War was over, their lives were flourishing, they were managing to recover the neighbourhood, it is as if they had born again, after being like dead for a period they are starting to live again. Even the music; the music was disappearing from their lives, the music that identified their house so well, the music that everybody liked to listen to when they had the windows open; the music that used to be part of that house, as if the walls were able to create it, since nobody knew where it came from. The music that used to emerge from that house day and night it is just listen now couple of days per week; as if ‘the musician’ was also losing strength… Nobody could explain what was going on in that house and what was happening to that family.

Everybody remembers the day this family arrived to the neighbourhood. It was late in the afternoon of a sunny Thursday when the Civil War was about to end, it was when its final was obvious, just some days before it was definitely and officially over. They came in a black car, full of packed stuff; the boot, the free seats, the roof-rack. The parents came out of the car and looked at their new house. The child stayed in the car until the parents asked him to come out and get in the new house. He went into looking without looking at it with his head hanging down. Everybody in the neighbourhood stayed silence looking at them; the parents did not seem to care, but the child seemed to feel very annoyed in that situation.

There are no secrets in this street; however, it is obvious that this family keeps one: nobody knows where the husband works and no one in the neighbourhood has ever seen the child outside home since that day. Nonetheless, the neighbours have realised that he spends more and more time looking through the window. In fact, at the same time the music is disappearing from that house the boy is starting to spend more time looking outside through the window. He just looks the other boys in the street, he looks how the children play, trying to understand what are they doing. It is similar to football in a way, because they always divided themselves into two groups and they make with whatever they find around two goals. But they do not play with a football ball, but with a ball much smaller, and instead of kicking it with their feet they do it with a kind of stick they all carry with them during all the game. <Once I listened to them talking and I found out that ‘hockey’ is the name of that game. The children spend hours and hours playing that game, the same hours I spend looking at them through my window. Sometimes I feel like going out and playing with them, but I have not enough courage to do it. I have never played hockey or something similar…and I am afraid something could happen to me or they will laugh at me…and I have not that stick to play. So I keep on looking at them, discovering how they play, the rules of the game, the technique, the strategies…> He starts writing down all the characteristics of the game and the ‘playing style’ of each of the boy. He analyses the strategies they use, deciding which ones are the best ones, and he tries to improve them and create new ones. He is starting to gain more and more interest in this game, feeling more and more fascination for it.

The children know that he looks at them, and they make signals to him to come down and play with them. But he always has to refused…he has no stick to play. His parents are already aware of this situation… to which they give an end. It is Edward’s birthday and they give him a stick as present. When opening it, Edward smiles, and without saying anything goes down to the street. He opens the doorway and stays there smiling with the stick in his hands. As expected, all the children look at him, but he plicked up courage and asked them if he could play with them. ‘Sure!’ answered altogether. And they explained him the basic rules of the hockey: <You just can touch the ball with the stick, you cannot use your body to move it nor elevate it… > He is so nervous that he cannot even listen to them, but he already knows really well the rules: If a person makes you a serious and volunteer foul you make a Penalty Stroke throw; if the defender makes a minor foul inside the area, Penalty Corner throw.

After the whole day playing hockey, Edward comes back home for the dinner. He is dirty, sweaty, tired, bleeding from a knee and with a bruise in his right eye, but with the biggest smile his face has ever had. His mother looks at him, worried because of his appearance, almost incapable of recognising him as his son. They stare each other, and when his mother looks at the sparkle of his eyes and the smile drawn in his face, she immediately understands that he is happy like that. When his father arrived home that day, Edward just said a few words to him: ‘Thanks, for the best birthday present I have ever received’, and he went to the bed, being the night he best slept since they arrived to this house.

And days pass by like this. Edward is becoming better and better in playing hockey, and he has now really good friends, something he had never had before. His parents also start to get integrated in the neighbourhood, and have realized that these people really enjoy life; no money at all, but health and happiness to go around. The house is not the new house but home, and children are not the boys but Edward’s friends. However, for the people from the street still there is something weird, they know nothing about the past and previous life of this family and the music that characterized so well that house has finally utterly disappeared.

The street is economically growing up and there are more and more things and services available for the neighbours; there is a doctor, a school with a couple of teachers and they are building a real grass hockey pitch for the boys to play. The neighbourhood is flourishing and everybody there carries a calm and lovely life. Until one day, suddenly, some shouts are heard from the house of this family and Edwards leaves the house shouting and crying.

When he appears in the street, before everybody asked him what was going on, he starts to talk: <I don’t want to move to another house, I don’t want a big house with a swimming pool, I don’t want to study French music and painting again, I don’t want to spend the day playing the violin any more, I want to play hockey, I want to go the school with my friends, I want to keep on with my life here!. I prefer being poor than rich and playing hockey rather than the violin! Here I have friends, I play hockey and I’m happy!> Never before the street had been so silence. No words, no noises, just silence.

The following day Edward did not go to class. All the children were worried, because maybe he had gone not to come back any more. And that day was Edward’s birthday.

Nonetheless, when they came out from school, Edward was there waiting for them, with his parents, all the neighbours and another man they had never seen before. Edward with a big smile in his face, his parents quite happy too, the man with face of indifference or ignorance, and the rest of the people with a great curiosity. Nobody knew what was going on; why that man was there and why there were several boxes in the street. Then, Edward’s father talked to all of them: <My son is right. I know you all listened to him yesterday, and he is right. We used to have quite a lot of money, but we had a very structured and disciplinary life; we did a lot of things, but we had no friends at all. We got poor because of the Civil War, but kept on working hard and yesterday I got back all the money I had lost. I am a business man, and you know what happens in business, one day you have a lot of money, the next day you have lost everything and the following day you get all the money back. Today is Edward’s birthday. I used to present him the all he wanted, the best and most expensive toys. Last year, however, I had no money for that, and I just gave him a stick for his birthday. That night he told me: ‘Thanks, for the best birthday present I have ever received’. Today I’m giving him what he asked me yesterday night (and he pointed to the boxes and the man): Material and complete hockey equipment for all the children in this neighbourhood. And this man will be their coach, he will train them for the Europe’s Cups next year and he will keep on training them until they become the best hockey team Poland has ever had.>

The Little Street

The Little Street (1657-1658)

As we all know, this painting is called The Little Street and it was drawn between 1657 and 1661 by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is an oil painting which size is 54 x 44 cms and it can be contemplated at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (Dutchland).

In this picture it is portrayed a nice view of Delft and the curiosity is that this is the only outdoors painting that Vermeer created. Maybe, this is not what we would have expected from him taking into account that he used to portray usual scenes that take place in a room. Precisely for this reason I chose this picture to analyze.

It is considered that this picture, though it has nothing, it is full of little and simple details that make this picture so especial. And this is what cought my attention from first sight. I see it completely different from the others because the other pictures contain always the same form: women in their daily routine, doing their labours, almost with the same face expression one and anothers. I thought I would not take anything new from my classmates would. The thing is that this painting makes me see and feel something especial; something different. And this is why I want to write about The Little Street.

As I have said before, The Little Street is different because we are used to see pictures where the main feature is a woman in a room doing a daily activity, and this is something different from what we usually from Vermeer. However, it maintains the essence of Vermeer: he freezes a determined moment in the daily life of Dutch ordinary people. In fact, he reaches his aim to be like that.

This Little Street belongs to Delft; the Dutch city where Johannes Vermeer lived. This street could have been any street in a 17th-century Dutch town: there is a woman pouring the water in the gutter, there are children playing in the street near their house (it is supposed that their parents will want them to be near in order to be visible and not get lost), and there is another woman who is sewing. These actions are the one that make The Little Street be different from the other pictures painted by Vermeer. How such simple and daily activities make the picture be full of this especial spell; charm. Johannes Vermeer had the particular ability to transform simple behaviours and actions into especial and immortal moments full of beauty. This complex simplicity (though it sounds ironic) gives the reason why this picture is involved in an especial magic and charm and it gets to make me feel such a sense of calmness and inner peace when I look at it.

The Little Street framed

The Little Street was painted in “a fine support, plain weave linen, with a thread count or 14 x 14 per cm². The original tacking edges are present and marks from the original strainer bars are 3.5″ cm. from the edge on all sides. Of the two lining canvases one is probably attached with glue/ paste, the other with wax resin.

The gray ground visible along the silhouette of the right house and in parts of the brick façade contains umber, a little chalk and lead white. Coarse particles of lead white protrude through the thin paint layers of the facade and in the brown shadows. Along the left edge of the painting secondary cusping is evident.

The sky was underpainted with lead white, over which the chimneys on the v-shaped-roof line were painted. Azurite was used in the underpainting of the three upper windows, including sills and surrounds, of the right house, followed by a creamy yellow layer. The sequence of paint layers is reversed in the ground-floor windows of this house. The foliage was painted with an azurite and lead tin-yellow mixture, three different shades of an ultramarine and lead white mixture, and pure ultramarine.”

Details and technical information taken from Essential Vermeer official page.

* Technical Description on Johanness Vermeer’s The Little Street. (2010, May 1). In Essential Vermeer. Retriever 9.57, May 20, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/tech/tech_house.html

The Guitar Player ( Characteristics)

- Artist: Johannes Vermeer

- Year: c. 1667

- Type: Oil on canvas

- Dimensions: 53 x 46.3cm

• Brushstrokes became freer and more expressive than in his earlier works:
  

– He emphasized patterns of color rather than textures.

-The face also is treated differently.  Its expression is outward and not self-contained.

• His composition away from the center of the painting:

- The girl is placed so far to the left that her arm is cut by the edge.

– Light falls to the left and a landscape hangs behind the girl on the back wall.

– The off-center composition is further emphasized by the direction of the girl’s glance.

References:

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/guitar_player.html

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

The Guitar Vs. the Lute

- The guitar was just coming into vogue in the late seventeenth century as a popular instrument for solo accompaniment. —

   - The music was created, more audacious than the lute, in large part because its production line with a resonance that the lute was not possible. —

   - Also in that time the music was very sofisticated and enjoyed by the purity of their sounds. —

   – The brilliant character and direct guitar offered us over the world of modern music represented, in contrast to the traditional conservative covered with lute.

REFERENCES

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/music/guitar.html

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/music/instruments.html

who was the model ?

Study of a Young Woman / Johannes Vermeer

-—Johannes Vermeer The yellow-jacketed girl (left) playing the guitar or cittern in the Kenwood picture also has the characteristic jaw formation of the Wrightsman portrait (right).

The Guitar Player / Johannes Vermeer

-—Assuming the date assigned to that picture (1671-1672) is about right, it could represent Maria (Vermeer’s youngest daughter) at the age of seventeen or eighteen.

-—Elisabeth, born about 1657, is a less likely candidate since she was probably less than fifteen years old at the time the Kenwood picture was painted.

 

Reference

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

Treatment of Colour in Vermeer’s Paintings

Vermeer is known to have been extremely conscious about the real nature of colour, and about the fact that objects change in different circumstances and under different lights. In the film “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, this sharp consciousness is represented through a conversation between the painter and Griet, where he asks the young maid about the colour of the clouds. Her reaction is similar as ours would have been: “White”. However, she soon realises that the answer is not as straightforward as she had thought, and discovers that the clouds actually reflects the colours of the world that expands beneath them.

“The Little Street” is another example of this for, though red is apparently the predominant colour, we realise that most details contain blue: the cracks on the wall, the pavement, the woodwork of the windows, the tree at the left, etc. Appart from Vermeer’s mastery, this is also a sign of his economic status. Art historias from UCL, quoted in Science Blog (accessed on June 5th), pointed out that lapis lazuli was a very expensive material in the 17th century, and that unlike most painters, Vermeer used it in the representation of materials like wood and chairs. This contrasts with the generalised belief that Vermeer belonged to the lower-middle class.

Richard A. Smith on Girl with a Pitcher of Water

Vermeer is speaking to the main theme of his body of work, which is Temperance, or Moderation based on pure motives. The young woman in the Pitcher painting is prepared to wash herself and has poured the water to the basin for that purpose. The act of purification from the grit and grime of the world would appear to be Vermeer’s assignment to the lady in this work, but her progress is interrupted by what may appear to be, at first sight, thoughtful inactivity. Yet Vermeer leaves clues to his real intent for this painting, by the means of the woman’s physical connection to the symbol of purity–the ewer and basin, but also to the open window. Open casement windows in dutch genre painting have iconographic significance and are meant as a warning to women of the dangers of not paying attention to household matters (minding ones own affairs), and the lures of the outside world to social and moral ills to which she may be attracted. The lady has departed from her original intent, however briefly, and, we may assume, to dwell on innocent household matters to which her new days efforts will be spent addressing or just a pleasant interlude. Vermeer does not leave that interpretation open to the observer. The lady holds the window open, but does not look out to the street. Physically, the open window is behind her, and, as her downcast eyes to the floor are not actively engaged or focused on anything that we can discern, why would we assume that the symbolism of the casement window, being open, is a problem? The answer is not apparent at first, but one troubling observation with regards the lady’s other hand on the pitcher is very revealing about the state of her mind and, symbolically, the moral state of the woman. Vermeer shows and indicates that the absorbed mind of the woman is involved in an intemperate activity when he pictures the lady’s absentmindedness. For, it is not logical that the lady would put down the pitcher in the bowl of the basin after she had filled it! Vermeer cleverly shows the viewer that the woman is not attending to her work as she should.
What, then is she attending to? It is true that her eyes do not betray her, by peering out of the window, but that does not preclude the woman from engaging the world outside with her ears. Is it plausible, then, that Vermeer is addressing her penchant for eavesdropping on her neighbours. After all, isn’t listening a prime activity of the gossip?
Twice, in his ouvre Vermeer used the visual device of the ebony map weight in an identical fashion. In this picture and the Luteplayer, he placed the map weight in close proximity to the crook of the women’s necks. It has the visual effect of slowing down the movement of the viewers eye, as it passes through the space behind their heads. In both cases, it has the effect of freezing their heads in their respective places. The lady with the lute is tuning her lute and listening as she turns a peg on the head of the instrument. Is it not likely that Vermeer has used the same painterly device to portray a woman listening at an open window?