vermeer, johannes, featured paintings in detail (3)

VERMEER, Johannes

Featured Paintings in Detail

(3)

VERMEER, JohannesA Lady Drinking and a Gentlemanc. 1658Oil on canvas, 66,3 x 76,5 cmStaatliche Museen, Berlin

VERMEER, JohannesA Lady Drinking and a Gentleman (detail)c. 1658Oil on canvasStaatliche Museen, Berlin


Like A Lady and Two Gentlemen, this seduction scene contains an open window which features the warning figure of Temperance.


Women who had become intoxicated on wine were considered to be the embodiment of sin, and this is a motif central to Vermeer's work. According to Jacob Cats, a famous popular teacher of the seventeenth century, women should be forbidden drink altogether, as alcohol was the first step towards whoring.

VERMEER, JohannesGirl Reading a Letter at an Open Window1657Oil on canvas, 83 x 64,5 cmGemäldegalerie, Dresden

VERMEER, JohannesGirl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (detail)1657Oil on canvasGemäldegalerie, Dresden

In this painting, a young woman stands in the center of the composition, facing in profile an open window to the left. The window reflects the girl's features. She is precisely silhouetted against a bare wall that reflects the light and envelops her in its luminosity.


In the foreground is a table covered with the same Oriental rug encountered in the Woman Asleep. On it is the identical Delft plate with fruit.

VERMEER, JohannesThe Procuress1656Oil on canvas, 143 x 130 cmGemäldegalerie, Dresden

VERMEER, JohannesThe Procuress (detail)1656Oil on canvasGemäldegalerie, Dresden

VERMEER, JohannesThe Procuress (detail)1656Oil on canvasGemäldegalerie, Dresden

It has been suggested that the smiling man on the left holding a lute and a glass is a self-portrait. If so, it is the only time Vermeer allows us to approach him on such intimate terms. But the identification remains speculative; no visual or documentary evidence corroborates it.

EYCK, Jan van, Featured Paintings in Detail (3)

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VERMEER, JohannesThe Procuress

There is no relationship between this painting and other authentic works by the master, neither in the conception nor the execution. One has attempted to establish a connection between this work and the one by Dirck van Baburen from 1622, now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. However, aside from the subject matter, the Dresden painting has nothing in common with the one in Boston. The latter seems to have been part of Vermeer van Delft's stock in trade and appears as such in two of his paintings. At one time, it must have been

the property of his mother-in-law.

The fact that Vermeer van Delft was a dealer and thus owned a number of works by other masters does not necessarily imply that he took them as models for his own productions; even if he used some of them as background decorations in his paintings.

However, this painting is usually considered as a point of departure for an appraisal of Vermeer's achievement. There is very little indication of the interior and more action in it than there will be in the later paintings. The erotic subject, size and decorative splendour are all closely related to the Utrecht Caravaggisti painted a generation earlier. The chiaroscuro effect and the warm colour harmony of reds and yellows also indicate a connection with works painted in the early fifties by Rembrandt and his followers; perhaps Maes, who had

settled in nearby Dordrecht by 1653, was the conduit.

VERMEER, JohannesGirl Reading a Letter at an Open Window

In this painting, a young woman stands in the center of the composition, facing in profile an open window to the left. In the foreground is a table covered with the same Oriental rug encountered in the Woman Asleep. On it is the identical Delft plate with fruit. The window reflects the girl's features, while to the right the large green curtain forms a deceptive frame. She

is precisely silhouetted against a bare wall that reflects the light and envelops her in its luminosity.

We are here confronted with one of the salient aspects of Vermeer's sensibility and originality. It is the stillness that stands out, the inner absorption, the remoteness from the outer world. She concentrates entirely upon the letter, holding it firmly and tautly, while she absorbs its content with utmost attention.

Much has been written about the trompe-l'oeil effect of the curtain. It is a pictorial artifice used by many other Dutch masters and in keeping with an old European tradition. Rembrandt, Gerard Dou, Nicolaes Maes, and many still-life and even landscape painters made use of such curtains as a means of simulating effects that now seem theatrical.

VERMEER, JohannesA Lady Drinking and a Gentleman

The leaden window to the left was entirely overpainted at the time of the purchase by the museum and replaced by a curtain and a view upon a landscape through an open window. Vermeer's works set the tone for representations of the upper bourgeoisie, a social level more refined than that depicted by his contemporaries. This type of setting required finer and

smoother pictorial rendition than, for instance, the Milkmaid.Like A Lady and Two Gentlemen, this seduction scene contains an open window which features the warning figure of Temperance.

VERMEER, Johannes

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He evidently was not

wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. "Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they

often portray the same people, mostly women."

He was recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, but his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch

painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him,

although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

vermeer, johannes, featured paintings in detail (3)

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