My brother recently traveled to Edinburgh, and given that he is my brother, had little choice but to visit the National Galleries of Scotland to see this painting. He reported back to me that he learned from the docent that this is the only religious scene that Vermeer ever painted.

I beg to differ.

Saint Praxedis, a painting of a Catholic saint wringing the blood of a martyr from her cloth while holding a crucifix, is clearly a religious painting.

But Saint Praxedis is not universally accepted as being by Vermeer. The docent in Scotland must have been one of those who contest that attribution.

Another painting from that same period, Diana and her Companions is ostensibly about a story from Greek mythology. However, the painting depicts a scene involving the washing of feet, which recalls the biblical reference to humility more than it does any of the myths of Diana, the Goddess of the Hunt.

Allegory of the Catholic Faith, while not a Bible story per se, has enough Catholic iconography in it to keep a summer Bible camp scavenger hunt going for quite a while.

And then there is the matter of a painting known as Visit to the Tomb that is mentioned in archival documents but is nowhere to be found today. The painting may have depicted the tomb of William of Orange, who is buried in the Nieuwe Kerk adjacent to where Vermeer lived. My hunch is that it is the tomb of Jesus where he lay for a few days after he was crucified.

So regardless of whether the docent in Edinburgh was correct or not, Christ in the House of Martha fand Mary is certainly a Bible story.

In the story, Jesus is being welcomed into the home of the sisters Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42). The story has been retold on many occasions, but never better than in Amor Towles’ 2021 novel The Lincoln Highway. In the book, a character named Sally has been frustrated by having to make meals for a series of houseguests with no help and little thanks. In her frustration, she tells the story:

At last week’s Sunday service, Reverend Pike read a parable from the Gospels in which Jesus and His disciples, having arrived in a village, are invited by a woman into her home. Having made them all comfortable, this woman, Martha, retreats into her kitchen to fix them something to eat. And all the while she’s cooking and generally seeing to everyone’s needs by filling empty glasses and getting second helpings her sister, Mary, is sitting at Jesus’s feet.

Eventually, Martha has had enough and she lets her feelings be known. Lord, she says, can’t you see that my idler of a sister has left me to do all the work? Why don’t you tell her to lend me a hand? Or something to that effect. And Jesus, He replies: Martha, you are troubled by too many things when only one thing is needful. And it is Mary who has chosen the better way.

Well, I’m sorry. But if ever you needed proof that the Bible was written by a man, there you have it.

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is more than five feet tall, remarkable compared with many of his later paintings, which are sometimes less than a foot on each side. If the characters were to stand up, we would see that they are about life-size. It seems unlikely that Vermeer would have produced such a grand painting with hopes of selling it in the mass market. Given the scale and subject matter, it has been suggested that it may have been commissioned, perhaps for a church. But at this point in his career, in his early twenties, Vermeer was still finding his niche as an artist. It is doubtful that he would have been given a commission while still in training and not yet a member of the Guild. The reason this painting was done remains a matter of conjecture.

Biblical scenes have been a source of inspiration for art since the time Jesus walked the earth and were a staple of sales for many of Vermeer’s fellow artists in the 17th century. The story of Martha and Mary would seem to be a safe bet. Indeed, Vermeer was certainly not the only artist to tackle this story. For an artist-in-training like Vermeer, the earlier painting of St. Praxedis would also not be a surprising subject. A story in Diana and her Companions, whether an accurate depiction of a Greek myth or an adaptation with a Christian message, would have found a ready market. The three paintings, then, are a reasonable starting point for his career as a painter.

But after these three, his work took a dramatic turn. His next painting is of a bordello scene; about as different a theme from Christ in the House of Martha and Mary as one could imagine.

And after that, in general, his career was devoted to small, sometimes very small, paintings of one or two people caught in a quiet moment, often instilling in the viewer a sense of calm and serenity. It can feel like a stretch to place Vermeer’s earliest paintings, including Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, alongside the later works we know so well—but every story has a beginning.

This painting marks the end of his apprenticeship and, essentially, the end of his interest in religious and mythological scenes. He was about to leave those subjects behind and begin painting the intimate genre scenes we more typically associate with Vermeer.

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St. Praxedis: The Least Vermeer-y Painting by Johannes Vermeer

Diana and her Companions

Allegory of the Catholic Faith

The portrait by Vaillant is telling. Maria van Oosterwijck was both a painter and a very religious person. And she was very much more than a “Flower Painter.” Here she is depicted holding a palette and paintbrush in one hand while turning the pages of a Bible with the other. We can tell from her paintings that she took her Bible lessons very seriously.

She was born in 1630 in a parsonage in a village called Nootdorp, near Delft, where her father was the minister. The parsonage had originally been built for her grandfather, who was the first Reformed minister in the town. She initially worked in Delft, and later lived in Leiden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam, where she had most of her success. She never married, and because she was a woman, was never allowed to join the artists’ guilds in any of the cities where she worked. She retired from painting in 1690, moved in with her nephew in Uitdam outside of Amsterdam, and died there three years later.

Her vanitas paintings are full of symbolic warnings about our short time on the planet. The painting currently in Vienna provides a striking example.

Vanitas Still Life, 1668, Vienna

This painting is a perfect example of the two attributes of her art—the rendering of flowers, insects, and other objects with scientific precision, and assembling a collection of objects that gives us a moral message about the impermanence of life.

At the center-left of the painting is a human skull crowned with a bit of ivy. Nothing could be a more obvious reminder of our ultimate death than a human skull. The skull seems to be gazing up at a celestial globe—not a terrestrial one—referencing the ultimate afterlife.

Around this central theme of impermanence, van Oosterwijck has assembled an astounding collection of symbols reminding us that our time here is fleeting.

Roughly running from left to right, we see a mouse at the edge of the tabletop nibbling a bit of wheat. Just above the mouse is a recorder and a bit of sheet music. Musical instruments are common symbols in vanitas paintings, as music exists only for an instant before disappearing.

Nestled in front of the recorder is one of the most interesting items in the painting: a glass bottle containing a red liquid.

The paper label on its neck says “Aqua Vitae”, Latin for “water of life.” That seems to be a particularly interesting juxtaposition with the skull to its immediate right: life and death, side by side. And in an easily overlooked detail, the bottle shows the reflection of the artist’s studio. The windowpanes are most obvious, but to the right of the windowpane reflection (and with a bit of imagination) we can see the artist at her studio—a tiny self-portrait of van Oosterwijck herself.

To the right of the bottle and below the skull is a half-eaten ear of corn, providing another reminder of the transience of life.

Below the corncob we see a “leper clapper.” People with leprosy were required to use these noisemakers as they walked through the streets, warning others of their approach so they could keep their distance. Van Oosterdijck includes it here as a gloomy reminder that disease is often a part of life.

The vase of flowers above the skull is carefully constructed.

Scholars have identified 17 different flowers, herbs, and grains in the arrangement. Some of the flowers have already begun to wilt, and of course we know that soon they will all be gone. The flower arrangement includes a Cabbage White butterfly at the left. Butterflies are noted for being both beautiful and short-lived. They have been used as a symbol of Christ’s resurrection—a living thing emerging from the seemingly lifeless chrysalis.

And this is not the only butterfly in the painting.

The butterfly in the foreground is a Red Admiral butterfly. She included this particular species of butterfly in many of her paintings—as a signature of sorts. The butterfly sits atop a battered book with the large title “Reckoning,” suggesting that life will ultimately be an account that is to be settled. The translation of the Dutch words below that title says, “We live to die, and die to live.” The butterfly again symbolizes the resurrection implied by those words.

The sheaf of paper jutting out from under the table has barely discernible lettering on it, but what survives is a quote from Job: “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.” Van Oosterwijck could not be more forthright in her choice of words from the Bible to point out that we are not on this earth for long-not more than a few days. And note the blowfly on the corner of the page, a clear symbol of decay atop those words.

The hourglass next to the battered book reminds us that “time is running out.”

Interestingly, the glass of the hourglass shows the reflection of the windows in the artist’s studio, just like the glass bottle with the red liquid.

The hourglass sits atop two books, both of which are identifiable. The upper book bears the inscription “SELF-STRYT,” referring to a book of that title by Jacob Cats, which concerns the struggle between good and evil thoughts. The paper protruding from the lower book says Navolging Christi, or The Imitation of Christ, referring to a devotional book by Thomas à Kempis. Atop the books are a few early-spring flowers, yet another reminder of the shortness of our existence, and a housefly, again reminding us of decay and mortality. She is going overboard to make sure we get it, isn’t she.

And at the far right of the assemblage is a large moneybag tied with a sturdy cord, and a few coins—two silver and two copper—on the table in front of it.

The money obviously represents worldly wealth, which is of course is worthless at death.

Van Oosterwijck the Businesswoman

In addition to being a talented painter, she was skilled in the business of art as well. She had an agent in Amsterdam and sold pieces to the monarchies in England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. Louis XIV of France bought one of her paintings and inspired an artistic trend among royalty and aristocracy for floral paintings and still lifes. Her last painting was purchased by Queen Anne of England and is currently held in the Kensington Palace collection.

Dutch Women Artists’ Rightful Place: De Eregalerij (The Gallery of Honour)

On March 8, 2021 (International Women’s Day), the Rijksmuseum corrected a 130-year snub by finally installing three works by women artists into De Eregalerij—the Gallery of Honour—the hall showcasing the champions of the Dutch Golden Age. Importantly, these paintings are not grouped together in a “women’s corner” of the Gallery but are displayed as part of the canon of Dutch art history, alongside the men.

In 2021, when those paintings joined the Gallery of Honour, the Rijksmuseum did not own a painting by Maria van Oosterwijck. So it bought its own van Oosterwijck vanitas painting from a German collection in 2023, restored it, and put it on display in the Gallery of Honour in early 2025, joining the others.

At last, this remarkable painter is recognized and has joined the other heroes of the Dutch Golden Age.

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The prospects for women artists in 17th-century Holland were abysmal. Women were expected to raise children and support their husbands’ endeavors. Women were denied opportunities for training that would have been afforded young men and were not allowed to join the local artists’ guilds, which would have been required for them to sell their work.

Judith Leyster broke that mold.

She was born in Haarlem, the daughter of a weaver who became a brewer, and then ultimately became a failed brewer: He went bankrupt when she was a teen. She may have taken up painting to help support the family after that bankruptcy. She trained in Haarlem, quite possibly with the town’s most famous artist, Frans Hals. In 1633, she became the first woman painter to join the Guild of Saint Luke of Haarlem, a trade union of sorts that represented the city’s artists. She then established her own studio, where she enrolled at least three apprentices within a couple of years. At one point, in a wonderful bit of Baroque bad-assery, she sued Hals for having stolen an apprentice from her workshop without permission from the Guild. Her success in the dispute—certainly an unusual feat for a woman—coincided with a period of growing recognition and success for her as an artist.

But her output dropped precipitously when she married fellow artist Jan Molenaer in 1636. She may have worked collaboratively with him on his paintings but accomplished very few of her own from that point forward. She died in 1660 at age 50. Her estate listed a number of works done by “the wife of Molenaer,” suggesting that even at this point she was being erased from the annals of Dutch art. For the next 200 years, whenever any of her works were displayed, they were attributed to Hals, Molenaer, or someone else, until she was “discovered” more than 200 years later.

The Serenade

The Serenade is one of Leyster’s earliest signed and dated works and one of many that, for a long time, were attributed to Frans Hals. It is unclear whether she was working in Frans Hals’s studio when she painted this, or even whether she was living in Haarlem. By that time her father had gone bankrupt, and the family had moved to the province of Utrecht. It is not known if Leyster went with them or stayed behind in Haarlem with a relative. But the painting was clearly influenced by Hals’ The Lute Player, which may have been in his studio when Leyster painted this.

The Jolly Drinker

The fellow in the painting grins and raises his tankard to us, laughing with us over the news that his tankard has indeed been drained. His red cheeks and nose suggest this is not his first plea for a refill. He is a bit of a gallant, as we can see by the beret hanging low on one side of his face, the fancy feather hanging well past his shoulder on the other.

A Cautionary Tale

Two of the figures here are involved in drinking and revelry. One tips the jug to his lips, trying to get the last drop out of the container while struggling to keep his balance on his chair. The other raises a pipe with one hand and holds his tankard upside down with the other. He has already finished his beverage. Both are wearing dancing shoes and clothes from the commedia del’arte. They seem to be unaware of the other figure in the scene—a skeleton, holding an hourglass in one hand and a skull and candle in the other. The skeleton peers at the fellow with the jug to his lips, with an obvious reference to the passage of time and the lad’s trajectory to a tragic end from his excess.

A Woman Too Busy to be Bothered

A young woman is working at her needlework by candlelight. She is absorbed by her work. A man approaches her from behind, gently touches her shoulder to distract her from her work, and offers her some coins. It is unclear if the offering is a proposition for sex, although the scene does not appear to be a brothel and she does not appear to be a prostitute. It may be that the offering is more one of courting than an attempt to purchase sexual services. In this interpretation, he is presenting himself as a financially well-off suitor, much like a blue-footed booby showing off his feet in his mating ritual. Either way, the woman shows no interest in the man with the coins.

When she painted this, Leyster was not yet married and not yet a member of the guild. But she was obviously diligently painting. Like the woman in the painting, she was focused on her work and had no time for a man wanting to distract her from her calling.

A Confident Painter

Her most celebrated work is her Self-Portrait, made in 1630, now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

This is an unusually assertive image of a seventeenth-century woman presenting herself as a successful professional artist. She has a palette and paintbrush in her hands, and an arsenal of brushes in front of her. Her gaze is fixed on the viewer, exuding self-assurance. Yet there is some playfulness to it, as well. That is clearly not how she would really dress in her studio. The collar would prevent her from getting close to the canvas and would be paint-splattered in a heartbeat. This serious painter is working on something rather amusing. It appears as though we are catching her in the midst of saying something to us—perhaps something about the fiddler on the canvas,

On the easel is the fiddler from her painting of Merry Company.

A Change of Direction, and a Rediscovery

Shortly after this painting was done, she married, now focusing her energies on childrearing and on her husband’s career. Very few paintings exist from after she was married. She simply vanished from the radar of the art world and remained unknown for more than 200 years.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the Dutch art historian Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, who in 1893 recognized Judith Leyster’s distinctive JL-and-star monogram on a group of paintings that had previously been attributed to other artists, particularly Frans Hals. He published an article that year devoted to her work, attributing seven paintings to Leyster, six of them bearing her distinctive monogram.

Hopefully there are still more to be discovered.

A Postscript
The “Eregalerij” (Gallery of Honor) at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has been the ceremonial central corridor since the museum opened in 1885. It is something of a “Hall of Fame” of Dutch painting and includes all of the expected heroes of the Dutch Golden Age: Rembrandt, Hals, Metsu, Steen, Vermeer, and the rest. But for more than 130 years after the museum’s founding, not a single painting by a woman artist was displayed in this prestigious space. That changed on March 8, 2021 (International Women’s Day), when the Rijksmuseum installed three works by three Dutch women artists, with The Serenade by Judith Leyster leading the parade. The Leyster painting still hangs there today.

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Women Artists of the Dutch Golden Age

And if you are not familiar with blue-footed boobies, this video from National Geographic is worth your while:

The Blue-Footed Boobies Mating Dance

The painting is a copy of the same-titled work by the relatively unknown Florentine painter Felice Ficherelli (1605-1660).

Saint Praxedis and her sister Saint Pudentiana were noted for caring for the bodies of martyrs. Here she is seen wringing out a blood-drenched cloth she has used to clean a martyr’s body. The victim’s body and his severed head are seen in the background below the woman’s right arm.

It would not be surprising for the young Vermeer to copy another painting during his training. Apprentice painters would have honed their skills by copying works by earlier artists. And because his other early paintings look rather like Italian Baroque paintings, he might well have had a teacher at the time who steered Vermeer’s early works in the tradition of Italian Baroque paintings. These two earlyVermeer paintings, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and Diana and her Companions, certainly look as though they are influenced by Italian paintings of the time.

Vermeer’s Version

There are several changes that Vermeer has made in copying the Ficherelli painting. The most striking is the crucifix that Vermeer put in the saint’s hands. In practice, it would be rather awkward to wring out a cloth while holding something else. Symbolically, however, it perhaps equates the blood of the martyr with the blood of Christ.

Why would Vermeer have added the crucifix? When he married Catharina Bolnes in 1653, two years before the date on this painting, he converted to Catholicism. Perhaps the crucifix was added as a nod to his recent conversion. It is thought by many that that conversion was made at the insistence of his mother-in-law, Maria Thins, as a quid pro quo for her blessing on their marriage. Perhaps the crucifix was added to please her. Indeed, at the time the painting was done, Vermeer was living in the home of that mother-in-law, adjacent to a secret Jesuit church that she supported. It has been suggested that the painting was in fact commissioned by those Jesuits. The addition of the crucifix might have been their idea. As impractical as the crucifix might be, there are a number of suggestions about how it came to be.

The other major alteration has to do with the face of Saint Praxedis herself. The face in Vermeer’s painting is similar to the one in Ficherelli’s, but different enough to suggest that Vermeer might have used a live model for some aspects of the face. It has been noted that the face bears some similarity to a woman appearing in several of Vermeer’s later paintings, including A Maid Asleep.

Is it Really a Vermeer?

The painting’s history before 1943 is unknown. That is the year that Erna and Jacob Reder of New York purchased the painting at a small local auction. The auction house, previous owner, and details of the sale are unknown. Moreover, there is no mention of a painting of St. Praxedis by Vermeer in any inventory or auction list from Vermeer’s time until it “turned up” in New York. When the painting was loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its 1969 exhibition called Florentine Baroque Art from American Collections, it was exhibited as a work by Felice Ficherelli. But when the painting was being prepared for that exhibit, the signature “Meer 1655” was uncovered. The exhibition catalog raised the possibility that it might be a Vermeer. Michael Kitson, a British art historian and authority on 17th-century European painting, reviewed the exhibition in The Burlington Magazine and put the suggestion that this might be a Vermeer painting into the scholarly literature.

The possibility that this was a painting by Vermeer received additional support in a 1986 article by Arthur Wheelock, then the curator of Baroque Art at the National Gallery of Art and a noted Vermeer authority. His article presented multiple lines of evidence that it was indeed a Vermeer. He pointed out the signature Meer 1655 appears to be part of the original painting, and not a later addition. The painting materials and techniques are consistent with Dutch practices at the time, and indeed quite consistent with the approaches used in Vermeer’s early paintings, like Christ in the House of Mary and Martha and Diana and her Companions. He pointed out that the addition of the crucifix could be explained by his recent conversion to Catholicism, and that the model for her face was someone he used in other paintings. He later suggested that that model may have been his wife.

Since that time, more and more scholars have accepted the idea that the painting is indeed by Johannes Vermeer. Recently, at the monumental Vermeer exhibit at the Rijksmuseum in 2023, it was on display as a Vermeer.

But it certainly is different from the later quiet scenes that we usually associate with Vermeer:

What do you think? Is Saint Praxedis a Vermeer painting?

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Bibliography

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Florentine Baroque Art from American Collections. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1969.

Kitson, Michael. “Florentine Baroque Art in New York.” The Burlington Magazine 111, no. 795 (June 1969): 409–410.

Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. “St. Praxedis: New Light on the Early Career of Vermeer.” Artibus et Historiae 7, no. 14 (1986): 71–89.

Other Articles of Interest

Diana and her Companions

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter

Zen and the Art of Vermeer Paintings (The Milkmaid)

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In Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, Vermeer presents us with a pregnant woman standing alone in her home, reading a letter. The scene is quiet and serene. We notice her slight smile and know that she is happy with what she reads. Her elevated arms and the second sheet on the table tell us that she is eager to read the letter that has just been delivered and interrupted her morning routine.

Composition

Vermeer wants us to be focused on the woman reading the letter, with minimal distraction. She is standing in front of a wall decorated with a map. We only see part of the map; it must be a fairly large room to accommodate the whole map. Two chairs bracket the woman in the center of the composition. Vermeer does not show us any ceiling, floor, or side wall in the composition. The wall is unblemished: There are no nails or pockmarks to be seen. The wall is just a backdrop for the woman and does not provide us with any identity of the exact room. She could be any woman, anywhere, excitedly opening a letter.

Light and Shadow

It is almost a cliché to talk about Vermeer’s unparalleled ability to show light and shadow with paint, but it is indeed demonstrated particularly well in this painting. The morning light shines in from the left. We can imagine the blue curtain Vermeer used in other paintings hanging over the unseen window, casting a pale blue light across the wall. The shadows of the chair and the finial at the end of the rod weighing the bottom of the map also have a bluish hue. The light reflects off the tacks of the chairs, off the finials, and most certainly off the most important part of the painting, the letter itself. The blue hue creates a sense of calm and serenity in the painting.

What Does the Letter Say?

The woman is in her bedjacket; she is just dressing for her day. The delivery of the letter has interrupted her morning toilette. Her jewelry box is open. A strand of pearls with its blue ribbon rests on the tabletop awaiting her attention. She is so eager to see the contents of the letter that she has paused in her preparations for the day to read it. The second page of the letter sits atop her necklace on the table as she eagerly reads the first page. The angle of her arms shows her eagerness to see its contents.

The woman is shown in profile with her eyes downcast. We cannot read in her eyes her reaction to the contents of the letter, but the ever-so-slight upturn of her mouth tells us she is pleased with what she reads.

The Map

Vermeer was certainly not the only painter of the Dutch Golden Age to put maps on walls of the scenes being portrayed. Cartography was more advanced in the Netherlands than anywhere else in the world, and maps were sources of national pride. They were also used as decorations in homes to cover an otherwise uninteresting wall.

Vermeer always selected things on the walls of his scenes for a reason. Putting a map on the wall contributes to the narrative. Here, Vermeer is telling us that the letter writer is away on a journey. The man has written this letter to his wife, who is home pregnant with their child. The early-morning arrival of the letter has brought her good news: he will be returning soon—hopefully before the birth of their child. The empty chair against the wall anticipates his arrival.

The Joy of Opening a Letter

We share the woman’s anticipation and optimism. I too would eagerly open a letter from a loved one and read it as soon as it arrived. Actually, the parallel story would be that I would push aside my coffee cup and lean into my computer screen to read the morning email from someone surprising me with a loving note from a different time zone, or pause my scrolling to read an affectionate text message. The story is timeless A written bit of love arriving in our day is precious, regardless of how it is delivered.

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Disappointment in Love

That article outlines why the letter in Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window is in fact a breakup letter, and not a love letter.

But everyone stops to spend time with The Goldfinch.

What is it about that little bird that is so captivating?

Carel Fabritius

Any biography of Carel Fabritius (1622-1654) is necessarily short. Not much is known about him. And he did not live very long.

He was born in Middembeemster, a small village about 20 miles north of Amsterdam. His father was the village schoolmaster and a weekend painter, inspiring Carel and his two younger brothers, Barent and Johannes, to become painters.

In September of 1641, at age 19, Carel married the girl-next-door. The newlyweds immediately set up house in Amsterdam, where Carel was beginning an apprenticeship in Rembrandt’s studio. He is regarded by many to be Rembrandt’s most gifted student. But his family life during his time in Amsterdam was beset with tragedy. Within two years, his young wife was dead, as were a set of twins and a third child. Carel had just turned 21. He moved back to his parents’ home in Beemster to grieve. He continued to paint during that time, but very few paintings from that period survive. In 1650 he married a widow and moved with her to her hometown of Delft. There, at age 28, his career began to flourish.

For Fabritius, 1654 was a year of extraordinary artistic achievement: During that year he produced what would be considered his four greatest works: The Sentry, a revealing Self Portrait, A View of Delft (not to be confused with Vermeer’s painting of the same name), and The Goldfinch.

But in October of that year, while working at his easel in his studio, an arsenal containing 80,000 pounds of gunpowder exploded just across the street, destroying a quarter of Delft and killing hundreds, including Fabritius himself and three other people in the studio at the time. The explosion, known as De Donderslag (“The Thunderclap”), presumably destroyed many of his paintings; only about a dozen are known to survive.

An analysis of The Goldfinch conducted in 2003 revealed several small indentations on the surface of the work, which could have been caused by debris thrown by the explosion. The paint was apparently still wet and still in his studio at the time of The Thunderclap. Somehow this one was spared. What good fortune that is for us, that this masterpiece survived that catastrophe.

Carduelis carduelis

The painting depicts a popular songbird, the goldfinch.

Carel Fabritius was not the only artist to portray the goldfinch in a painting. In fact, Herbert Friedmann produced a monograph in 1946 in which he listed some 486 paintings that included a goldfinch, including works by Rafael, Leonardo da Vinci, Hieronymus Bosch, and others. The goldfinch was popular for its colorful plumage, pleasant song, and the belief that it brought good health and fortune. In paintings, it has been linked to fertility and redemption.

Fabritius’ Version

In the Fabritius painting, the bird is sitting atop the upper of two perches around a blue-gray lidded feeder box affixed to a wall. The bird is life-sized and realistic. The panel may have been intended to be affixed to a window jamb, above the viewer’s eye, to trick the viewer into thinking that there was a real bird there. Such paintings—a style known as trompe-l’œil (literally “tricks the eye”)—are designed to create an image to look convincingly real. Fabritius had experimented with such approaches with the nail in the wall of the Portrait of Abraham de Potter, and with perspective in his A View of Delft, so a painting like this one would not be out of character.

On first glance, this painting would seem to be about being “as free as a bird.” We associate birds with freedom and flight. But then we see the gossamer chain around its ankle holding it to the lower perch. This is a painting not about freedom, but about bondage. Why is such a sweet, innocent bird chained to its feeder?

And again, what is it about this little painting that makes it so engaging?

The Wide-Ranging Influence of The Goldfinch in the Modern World

It turns out that The Goldfinch has had an impact on many. It played an important role in Donna Tartt’s novel of the same name. The book won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was made into a 2019 film starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman.

Even before that, Morri Creech’s poem “Goldfinch” (2010) addressed the bird directly: ”You stare from a modest trompe l’oeil heaven we don’t share.”

Helen Frankenthaler used the painting as inspiration for her 1960 painting of Fabritius Bird.

And Wayne Thiebaud said it was an inspiration for his painting, Bird on a Swing.

So again, what is it about The Goldfinch that makes it so engaging?

Perhaps it is the painting’s intimate realism. The trompe-l’œil technique makes the bird appear three-dimensional and lifelike, inviting the viewer to look more closely upon encountering it at the Mauritshuis. Perhaps it is its small size. It is only 13 inches tall, perhaps making it more approachable, or at least less overwhelming than larger paintings nearby. Perhaps it is the tiny chain, showing a fragility and confinement that resonates with the human condition. Perhaps the painting is telling us that we are all held in captivity in one way or another, that we are all held back from our full potential. Perhaps it is that we know that this was his last painting—the punctuation mark at the end of his career—the artistic equivalent of “famous last words.” But we are all captured by this meditation on life, bondage, beauty, fragility, and loss.

Maybe we recognize those feelings.

Maybe that is why we stop and stare.

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References

Friedmann, Herbert. The Symbolic Goldfinch: Its History and Significance in European Devotional Art. New York: Pantheon Books, 1946.

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The Tragically Short Life of Carel Fabritius

The Sentry by Carel Fabritius

Steen was a contemporary of Johannes Vermeer. But Steen was more prolific than Vermeer, with more than 400 accounted for today, compared to 36 for Vermeer. Steen is best known for portraying the comic chaos of everyday life in Dutch households. The scenes in those paintings are hectic and lively, with misbehaving adults and children getting into trouble in cluttered homes in disarray.

Here are three of his paintings. Look at the details and have a good laugh.

The Dissolute Household

The curtains are drawn aside so that we can be voyeurs and look in on an embarrassing domestic scene in The Dissolute Household.

The grinning fellow behind the table with the pipe in his hand is Steen himself. Steen includes himself in many of his paintings. Here he is flirting with the maid while she encourages more drinking rather than serving responsibly. She is clearly not helping to maintain an ordered household.

The lady of the house is oblivious to everything happening around her as she reclines in her chair, holding out her glass for more wine. Her foot rests on an open Bible on the floor. The moral instruction that might be gleaned from the Good Book is being disregarded. The model Steen used for the lady of the house is, in fact, his real wife, Margriet van Goyen. She appears in more of Steen’s paintings than he does himself.

The sleeping woman at the end of the table and the romping young boys annoying her contribute to the impression of a household run amok.

A lute lies on the floor, resting on a partially open backgammon board, suggesting that a bit of gambling has been part of the evening’s activities.

The mess on the floor shows that the meal has been completely wasted. The detritus includes broken glassware and the main course—a joint of meat on a platter—about to be scavenged by a mischievous cat. The pocket watch between the glass and the platter reminds us that time is passing—and perhaps is being wasted with their bad behavior. Together these objects show a catalog of offenses: gambling, sacrilege, drunkenness, waste, and careless extravagance.

Above their heads is a basket that Steen includes to give a moral to the story.

The basket contains a beggar’s crutch and alms cup, a leper’s warning clappers, sticks associated with punishment, and a sword suggesting even more severe punishment. And crowning the container, the unlucky jack of spades. Steen is using these symbols to warn of the consequences of the lack of attention to family order.

The Merry Family

At first glance, this looks like a happy family making music—a noisy conviviality. After a minute or two, you realize it’s really about children learning their parents’ bad habits.

Steen has made it easy to grasp the message of the painting—it is in plain sight, tacked above the fireplace. It says “Soo de ouden songen, pijpen de jongen,” or “As the old sing, so pipe the young.” Everything else in the painting illustrates that proverb.

The bearded patriarch of the family at the head of the table has paused his violin playing and is happily singing as he raises his glass. Steen has again used his wife as the model for the lady of the house. The two of them are enjoying themselves, indulging in the bad behavior rather than trying to corral the family.

The admonition on the wall is coming true: the parents’ bad behavior is being transmitted to the children. One youngster is learning to smoke a pipe. Wine is being poured for the child in the foreground. The children have essentially been left to do whatever they please.

There are four musical instruments in the scene, including a flutist and a bagpiper behind the patriarch. That is Steen himself playing the bagpipes, traditionally regarded as the instrument of fools. The violin and horn are silent. The man, the woman, and Grandma, who has the sheet music, are singing along. The baby holding up the spoon seems to be singing along as well.

The floor is littered with overturned dishes, cooking utensils, food, broken eggshells, and two jugs—one of them on its side and drained.

Steen allows us to laugh at the scene, but at some point we pause and say, “But wait, they are allowing the child to drink the wine!”

Beware of Luxury

In his painting Beware of Luxury, Steen takes the warning signs of debauchery up a notch, and has certainly given us a lot to chuckle about.

The woman of the house has fallen asleep to the left of the center, and virtually everybody else in the painting is taking advantage of the situation. Two of her children are misbehaving behind her, one smoking a pipe and the other filching something from the cupboard. The baby in the chair is playing carelessly with a costly string of pearls. That may be her teenage son playing his fiddle behind her. And if she is supposed to have the keys to the family’s well-being, that key is hanging unused on the wall over her shoulder.

At the center of the picture is a grinning party girl, with a wine jug dangling from one hand and her full wine glass in the other, resting between the legs of the man of the house. That self-satisfied reveler has his leg draped over the coquette’s knee and has allowed his hat to fall to the floor. He is grinning and dismisses the stern religious woman who has grabbed his shirt sleeve and is scolding him for his rakish behavior.

The room is something of a menagerie. A monkey stands on a wall fixture and tampers with the clock. A pig roams the room with a wine tap in its mouth—perhaps taken from the cask leaking onto the floor at the left of the painting. A duck is perched on the shoulder of the Quaker in the tall hat reading a pious text from his book. And the family dog is on the table, helping himself to the meal.

As in The Dissolute Household, a book is abandoned on the floor—perhaps a moral guide being disregarded. And as in that painting, Steen has suspended a wicker basket over the table to show the potential consequences of the behavior. The basket contains a sword and a crutch, emblems of punishment and destitution.

Vermeer and Steen

Jan Steen and Johannes Vermeer were contemporaries, and both important painters in the Dutch Golden Age. Steen lived much of his life in Leiden, while Vermeer lived all of his in Delft. The two cities are only about 15 miles apart. The journey between the two cities at the time would have been done by trekschuit—a passenger barge pulled by a horse walking on a towpath beside the canal. A trip between the two towns would have taken about three hours, and the barges ran eight times a day. For a few years, Steen lived in Delft and ran a brewery a few hundred yards from Vermeer’s home. It seems likely that they would have met at some point.

They were both known for painting interior scenes of Dutch households. But my, how different those portrayals of Dutch homes were.

Vermeer’s homes are immaculate. Chairs are carefully placed. Floors are spotless. People seem to speak quietly in tranquil scenes.

Steen’s homes are quite the opposite. Children laugh and cry. Dogs and cats steal dinner. Parents flirt with servants. Wine spills onto the floor. The homes are cluttered and messy.

Yet both painters were showing ordinary Dutch life—just different moments of it. Vermeer’s are calming because they show us the serenity we strive for. Steen’s paintings are funny because we recognize ourselves in them.

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I have had a fascination with Vermeer for more than half a century. It started when a small detail in one of his paintings captured my interest during a boyhood visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington with my parents. Barring a future find in an attic in an old Dutch home, I have seen all his surviving paintings. I have spent enough time with them that I feel like I have spent time with Vermeer himself. I think I have a pretty good sense of how he put ideas together for his paintings before he ever touched the brush to the canvas. On this visit, I not only got to imagine his life on his turf but also got to share some of my love for Vermeer with these new recruits.

The Nieuwe Kerk

It is a bit funny that a church completed in 1495 would be called the New Church, but it is, in fact, quite a bit newer than the Old Church up the street.

Vermeer was baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk and lived his life in a total of three homes, all in the shadow of that church tower.

Here is a picture of me on an earlier visit to Delft, grading student papers in the church, combining two of my passions: teaching biology and being with Vermeer.

The Flying Fox

His first home was at an Inn his father ran, called “De Vliegende Vos” (The Flying Fox). It was probably located at what is now Voldersgracht 25/26. At the location now is the Café Johannes, and an antique shop.

In Vermeer’s day, it was probably a brick-fronted building, two or three stories tall, with stepped gables and shuttered windows—common architecture in the 17th century and still common today in much of old Delft. As was typical of small inns at the time, it likely included sleeping quarters for guests, a room to enjoy a meal and a beer, living quarters for the family, and space for Vermeer’s father’s art-dealer business. It was adjacent to the Guild of St. Luke, which would play an important part in Vermeer’s life later on.

The Mechelen Inn

When he was 8 or 9 years old, the family moved to the Mechelen Inn. The building at the site today is a tourist shop.

The move to the Mechelen Inn was a step up for the Vermeer family—it was larger than the Flying Fox and faced the busy market square—good for business.

When standing in front of the site today, I can imagine Vermeer as a boy in this same spot, watching customers entering and leaving the Inn. Because of his father’s work as an art dealer, he no doubt would have met artists selling their works through his father’s business. I had role models when I was a boy that influenced my career choices. Vermeer’s role models would certainly have included painters.

Vermeer’s friend, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek is today known as the Father of Microbiology. He was the first person to build a microscope capable of seeing single-celled organisms. Vermeer and van Leeuwenhoek were both born at the end of October 1632 and were both baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk. Their names are on the same sheet of paper on the church’s baptismal registry. When Vermeer died, van Leeuwenhoek was the administrator of his estate.

They surely must have known each other. Indeed, Vermeer seems to have used van Leeuwenhoek as a model in two of his paintings:

The house where van Leeuwenhoek lived is at Hippolytusbuurt 4, a short two blocks from Vermeer’s boyhood home.

The building’s façade is different today, but records indicate that this is the place where he lived and built his microscopes. It is fun to imagine little Johannes and little Antoni playing in the street as youngsters, maybe sailing toy boats on the canal, just as I saw kids doing during my visit. It is that same canal water that van Leeuwenhoek would later inspect with his microscopes, discovering a world of what he called “little animals:” algae, protozoa, bacteria, and tiny animals such as rotifers.

The Maria Thins Home

When he was 20, Vermeer married Catharina Bolnes and moved into the home of his mother-in-law, Maria Thins. The house was located just across the market square from the Mechelen Inn, on the other side of the Nieuwe Kerk, in the upscale Catholic quarter of Delft known as the Papists’ Corner. It looked like this:

This brush-and-grey-ink drawing by Abraham Rademaker, made a few years after Vermeer’s death, shows, from left to right, a Jesuit school, a small private house, and the larger but inconspicuous Jesuit church with two entrances. Two women are entering the church through the left door of the church. The edge of the building on the far right is thought to be Maria Thins’ home. The window on the upper floor at the far right may be Vermeer’s studio window.

That building, too, is gone and has been replaced by apartments, but a plaque marks the spot where the old home stood.

Even though this is not the building where he lived, I can imagine an upstairs window like this one lighting Vermeer’s studio, with light streaming through that window and into the scenes of so many of his paintings.

The Oude Kerk

Vermeer died in 1675 at age 43 and was buried in the Oude Kerk, less than a kilometer from where he was born.

This church is indeed older than the Nieuwe Kerk, and was originally Catholic, although it was Protestant during Vermeer’s lifetime. He was buried there because his mother-in-law owned a family grave in the church. There is a modest marker on the floor of the church, although it is not entirely clear if that is where his remains lie.

The Trip to The Hague

We left the Oude Kerk and took the #1 streetcar to The Hague to visit the Mauritshuis museum, home to three magnificent Vermeer paintings: Girl with a Pearl Earring, View of Delft, and Diana and her Companions. I have written articles about each of these paintings and was relishing the opportunity to share my ideas with my new friends.

At one point we were standing in front of Diana and her Companions.

I was explaining how this painting seems to have very little to do with Greek mythology: Much more of the symbolism in the painting, particularly the washing of feet, comes from the Bible. I was admittedly enthusiastic about what I was saying, but I swear I was speaking sotto voce as I pointed out the details of the painting. I was pleased to see that a few other folks had gathered and were also listening to what I had to say. The security guards were apparently listening in too. One came over and asked if I had a badge identifying me as a guide. Apparently, external guides at the Mauritshuis are welcome, but there is an accreditation and registration process that results in the issuance of a badge. I assured him that this was just a conversation among friends, but I tamed my enthusiasm a bit and continued, albeit a bit more quietly.

It was a good day. I got to spend time retracing Vermeer’s steps in the town he loved so much. I got to share some of my ideas about Vermeer with my new friends. But the highlight was nearly getting in trouble for seeming to be a museum guide without a license. I am pretty proud of that one.

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View of Delft

Diana and her Companions

Rembrandt was a great admirer of Brouwer. When Rembrandt’s possessions were inventoried during his bankruptcy in 1656, he owned six paintings by Brouwer as well as an album of his drawings. Rubens was an even more enthusiastic collector, owning at least 17 Brouwer paintings. After Brouwer died in 1638, he was initially buried in a pauper’s grave. Rubens helped pay for a more respectable reburial, a striking gesture of one artist’s admiration for another.

Portrait by Anthony van Dyck

Anthony Van Dyck admired Brouwer enough to include him in his series of portraits of about a hundred distinguished contemporaries: Scholars, statesmen, military leaders, nobles, and artists. That van Dyck included Brouwer in his collection speaks to the respect he had for the painter. The original painting no longer survives, but it is preserved in an engraving by Schelte Adamsz. Bolswert.

Tavern Scenes—Brouwer’s Home-away-from-Home

Brouwer spent much of his adult life in and around taverns—drinking and painting. It was the ideal venue for both activities—the tavern would provide plenty of material for his paintings, and the drink to keep him well-lubricated.

