Johannes Vermeer and the Golden Age of Dutch Art is an exhibition showing in the Scuderie del Quirinale Rome until January 2013. It is displaying eight works by Vermeer (including The Girl with a Glass of Wine, Little Street, Woman with a Lute, Girl with a Red Hat and A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals), alongside the works of other C17th Dutch genre artists.
In April 1653 the Protestant artist Johannes Vermeer married a Catholic woman, Catharina Bolnes, in a Catholic ceremony near Delft. His mother-in-law, Maria Thins, had the house and income that Vermeer later required, so it seems likely that it was the mother-in-law who insisted Vermeer convert to Catholicism before the marriage went ahead.
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Johannes Vermeer struggled financially. The young couple probably lived with Vermeer's own family in the large inn, Mechelen, bought by Vermeer's father. The artist supported himself from the sale of his own paintings and by working as an art dealer. But he also supported himself by working as an innkeeper. Alas his paintings never realised the growing prices that artists in Amsterdam were receiving, and financial troubles were constant.
When the art dealing business went bad for Vermeer, he and his growing family left the Mechelen inn in 1672, to move in with the mother-in-law Maria Thins in Amsterdam.
So what gave Vermeer his passion for painting the small scale, the domestic, the non-wealthy? There are at least two possibilities: a] he was only converted to Catholicism and never truly absorbed its values of grandeur, muscular Christianity and glorious history-telling. Or b] that Vermeer struggled all his life like other working families in the Netherlands, giving him an insight into the modest and the domestic.
In any case, Vermeer was not alone. As a painting type in its own right, not as a prop for portraiture or religious themes, there was no nation as interested in domestic genre scenes as the post-Reformation Dutch. The Dutch middle class wanted small, realistic images of their own life to hang on their walls, images where education, exploration, science, business and Protestant virtues were honoured.
The Calvinist state religion tolerated no papist superstition in art, public or private. There was something about bourgeois Protestant Holland that promoted this celebration of domestic virtues: orderliness, cleanliness, piety, the proper care of servants, thrift and the proper education of children.
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The Dutch raised domestic genre scenes to a very fine art form, and made it their own. Often the canvases were small and jewel like, emphasising the smallness and quietness of the theme. The finest Dutch artists of the 1650s and 1660s often cannot be distinguished from Vermeer, at least by the subject matter.
Christopher Allen called Vermeer the sublime poet of the banal, whose reticent mystery was only possible in the smaller and more private milieu that he inhabited (i.e not in Italy). It was an act of revelation through which the artist teaches us how to apprehend the world more vividly by abating the will and attending to something outside ourselves.
In April 1653 the Protestant artist Johannes Vermeer married a Catholic woman, Catharina Bolnes, in a Catholic ceremony near Delft. His mother-in-law, Maria Thins, had the house and income that Vermeer later required, so it seems likely that it was the mother-in-law who insisted Vermeer convert to Catholicism before the marriage went ahead.
Vermeer, Girl with a red hat,
23 × 18 cm, 1665-6.
The painting belongs to the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
When the art dealing business went bad for Vermeer, he and his growing family left the Mechelen inn in 1672, to move in with the mother-in-law Maria Thins in Amsterdam.
So what gave Vermeer his passion for painting the small scale, the domestic, the non-wealthy? There are at least two possibilities: a] he was only converted to Catholicism and never truly absorbed its values of grandeur, muscular Christianity and glorious history-telling. Or b] that Vermeer struggled all his life like other working families in the Netherlands, giving him an insight into the modest and the domestic.
In any case, Vermeer was not alone. As a painting type in its own right, not as a prop for portraiture or religious themes, there was no nation as interested in domestic genre scenes as the post-Reformation Dutch. The Dutch middle class wanted small, realistic images of their own life to hang on their walls, images where education, exploration, science, business and Protestant virtues were honoured.
The Calvinist state religion tolerated no papist superstition in art, public or private. There was something about bourgeois Protestant Holland that promoted this celebration of domestic virtues: orderliness, cleanliness, piety, the proper care of servants, thrift and the proper education of children.
Vermeer, Woman with a lute near a window,
51 × 46 cm, 1662-3.
The painting belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The Dutch raised domestic genre scenes to a very fine art form, and made it their own. Often the canvases were small and jewel like, emphasising the smallness and quietness of the theme. The finest Dutch artists of the 1650s and 1660s often cannot be distinguished from Vermeer, at least by the subject matter.
Christopher Allen called Vermeer the sublime poet of the banal, whose reticent mystery was only possible in the smaller and more private milieu that he inhabited (i.e not in Italy). It was an act of revelation through which the artist teaches us how to apprehend the world more vividly by abating the will and attending to something outside ourselves.
I did not agree with Christopher Allen at all, until he started discussing Vermeer’s subjects who were always focused, either in concentration on a task or in waiting for someone. That is why, Allen said, Vermeer usually painted women - women were attentive and receptive; men were wilful and engaged in action.
Although Vermeer died in poverty in 1675, his popularity seems to have no limits now. Vermeer and Music: Love and Leisure in the Dutch Golden Age will commence at the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery of Art London in June 2013. According to the National Gallery, this exhibition will enhance viewers’ appreciation of beautiful, evocative paintings by Vermeer and his contemporaries, by juxtaposing them with musical instruments and songbooks of the period. Visitors will be able to compare C17th virginals, guitars, lutes and other instruments with the painted images, to judge the accuracy of representation and to assess the liberties the painter might have taken to enhance the visual or symbolic appeal of his work.
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Although Vermeer died in poverty in 1675, his popularity seems to have no limits now. Vermeer and Music: Love and Leisure in the Dutch Golden Age will commence at the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery of Art London in June 2013. According to the National Gallery, this exhibition will enhance viewers’ appreciation of beautiful, evocative paintings by Vermeer and his contemporaries, by juxtaposing them with musical instruments and songbooks of the period. Visitors will be able to compare C17th virginals, guitars, lutes and other instruments with the painted images, to judge the accuracy of representation and to assess the liberties the painter might have taken to enhance the visual or symbolic appeal of his work.
Vermeer, Girl with a wine glass,
78 × 67 cm, 1659-60.
The painting belongs to the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig.