Vermeer exhibition text

Vermeer's oeuvre is small. Of the approximately 37 paintings attributed to him, no less than 27 have been brought together here. By and large, the works are presented thematically, whereby you can witness how Vermeer introduces the outside world into his stilled scenes. You can follow his artistic development. And, you can see how the women in his paintings connect with the viewer by turning their gaze outwards.

Johannes Vermeer was born, raised, and died in Delft (1632-1675). He grew up surrounded by the paintings in his father's art business. Brought up in the Reformed Protestant faith, he may have converted to Catholicism when he intended to marry Catharina Bolnes. They had fourteen or fifteen children, eleven of whom survived infancy. In addition to being a painter, Vermeer was an art dealer and headman of the artists' Guild of St Luke.

Typical of Vermeer are his contemplative scenes set in tranquil interiors, his mastery of perspective and rendering of light. Certain objects and interiors recur with regularity. This creates the impression that this is how Vermeer's surroundings actually looked, yet the world he presents is invented. He accurately observes optical effects, such as sharpness and blurriness. As a result, he guides our gaze into the painting, which centres on an everyday activity, a glance, an encounter. Now and then our gaze is reciprocated.

As far as can be established, Vermeer made three paintings of his hometown, two of which are still extant: View of Delft and The Little Street. His world is serene and time seems to temporarily stand still, just as in the interiors he depicted. Vermeer's approach was innovative. In View of Delft, he does not place emphasis on the most important buildings in the city, but approaches Delft from an unexpected angle. In doing so, he takes liberties with the actual topography.

Vermeer leads our eye into the distance by means of effects of light and dark, perspective, colour and texture. He does the same in The Little Street: the dark houses in the back contrast with the bright white cloudy sky. The figures add to the sense of space, including the woman in the alley and the children playing on the front door step.

1. In the distance you can see the Nieuwe Kerk, its tower catching the morning light, painted with a thick layer of yellow-white paint. In the middle left is the Schiedam Gate, its clock indicating that it is about 7 o'clock; to the right is the Rotterdam Gate.
2. The alternating light and dark sections roughly divide the composition into four horizontal bands, with the bright sand of the quay in the foreground. Highlights dot the ship at the right: small dabs of paint suggest the reflection of sunlight.
3. The clothes worn by one of the women are similar to those of the woman in The Milkmaid (Gallery 5), which Vermeer painted in the same period.

These four large paintings are Vermeer's earliest known works. The artist was in his early twenties and had just established himself as a master painter. A Reformed Protestant by birth, he had recently married Catharina Baines, a Catholic. Very ambitiously, he painted religious themes: Saint Praxedis and a biblical scene of Christ in the House of Mary and Martha. The latter painting relies on a Flemish model and painting style, while his Saint Praxedis is a copy after a picture of the same subject by a contemporary Italian master. These commissions undoubtedly issued from his new Catholic milieu. He also tried his hand at a mythological subject, namely Diana and her Nymphs.

The young artist clearly wished to radiate an international elan and aspired to excel in the most highly regarded artistic genre, namely history painting. A turning point in his development is The Procuress of 1656, a brothel scene in which he merges all international influences. From then on, Vermeer chose everyday life as the point of departure for his works.

1. Jesus visits the two sisters Martha and Mary. While Martha is busy serving their guest, Mary sits at his feet listening to him. Martha complains that she has to do all the work alone, to which Jesus replies that Mary has made the right choice: the spiritual takes precedence over the material. The three figures each convey their role: serving, listening, explaining.
2. Jesus' gesturing hand is right in the middle of the composition, intentionally contrasted with the bright white tablecloth. In this way, Vermeer emphasized Jesus' spoken word as the core of the story.
3. Vermeer preferred painting introverted figures throughout his career. This is evident already in this early painting, in which Mary assumes a calm and pensive pose.