In this painting, Brouwer lends a sense of grandeur to the figure sleeping outside the tavern with his jug through his expressive brushwork and dramatic lighting. Many believe this is one of the Brouwer works that Rembrandt owned. It has a number of attributes that would have appealed to Rembrandt: vigorous brushwork, dramatic lighting, and the wonderfully observed sleeping pose. Rembrandt shared Brouwer’s fascination with expressive faces and the humanity of ordinary people.

Here a group of peasants are drinking and smoking around a rickety table. A woman in the foreground has fallen asleep on the floor, her head resting on another drunk’s knee, with her child clawing at her for attention.

Card Games Gone Bad

Hanging around in the taverns as he did, Brouwer no doubt witnessed any number of fights breaking out over a card game. Here is a classic. It is worth noting that, while funny, this painting shows Brouwer’s mastery of light and shadow, a feature that would prove to be an important part of Dutch Golden Age painting.

Fights were not confined to the tavern. In Fighting Peasants, a card game and drinking session outside an inn has erupted into chaos, fueled by a drink or two, as evidenced by the jug overturned on the table. Cards and papers litter the ground. A woman struggles to restrain one combatant who has drawn his sword. The young man at the front is about to draw his sword as well and join the ruckus. Even the dog and pig seem to be part of the quarrel. The different faces show anger, pain, alarm, or simple curiosity—while ordinary village life continues serenely in the distance.

Medical Quackery

This is a fascinating piece that shows the state of the art of medical practice in the 17th century. A tense young man is seated at a table, his face turned toward us. His twisted mouth and screwed-up eyes make his pain obvious. The surgeon is precise in inserting his scalpel into the wound. His assistant looks on, bemused. But rather than joy, anger, fear, or humor, here Brouwer focuses on pain.

A Perfect Tronie

A tronie is a type of painting from the Dutch Golden Age that depicts a character with an interesting facial expression or an unusual costume. Tronies are not portraits: They are not commissioned likenesses of specific people. They are meant to be fun and appeal to the mass market. Almost any collection of tronies includes this painting of a young man who has clearly just taken a swig of some bitter medicine.

A Landscape Painting

Brouwer did not only paint tavern scenes. Later in his career, he revealed another quieter side with a number of landscape paintings. Rembrandt and Rubens appreciated Brouwer not only for his humor but for his handling of light and atmosphere as well.

In this painting, the figures play a minor role. There are three in the foreground and two in the distance near the water. But the magic of the painting comes from the light of the moon shining over the lake, the hills, and the small farmhouse at the right. This is probably one of the paintings owned by Rubens, listed as “un paysage à la lune” in the inventory of his estate. Indeed, Rubens himself painted a very similar work soon after Brouwer did this one. Rubens was clearly influenced by this one.

The Smokers

This painting is a self-portrait in a group of friends. Brouwer is the wide-eyed man exhaling smoke through an open mouth, looking perhaps a bit surprised, as if we have caught him here. Also in the painting are his fellow painters, traditionally identified as Jan Lievens, clown-like, winking with his finger at his nose at the far left, Jan Cossiers behind Brouwer, Joos van Craesbeeck near the center, and Jan Davidsz. de Heem, elegantly dressed in black and white, at the right. Each face is a terrific little comedy.

It is interesting that three of Brouwer’s friends in the painting, Leivens, De Heem, and Craesbeeck, all made portraits of themselves with smokers and drinkers after Brouwer made this painting.

Adriaen Brouwer is one of the most interesting painters of the early Dutch Golden Age. He was a hopeless drunk, rarely out of the tavern, died young, and was buried in a pauper’s grave. That sounds like a story that would have ended in obscurity. Instead, his paintings were prized by Rembrandt and Rubens, and his tavern scenes, expressive faces, and atmospheric landscapes remain in major museums around the world. I’m glad I found him; he is now on my list of “must-sees” on my gallery visits.

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Tronies

The Buildings

It would be satisfying to identify the specific buildings in the painting. In fact, many have made a sport of trying to do just that. But the street scene shown here is a fabrication. I have recently strolled the streets of Delft. There are scores of buildings in Delft with stepped gabled facades, and any number of arched passageways and small alleyways, both then and now. But the structures shown in his painting were created by copying and pasting ideas from several buildings near Vermeer’s home.

There are several architectural “challenges” indicating that the buildings are inaccurate. The greenish-gray shutters between the doorway and the alleyway cannot be accurate—opening them more than halfway would obstruct the door to the home or block off the alleyway. The left side of that window is too close to the edge of the house to be practical. The bench where the children play looks fragile compared to the rest of the building and seems to hang in the air, supported only on the left side.

The buildings, as depicted, are not pristine; they appear to have undergone extensive repair: Shutters have been replaced, patches are evident, and some repainting has begun but is not yet complete. All of this is consistent with this painting having been done just a few years after De Donderslag (The Thunderclap), an explosion of a gunpowder magazine that destroyed much of Delft in 1654. The explosion would certainly have damaged these dwellings.

The Composition

The composition of the painting is unusual. The top of the building is cropped off, and the whole scene is off-center. If the purpose of the painting were to accurately show a particular building, it would have been framed better. It is intentionally unbalanced to show that this is not an architectural document. It is not about the buildings, but simple everyday life in Delft. It is about the feel of women and children going about their daily activities under a billowy sky, next to a building on a quiet, pristine yet anonymous little street.

There are no church spires or signposts to identify the neighborhood. De Hooch and many other Dutch painters of the time would have included such landmarks to provide a sense of place. By leaving out such landmarks, Vermeer keeps the location anonymous.

The Characters

The woman in the entry of the main building is the only elderly person in any of Vermeer’s paintings. She is involved in the everyday task of mending clothing. Like the woman in the alleyway, she is not involved in anything majestic or grand but is quietly pursuing an everyday but ever-so-important task for the well-being of the household.

The maid in the alleyway—perhaps the same woman working in the kitchen in The Milkmaid—is washing laundry over a wooden barrel, the overflow trickling towards the street. Her broom has already been put to good use: The alleyway and the street are as clean as a Dutch interior. The broom stands at the ready to whisk the wash water towards the drain in the street. The sense of pride in one’s surroundings is evident, even after the damage from the explosion. Vermeer is pleased with his town and wants to share it with us.

The most charming characters in the painting are the two children playing under the bench in the foreground. Surprisingly, although Vermeer was part of a busy household teeming with children, they are rare in his paintings. Children would have been particularly precious at the time this painting was executed, as so many of them had been killed in The Thunderclap. And because these two characters are closer to the viewer, the children appear larger on the canvas than either adult. That is, of course, deliberate: Children, if not the most important people in a household, are certainly the most demanding.

These two are hiding their play from us adults. As with many children’s games, we adults can’t grasp what they are doing. They are participating in a simple everyday childhood game like children everywhere, enjoying an innocent childhood joy. Their innocence reminds us of the fleeting nature of life.

The Joy of Everyday Life

After living through the Thunderclap and witnessing so much death and destruction in Delft, I can imagine the young painter having an acute awareness of the fragility of life. The focus of his paintings immediately shifted from Bible stories and mythological scenes to pictures of everyday life in Delft. Perhaps no painting of his honors the value of a simple life more than this one. The children are safe, the women are occupied, the brickwork is weathered but sturdy. The real “story” of The Little Street is that ordinary life itself is precious.

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View of Delft by Johannes Vermeer

De Donderslag (The Thunderclap)

The painting was a favorite from the beginning. In the 1696 Dissius auction, which included 21 Vermeer paintings, it fetched the sum of 200 guilders, more than any other Vermeer painting in the collection. Vincent van Gogh lived in The Hague on two occasions, visited the Mauritshuis, and wrote to his brother Theo about the paintings he had seen, singling out this one as his favorite. When Marcel Proust needed an image of artistic perfection in his book In Search of Lost Time, he used this painting. A character in Proust’s book, an elderly writer named Bergotte, visited this painting, remarked on a “little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof,” took ill, and died that night. The yellow patch is likely the bit just to the left of the spires of the Rotterdam Gate, although there is no way to be sure.

When Emilie Gordenker was the curator of perhaps the best collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, she picked View of Delft as her favorite in the museum, selecting it over some stellar options in the collection, including The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Vermeer, The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius, and Girl Eating Oysters by Jan Steen.

All this high praise is well deserved, as Vermeer was at his artistic best in this painting. His pointillist technique, showing the reflection of light off the water, best seen on the herring boats to the right, was not achieved as well until the Impressionists, more than 200 years later. The reflections of the buildings in the canal provide a sense of the morning calm before commerce in the waterways disrupts those reflections. The clouds take up more than half of the canvas, and provide a study of light, clouds and sky in their own right. To add to the dynamic, Vermeer mixed sand with his paint to give texture to parts of the painting, such as on the window frames on the long building at the left beyond the wall.

The painting is thought to have been finished around 1660, just a few years after The Thunderclap—the explosion of a secret gunpowder magazine in Delft that leveled at least a third of the town. The result of that explosion was documented by Egbert van der Poel in a more journalistic way, just a few months after the explosion. In fact, van der Poel made something of a living making copies of his painting for the next ten years.

One cannot know the timetable for the town’s reconstruction, but it is difficult to imagine that in just six years the town would have been as pristine as depicted in Vermeer’s painting. Van der Poels’ version is surely more accurate. It is true that the explosion was in the center of the town, close to van der Poel’s vantage point. Vermeer’s view was from the southern end of the town, a bit more distant from the site of the explosion. But scars from the explosion would no doubt still have been evident. But no evidence of the aftermath of the explosion is seen in Vermeer’s painting. We see commerce on the river, the sun shining on the Nieuwe Kerk, a beautiful day with skies clearing after an early-morning cleansing rain. Vermeer took some artistic liberties by omitting the scars of the explosion for our benefit—to show us a bit more love and less of the damage than a more accurate assessment would reveal. People do that when thinking about their hometown, I suppose. Memories are sometimes embellished a bit.

I’ve been to Delft a few times. The first time was after a friend’s wedding in Germany. I flew to Amsterdam, took a train to Delft, and booked a room in what turned out to be an old gypsy caravan wagon behind a small hotel near the market square. It turned out to be one of the two best stories of “no room at the inn” that I know of.

The next morning, I crawled out of my wagon and set out to find the spot where Vermeer must have been when he created View of Delft, so that I could get my own view. I did well; I found it. I was in the spot where Vermeer had been when he composed his painting.

The similarities between Vermeer’s painting and my photograph, despite being created centuries apart, are striking. There is a large boat on the right and a few smaller ones on the left. Bright cumulus clouds dominate a vast sky, and in both cases, the sky occupies more than half of the image. The canal has been dredged sometime in the last 350 years to create a bigger harbor, so just a tiny bit of the shore is seen at the bottom left—no room for people to stroll on the beach. The Schiedam and Rotterdam Gates are gone. The big building on the right is where the Rotterdam Gate was, and it is taller than the old gate, so we can’t tell whether the “little patch of yellow” is still there. The lone church spire in the photograph is the Nieuwe Kerk. The buildings on the left block our view of the Oude Kerk tower.

Mariët Westerman, an art historian and former director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, suggested that A View of Delft is perhaps the best-known cityscape in Western art. She describes it well: “What we see seems almost too obvious, too plainly descriptive, too perfectly observed to require comment or analysis.”

The love that Vermeer had for his hometown shows clearly in his painting. Westerman may be right when she says that this is “too perfectly observed.” Perhaps Vermeer took some artistic liberties to tidy things up—to complete buildings that might have been damaged, to make his town even more perfect. He can be forgiven for going beyond what can be seen by direct observation. Love does that. And he has shared with us his love for Delft by idealizing its beauty.

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Bibliography

Westermann, Mariët. Vermeer and the Dutch Interior. Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2003.

Gordenker, Emilie E. S. Director’s Choice: Mauritshuis. The Hague: Mauritshuis, 2014.

Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667)

Like his contemporary Johannes Vermeer, details about the life of Gabriel Metsu are few. And like Vermeer, he died young.

He must have begun his training as a painter early, as he joined the Guild of St. Luke in Leiden at age 19. His work seems to have been influenced at different times by Rembrandt, Gerrit Dou, Jan Steen, Gerard ter Borch, and most certainly, Vermeer. Metsu was an eclectic artist who painted a wide range of subjects: portraits, history paintings, still lifes, and genre paintings. During his short life, his style and subject matter changed frequently as he rotated through various teachers and role models.

The Dutch artists who inspired Metsu all painted stories involving letters—writing them, receiving them, or reading them. The paintings frequently present puzzles: The viewer is often left wondering who wrote the letter being read or to whom a letter might be intended. Here, in what many would consider his masterpieces, Metsu fills in some of these blanks for us by providing a story told in two paintings.

And it starts with the letter being written.

A Young Man Writing a Letter

This young man has hung his hat on the back of his chair, smoothed the carpet serving as a table covering, gathered his writing materials and sat down to write a letter to his sweetheart. He is affluent, dressed in silk and frills and sitting in a well-appointed room. The globe on the table is a mark of affluence and alludes to the distance separating him from the recipient of his letter. Metsu has given us a hint that the letter he is penning is a love letter. The painting on the wall depicts goats on a farm and is displayed in a gilded frame featuring a dove. Although it is not obvious to a modern viewer, someone seeing the painting in the 17th century would have recognized the lustful connotation: Goats were associated with passion and desire, doves with love.

And in the second painting, the story continues:

Young Woman Reading a Letter

The letter has been delivered. Like the writer of the letter, the recipient also lives an affluent life. Her chair sits upon a soldertje, a small platform used among well-to-do homes to avoid contact with the cold tile floors. And she is tended to by a maidservant.

She is excited to receive the letter. She has literally jumped out of her slipper and dropped her thimble on the floor. She tilts the letter away from her maid to keep its contents private, although it is likely that the maid is well aware of who penned the letter and the gist of its contents. Metsu has given us a hint here, too, that the letter is amorous in intent. The arrows on the maid’s bucket serve no purpose. There is no need to mark which side of the bucket is up. No, these represent Cupid’s arrows, aimed at the lady reading the letter.

And in a bit of baroque wit, the maid holds another letter—and this one is addressed to none other than Metsu himself, and serves as his signature on the painting.

As always, the picture-in-the-picture is telling. Here, the maid is pulling aside a curtain to see an image of a ship in a storm at sea. The analogy of love being beset with rough seas was nothing new. The maid may have wanted to caution her mistress that the path ahead might not be all smooth sailing.

Vermeer’s Influence

At this point in his career, Metsu had no doubt come across Vermeer’s paintings. Both of these paintings borrow heavily from Vermeer’s work. Vermeer’s interiors are characterized by lighting coming from a window on the left, checkered tile floors, and Delft blue tiles along the base of the walls. The scenes often contain an ebony-framed mirror and a woman wearing a yellow jacket with spotted fur trim. The light and shadow on the wall in the back of the scene are always remarkable. All of these are features of these two Metsu paintings as well. In fact, studies have shown that Metsu originally had the woman in A Woman Reading a Letter wearing a red jacket—common in many of Metsu’s paintings—but here he later changed the color to yellow—the color of the jacket used six times in Vermeer’s work.

If Metsu was inspired by Vermeer when composing A Man Writing a Letter, he may have returned the favor: A few years later, Vermeer seems to have borrowed heavily from Metsu when he painted The Astronomer. The positions of the men, the globe, the table, the carpet, and the painting on the wall seem to have marked similarities.

Comparing the paintings by Metsu and Vermeer shows how painters of the Dutch Golden Age shared ideas in their work. They were competitors in the market but also partners in developing their craft.

The Dutch masters all painted stories depicting letter writing. As stand-alone paintings, they often leave us with mysteries to solve: Who is the letter from? To whom is it intended? Metsu takes some of the mystery out of the story by giving us a pair of pendant paintings. We see who is writing the letter, and we see the recipient. We have ample evidence that the letter is amorous in nature. But we still have the treat of guessing what the letter says, and how the story will unfold. Will this letter lead to a happy love story, or a relationship that is tossed about in heavy seas?

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A Title Change

This is the first of the three Vermeer paintings acquired by Henry Clay Frick, now part of The Frick Collection, along with Officer and Laughing Girl, and Mistress and a Maid. When Frick acquired it in 1901, it had the rather uninspired title of The Music Lesson. Sometime in the early 1930s, while a comprehensive catalog of the collection was being drafted by Frederick Mortimer Clapp, the title Girl Interrupted at her Music began to be used. That folio was ultimately published in 1949. Although there is no record of the reasoning behind the retitling, I think it turned out to be one of the best titles for any of Vermeer’s paintings, as the girl is being interrupted not only by the gentleman in the painting but by us as well. I am not alone in appreciating the updated title: Susanna Kaysen entitled her memoir Girl Interrupted, citing a visit to The Frick Collection as the source. The book was later made into a film with Winona Ryder and Angeline Jolie.

A Painting’s Metamorphosis

The painting has unfortunately suffered from some ill-advised editing and some overzealous restoration efforts. The still-life on the table is the only part of the painting that looks as Vermeer intended.

Because of its treatment, the painting of Cupid on the back wall is no doubt the murkiest of the many “paintings-in-the-painting” that Vermeer ever did. In fact, it only became visible after a cleaning in 1907. Prior to that, a secondary artist had painted over the Cupid, replacing it with a small violin hanging from a nail. Removing the paint over the Cupid left that portion of the painting badly damaged, and now the Cupid is quite difficult to discern. The birdcage and the violin in the upper left corner were also done at the hand of someone other than Vermeer. Hence, when trying to understand the story that Vermeer is telling in the painting, the birdcage and the violin must be ignored. Instead, we must imagine the now-obscure Cupid on the wall dominating the scene, telling us that love, in one form or another, is in the air.

The Details

It is noteworthy that the woman is not dressed in formal attire, as is the case for most of Vermeer’s women. This young woman is wearing her everyday clothes. She has been practicing her music on her own. A cittern and some sheet music rest on the table, and more music is in her hands. She is quite surprised by her unexpected visitor. She looks up at us, a bit startled that we too have now interrupted. He, by contrast, is not concerned by our intrusion. He is focused on the matters at hand. He wears a massive cloak that was probably quite striking when first painted. He has his “goin’ courtin’” clothes on. He is not interested in us or the music.

What about the glass of wine and the jug on the table? Who put them there? Not the girl. If she had put the jug out, she would have included two glasses, not just the one, and she would have dressed for the occasion. No, the cavalier brought them in, set them down, and is now trying to redirect the girl’s focus away from the music towards him, as he gently coaxes the sheet music out of her hand. Like the men we have seen in The Glass of Wine or Girl with a Glass of Wine, he is eager to put the drink in her hand. His goal is far removed from a tune from the cittern.

And the Cupid looking over the scene? Although it is hard to see in its debrided state, he seems to have an uplifted hand, quite possibly holding a card bearing the Roman numeral “I,” an emblematic symbol of fidelity to a single lover. Here, he may be there as a caution to the forwardness of the man and his overt flirtation.

The Cupid is likely a painting by Cesar van Everdingen that was in Vermeer’s home; it was included in the “Inventory of Movable Goods” taken shortly after Vermeer’s death. The van Everdingen painting, in turn, borrowed from an emblem published in a book in Antwerp 60 years earlier.

In that emblem, the card in Cupid’s hand has a Roman numeral “I” on it. He is trampling on cards embossed with other numbers, rejecting them. The emblem’s motto, “Perfects Amor non est nisi ad unum”, states that “a perfect love involves only one lover.” Vermeer has used this Cupid in three other paintings, in each case conveying a message about faithfulness and innocence in true love.

Here in Girl Interrupted at her Music, Cupid looking down on the scene would not approve of the scalawag’s behavior. I gather that Vermeer does not either.

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What is She Laughing About? (The Officer and the Laughing Girl)

Seduction in the Dutch Golden Age (The Glass of Wine and Girl with a Glass of Wine)

Two Different Sorts of Love (Young Woman Standing at the Virginals, and Young Woman Seated at the Virginals)

We cannot know for sure, but these two images are thought by many to be self-portraits of the two artists, in Vermeer’s case, embedded as a character in a larger painting called The Procuress. It is the best guess we have of what they may have looked like.

Did They Know Each Other?

There is no documentation confirming that the two artists knew each other, but it seems almost certain that they did. The two men were contemporaries. De Hooch was four years older than Vermeer, was born in Rotterdam, lived in Delft from 1652 to 1660, and died in Amsterdam. Vermeer lived his entire life in Delft. While de Hooch lived in Delft, their homes were a short five-minute walk from each other. They were both members of the Guild of St. Luke, the organization that represented artists and artisans in the town. The Guild probably had about 100-150 members, some 50 of them painters. The two men would have met at Guild functions, or at least at occasional funerals—Guild members were all required to attend the funerals when one of their members died. Their names appear almost adjacent to each other in a surviving ledger from the Guild.

It seems like they must have known each other. Indeed, multiple examples of paintings by the two artists appear to have been made with some knowledge of each other.

Street Scenes in Delft

These two paintings show the closest similarity of any pair of paintings by the artists.

The two paintings were created in Delft within a year or two of each other, and present very similar views of their town. Each painting includes a small arched passageway, weathered brick, whitewashed walls, domestic activity, and a bit of sky to remind us that this is a normal afternoon in Delft. There are enough similarities between the two paintings that I can imagine the artists visiting each other’s studios to swap ideas and compare their paintings as they were being created. Both pictures are gentle homages to the honor of everyday life in Delft.

Women Using Balances

At the time these two paintings were done, de Hooch had moved to Amsterdam, and Vermeer was in Delft. It is unclear how, where, or when the two might have had the opportunity to exchange ideas about these two paintings. But the similarities between the two paintings are too profound to discount the idea that they knew each other’s work.

Both works show a woman wearing a colorful fur-trimmed morning jacket and a white linen cap, using a pan balance at a table with the table covering pushed aside to accommodate the task. Both are facing the light entering from the left of the scene. But while the paintings’ compositions are strikingly similar, their messages differ. De Hooch is depicting a moment in time—a woman weighing coins—without any apparent moral to the story. Not so in the Vermeer painting—Vermeer includes a painting of the Last Judgment on the wall behind the woman and places a mirror in front of her. It seems to me that Vermeer saw the painting that de Hooch had done and went to his studio to do one of a similar scene. But in Vermeer’s version, he added various “extras” to deliver a painting with his characteristic symbolism and a message about the relative value of worldly things and spiritual things.

Doorkijkjes—Peeks through Doorways

If de Hooch’s painting Woman Weighing Coins provided inspiration for Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance, Vermeer may have returned the favor by giving de Hooch an idea to work with in The Love Letter.

Here, Vermeer allows us to peek into a scene through a doorway—a style known as a doorkijkje, popular in Holland at the time. A curtain has been pulled aside as we stand in an anteroom, flanked by a wall with a map on the left and a Spanish chair with some crumpled music on the right. We look past a broom and a basket into a room with a checkered floor to spy on the delivery of a letter by a maid to her mistress—likely a love letter.

Vermeer completed this painting a few years before his death. De Hooch may have seen the painting, and soon after his friend died, he created a similar composition in Couple with a Parrot. Again, a curtain has been drawn aside; we look past a chair with a musical instrument on it and past a bucket and mop to a room with a checkered floor. We peek in on a couple flirting over a glass of wine beside an exotic parrot in a bird cage on the table. The wine jug seems a bit out of place on the floor rather than on the table, and looks suspiciously like the one Vermeer used repeatedly in his paintings. Could this be a subtle homage to his departed friend?

Friends? Competitors? Thieves?

The evidence is quite convincing that these two artists knew each other. The nature of their relationship remains a matter of conjecture. Were they friends? I would think so—they were certainly in the same group at the Guild. Were they rivals? Presumably. They were both making a living selling their work, and there was a limited number of potential purchasers. Did they steal ideas from each other? It looks like it. But that might be considered flattery as much as thievery.

Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021), the noted California painter of everyday objects like cakes and yo-yos, 350 years later, said, “I believe very much in the tradition that art comes from art and nothing else,” and described himself as an “art thief.” I suspect that the tradition of making art with the help of others’ ideas was very much in play with Vermeer and de Hooch.

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In both of these paintings, Vermeer has depicted a room with an elaborate stained-glass window. This window appears in only these two of his paintings and is much more intricate than the windows in his other paintings. The image in the window is of Temperance—one of the four cardinal virtues along with Prudence, Justice, and Fortitude. Here she is holding a bridle and watching over the scene, there to advise anyone who might want to listen. But alas, none of the characters in either of these paintings is in the least bit aware of her admonition to exercise restraint.

It is doubtful that this window was actually in Vermeer’s home, but it has been identified as the coat of arms of a Delft woman who died a few years before Vermeer was born. How Vermeer would have been aware of this window and this coat of arms remains a mystery.

In The Glass of Wine, (the Berlin painting), Vermeer has arranged the props to tell a story of an unchaperoned flirtation between two people who have slightly different ideas about how the afternoon might unfold.

The woman has clearly put care into preparing for her visitor. Her dress is formal and includes a whalebone bodice. Her shoulders, arms and head are all covered. This is far from provocative. She has organized an impeccable room and has even put out a cittern and sheet music in anticipation of enjoying some casual music with her visitor.

The man has his own sort of music-making in mind. He has brought a jug of wine, poured her a glass, and is watching her finish it. His hand rests on the handle of the wine jug, ready to pour a second. He has not even brought a glass for himself—he is focused on the objective of getting her tipsy. His cloak, huge by comparison with her bodice, appears almost windswept as he hurries to refill her glass. His bold black hat contrasts with her demure white cap, emphasizing the two characters’ different perspectives, using the same white-hat/black-hat device employed in American western movies 300 years hence to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys.

Although the woman has accepted the glass of wine, she does not appear happy about it. This is not the slow-paced music-filled romantic interlude she had in mind. She is quite stiff, with her arm across her waist in a protective posture. Her eyes are invisible behind the glass and under her bonnet, so we don’t know what look she has on her face. By contrast, we can see his face. His eyes are focused on watching the glass emptying.

The jug is the focal point of the painting—centrally positioned, the sunlight shining on it, the ceramic framed by the man’s billowy sleeve. It is the principal part of the story for them both: a vital part of his approach and a source of conflict in her mind. Nobody is aware that Temperance is looking down at the scene from the window. Nobody is going to pick up the cittern.

In the companion painting, Girl with a Glass of Wine (the Braunschweig painting), it appears that we are looking in on this relationship a few moments earlier in its development; this girl has not yet taken her first sip of wine.

The man is quite close to her in this painting. With the exception of the bordello scene in The Procuress, this is the only Vermeer painting in which the man is actually touching a woman. He is about to push her hand with the wine glass towards her lips for the first sip. She looks up at our intrusion with a nervous smile. Perhaps she welcomes our interruption.

The ever-present wine jug is there on the table, of course. As in the Berlin painting, the man has arrived with a wine jug and has already filled her glass. And as before, there is no second glass for him. There is a chaperone in this painting, but he will be of little consequence; he is asleep in the corner.

The painting on the wall is a formal portrait of an unidentified man. The portrait was likely in Vermeer’s home and may indeed be the father of someone in the household. Here, he is looking down from the wall in a fatherly way, playing the role of a second chaperone. Alas, he will be no more effective as a chaperone than the man asleep in the corner.

In both of these paintings the stained-glass image of Temperance with her bridle in the window provides sound advice but is ignored. If either woman were to look up from her wine glass, she would see this admonition to exercise restraint. But instead, in the Berlin painting, the woman’s face is buried in the glass, ignoring the advice, and in the Braunschweig painting, her focus is distracted from the proceedings by our arrival in the room. In that painting, everyone’s attention is directed away from Temperance’s admonition in the window; even the man in the painting on the wall is looking away from her. In both paintings, we know that, despite her urging, the women will be coaxed into a second glass, and likely a third. Temperance, abstinence, and restraint are not part of these stories. We know where this is going.

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What Is She Laughing About? (The Officer and the Laughing Girl)

Vermeer allows us to peek in on a conversation between a swashbuckling military man and a young woman in close quarters at a table in a small room. The map on the wall of the Netherlands and the surrounding sea suggests that the man is a naval officer, just returned from a voyage. That would not be surprising—the Netherlands had a dominant naval force in Vermeer’s time to support its considerable sea-going commerce. Scenes of seagoers returning to port would be commonplace. The enormity of the map—extending beyond the frame of Vermeer’s painting—tells us that although the scene is in an unknown seaport town in Holland, the story is universal. It could take place anywhere in Holland, or in fact anywhere in the world.

At first glance, we have the sense that the officer is the major character in the story. His silhouette dominates the scene. His hat is so large as to be completely impractical: the crown is bigger than his head, and the brim is so large that moving through a doorway would have only been accomplished with considerable caution. His bright red jacket with its sash and frilly cuffs suggests that he is more prepared for seduction than for a sea battle. The woman is well-dressed, but the colors of her dress match the upholstery behind her; she is barely distinguished from her surroundings. His size on the canvas and his fancy attire give us the initial impression that he is in the more powerful position in the relationship; he certainly thinks so.

But looking closer, we see that the woman’s role in the exchange is more important than we thought. The light from the window falls on her face and bonnet, illuminating her nose and lips. The gentleman is in the dark, both literally and figuratively. The light focuses our attention and tells us that the principal subject of the painting is the laughing girl.

As we peek over the officer’s shoulder, we can only guess what has been said to capture the girl’s interest, and why it brightened her day so much. Has he told a particularly clever joke? Has he made a proposal that she finds appealing? Is she laughing with him or at him?

Perhaps her hand on the table gives us a hint. Her right hand is holding a wine glass, but her left hand sits upturned on the table. It would have been much more comfortable for her empty hand to be face down. Palm up, she seems to be asking for something. I don’t think that she is asking for money. She is dressed too well for that. A courtesan would have been portrayed a bit more bawdily than this demure woman. But she is asking for SOMEthing; she is asking for some sort of reciprocity in the relationship.

“Look,” she laughs, “I have seen plenty of gallants like you strolling in dressed like peacocks and expecting me to swoon over you. But if you expect this conversation to go any further, I need something more out of the relationship than your swagger!” It is the laughing girl who has the upper hand now.

It would not be the first time in naval history, nor the last, that upon returning from a voyage, a first adventure on land would involve a glass of wine and a woman with an upturned hand. Nor would it be the first time that a man needs to be taught by a confident woman that he is not the center of the universe.

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Mark Rothko

With the possible exception of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko must be the poster child of the New York Abstract Expressionists of the mid-1900s. He is best known for his color field paintings from the latter part of his career.

History of the Chapel

In 1964, the Texas oil millionaires and art collectors John and Dominique de Menil commissioned Mark Rothko to create a meditative space filled with his paintings. Rothko, a noted hothead, clashed with several architects in the design of the chapel while devoting the last six years of his life to the project. The chapel was ultimately designed and erected in Houston, Texas, adjacent to St. Thomas Catholic University, where Dominique de Menil was the Chairperson of the Art Department. Rothko outfitted his New York studio to accommodate the size of the paintings and executed them there. The paintings were completed in 1967, and the Chapel itself was completed with the paintings installed in 1971—a year after Rothko’s death by suicide in early 1970. Although he considered it his most important project and the culmination of his artistic vision, ironically, he never actually saw it.

Since its completion, the chapel has not only been a space for non-denominational meditation but has also hosted colloquia focused on peace, justice, and freedom, music premieres, and The Rothko Chapel Awards to Commitment to Truth and Freedom. The Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation gave its first award there, with Nelson Mandela as the keynote speaker and recipient.

What it Looks Like

The Chapel is built on an irregular octagonal plan—nearly symmetrical, but adjusted to accommodate the arrangements of the paintings inside.

One enters at the back of the chapel, facing three large panels on the wall that would be the front of the church. Each panel is 15 feet tall and 7 feet wide. They touch each other, creating an image that is 15 feet tall and 21 feet wide.

Each wall has one or three panels, for a total of 14 panels on the eight walls.1 There are varying numbers of benches in the space—up to twelve of them—as well as a few floor mats in the front.

When one enters the room, one is surrounded by these panels, immersed in an unfamiliar space and a new experience.

At first glance, I thought all the panels were painted the same: all of them black. But after a second or two, as my eyes adjusted to the soft lighting, I saw that the center panel in the front triptych is, in fact, a deep dark purple. And after a few more minutes, I realized that none of them are simply black. They are deep shades of maroon, plum, leather, burgundy, and violet-brown. Several show a large dark rectangle floating within a dark perimeter, formatted like his other color field paintings. As my eyes continued to adapt, I could see that the paint was applied in thin layers, with brushstrokes and variations in value and intensity, revealing internal shapes and colors.

What it Feel Like

The experience is clearly different for different people. I am told that some folks entered and exited the Chapel in less than a minute, concluding quickly that there was nothing to see. Some people even asked why the paintings had been removed, not realizing that the panels they saw were in fact the paintings they had heard about. Some complained that they had been hoodwinked—that they had traveled to see the Chapel only to find an empty room.

That was not our experience. My partner Terin and I both spent time standing in front of panels, randomly moving from one to another, looking at them close up and then from across the room, seated on the benches or standing, and walking quietly from one area to another. Everybody else that was there when we were had a similar approach—slow, individual, and patient. I suppose the same thing happens in other churches and temples—people are in a common space with common rituals, but with different individual perceptions and different paths to relief.

Terin and I were wet-eyed when we left, but I think for different reasons. In trying to describe it, Terin said she felt the paint was coming alive as she looked at it. That makes sense: Terin is an artist, and that is the way she paints—in conversation with the paint. My experience was different. The panels were changing for me too, to be sure, but they were not “coming alive.” For me, the paintings were quietly telling me to be comfortable with the stillness. It made me want to practice being more observant and aware of stillness, both in the chapel and in the world outside.

We came back again the next morning, aware now that there was so much more here than just some “big black paintings”. We looked at them even more intently than the day before. I saw rain and clouds in one, mysterious runes in another. Terin saw more and more colors. We both saw more brushstrokes, more texture, and wondered how he managed to make such moving paintings with such a minimal palette and nothing in the least bit representative. It took some patience, but there was a lot to see.

Rothko and Vermeer

One might wonder how someone who loves Vermeer as much as I do could be so attracted to the work of Mark Rothko. The fact is, both artists convey a quiet serenity that calms me. Their approaches are different, to say the least, but the result, at least for me, is the same.

I first grasped the sense of mindfulness years earlier in front of Vermeer’s painting The Milkmaid. If I allowed myself, I could join her in her kitchen and shut out whatever noise was in my head. The same thing happened to me in the Rothko Chapel. I was in the state of Texas when I went in the door, but I was in a very different spiritual state when I left.

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Zen and the Art of Vermeer Paintings

Further Reading

Smart, Pamela, and Stephen Fox. Rothko Chapel: An Oasis for Reflection. New York: Rizzoli Electa, 2021.

A Painting in a Sad State

Many of Vermeer’s paintings have suffered from poor conservation and overzealous restoration over the years. Young Woman with a Lute may be in the poorest state of the lot. The painting is darker than it would have been when it was first created. Much of the foreground is difficult to identify. The tapestry over the table and the chair in the foreground are hard to discern. The viola da gamba resting on the floor at the lute player’s feet could easily be overlooked in its current state, but would have been clear when first painted. It is an important part of the narrative.

Despite its poor condition, the painting is clearly a Vermeer. The window, the blue curtain, and the Spanish chairs with the lion finials are all seen elsewhere. The map of Europe on the wall, the part of the painting that is in the best state of repair, has been identified as a 1613 map by the Dutch cartographer Jodocus Hondius. The map is included to tell us that the anticipated gentleman is returning from a long journey.

Women and Lutes in Dutch Painting

Depictions of women playing utes were commonplace in 17th-century Dutch art.

Here, Gerard ter Borch shows a young woman playing the lute for a visitor. I suspect the flirt will be successful, and abbreviated—the cavalier has already set down his pocket watch and its attached ribbon on the table.

Ter Borch has left this scene purposefully ambiguous, with two men in the picture. Is this an innocent flirt? A negotiation for a betrothal? A transaction in a brothel? And which man is the suitor?

Van Baburen leaves little to the imagination about what is going on in this brothel scene, showing a courtesan, a customer, and the elderly procuress asking for the payment before the musician will set down her lute.

On the surface, this scene shows a music lesson. But is the man a teacher or a suitor? It is hard to know. The faithful dog occupies the chair, on guard against this progressing any further than it should.

While these paintings show women playing lutes, Vermeer’s painting is different. In his presentation, the woman is tuning the instrument, not playing it. That on its own is not surprising: Lutes had as many as ten pairs of strings, and were continually going out of tune, necessitating frequent adjustment. But the fact that she is tuning the lute suggests that she is anticipating a visitor who will arrive to play the viola da gamba lying unplayed on the floor beside her table. Both the lute player and the instrument are anticipating a visitor. Perhaps she is just spotting him through the window as he comes across the Market Place. She wants to be sure that her instrument is in tune in anticipation of some good music-making.

Vermeer is the Consummate Storyteller

The story is told in the details: The woman in the painting is tuning her lute; there is an extra instrument in the scene that needs a player; the woman is looking out the window at the street, not at us or at someone or something else in the scene. All of these details tell us that this is a story of anticipation. And the look on her face captures that anticipation in its entirety: Hope, joy, confidence, and a little bit of flirtation.

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So, what makes this painting “modern?”

The Guitar

Among the varied instruments that Vermeer included in his paintings, the baroque guitar is the newcomer. Guitars were just being developed when this painting was made. If we look at other paintings of the time, we can find any number of lutes and harpsichords and viola da gambas, but we are hard-pressed to find a guitar. Guitars did not become a staple of artists until the 20th century.

The Painting-in-the-Painting

Vermeer frequently includes a “painting-within-the-painting” in his works to give us a message or to define a meaning to the piece. Here, the landscape painting on the wall is more than just an accessory—it is an integral part of the scene. The tilt of the girl’s head allows the ringlets to fall from her head in a pattern much like the leaves falling from the bough of the tree, which is also tilted to one side. The trick makes the girl a part of the landscape painting and brings her outside.

The link to the landscape is amplified by the painting’s overall perspective. Her head seems to be quite close to the painting on the wall, yet she seems further removed from the stack of books on the table in the corner. Vermeer has done this on purpose: It links her more closely with the painting on the wall than with the actual surroundings of the room itself—most notably that stack of books.

Tricks for linking the interior of a room to the scene outside are not unique to Vermeer. The 20th-century Belgian surrealist René Magritte did so in The Human Condition, depicting a painting on an easel in front of a window. The viewer can’t tell if the tree in Magritte’s painting is on the canvas or outside the window. Here, Vermeer plays the same trick, 300 years before Magritte: The woman in the painting is both inside the room playing the instrument and outside under the tree.

The Modern Composition

Vermeer takes another step towards modernity in the overall composition of The Guitar Player. Rather than have the focus of the painting at the center of the canvas, the girl’s face is off-center. And it is clear that to understand the story, we have to make some guesses about what she is looking at outside of the frame. That is more typical of 20th-century photography than 17th-century painting.

The Grin

The expression on the guitar player’s face differs from the depictions of women in Vermeer’s earlier paintings. Her flirtatious grin is directed at an unseen person outside the picture—not at someone in the painting, and certainly not at us viewers. It is tempting to think that this painting is one of a pair, with a companion looking back from the other painting, but that seems unlikely, as this one was sold by Vermeer’s widow shortly after his death as a stand-alone painting, without a companion piece. That flirtatious grin with that look of anticipation occurs in one other Vermeer painting—Young Woman with a Lute—the subject of next week’s article.

It is a Modern Painting

The painting can only be described as modern. The theme is modern: A modern woman in touch with and intrigued by the world around her, unapologetically flirting with a gentleman, playing the most modern of musical instruments, the guitar. The composition is modern: off-center, unbalanced, and using some tricks that won’t be in common use for centuries to come. Vermeer is, of course, usually known as one of the flagbearers of the Dutch Golden Age and a master of light and shadow. But with this painting, we also have to include him alongside Picasso and Magritte as a modern artist.

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