How do you suggest a pictorial space on a flat surface? Vermeer mastered this skill step by step. Although only very little of the room in Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window is depicted, he achieved depth through the left wall at right angles to the back wall. Moreover, he turned to scenes of daily life as his subject matter. The green curtain seemingly hangs in front of this painting. Pulled aside at the right, it offers a view of the woman reading and the large painting-within-the-painting behind her featuring Cupid, the god of love, gazing out at us.

Until 2019 Cupid was actually hidden under white overpaint. The painting's recent restoration revealed that this was not done by Vermeer, but later, by someone else. With the removal of the overpainting, it becomes clear just how well the painting fits into Vermeer's early development. Vermeer included the Cupid painting with minor variations in other pictures as well (Galleries 8 and 9).

1. A red curtain falls over the open window in which the girl's face is reflected. Vermeer here used dots and dabs of paint for the first time. For instance, he did not render the hair in lines, but built it up with highlights in different colours.
2. Vermeer only added the green curtain in second instance, and in so doing overpainted a large wine glass.
3. Bow in hand, the love god Cupid tramples on two masks, which were regarded as signs of deception. Their meaning is clear: true love must be without falsity, a warning to the letter-reading young woman.

Around 1658, Vermeer became acquainted with the domestic scenes of the painter Pieter de Hooch, who also lived in Delft. From him, Vermeer adopted his linear perspective with a single vanishing point -the point where all lines converge.

In The Milkmaid, he determined the vanishing point with a pin, just above the woman's right arm (the pinprick hole is still there). This way, you look slightly up at her. Her monumentality is enhanced by the whitewashed wall against which she stands out sharply. To achieve this effect, Vermeer painted over a jug rack that he had initially placed on the wall just behind her head. He also overpainted a large fire basket at the lower right, replacing it with Delft blue tiles and a small foot warmer with a basin of coals. Above all, the light dominates the room, playing and reflecting on every object. The bread and basket on the table are made up of hundreds of dots of 'light.' The everyday activity is simple and concentrated; only the stream of milk seems to move. Vermeer lets us partake in his stilled world.

1. This is a technically processed infra red image of the underpainting. Visible behind the milkmaid's head is the jug rack that Vermeer later painted over. Consequently, all attention is now focused on the woman and her activity. Photo Francesca Gabrieli (Conservation & Science, Rijksmuseum)
2. A fire basket held a small stove with glowing coals, a portable heat source. Nappies could be draped over a rounded lid made of willow branches to dry.
3. Given the many hunks of bread on the table, the woman is probably making bread pudding from dry bread soaked in milk. Sometimes the milk was supplemented with beer, which may be what is in the blue German jug.

Vermeer's scenes are tranquil and subdued, sealed off from the outside world. And yet it is present. Vermeer lets it in by opening windows or having someone look out the window. Still wearing his large beaver fur hat, a man pays a visit in Officer and Laughing Girl. The map of Holland and West Friesland on the wall also brings the outside world into the enclosed room, as does the open window. In Young Woman with a Lute, the woman tunes her instrument while looking out of the window -is she expecting someone? Letters, by definition, bring something from the outer world inside. The drawn back green curtain at the left in Woman Writing a Letter, with her Maid affords an unobstructed view into the room, while the patiently waiting maidservant gazes out past the white curtain. The intimacy of the serene interior becomes palpable, just as noise from the street seems to intrude.

1. The intimacy of this scene is due to Vermeer's virtuoso handling of perspective: the man is seen from close up and is proportionally much larger than the woman. Vermeer may have studied this effect with the help of an optical instrument, the camera obscura. This was a dark chamber or box with a hole, or later a lens, through which images of objects outside the room were projected on the opposite wall.
2. As in The Milkmaid, Vermeer executed parts of the picture with a multitude of dots of paint. In bright light, a camera obscura also shows a projection with dots of light.
3. This white window frame is the most brightly lit element in the painting. With good reason, for the sunlight outside is always more intense than the light inside. With this white, Vermeer suggests daylight pouring into the room.

Between 1664 and 1667, Vermeer produced a modest group of paintings of women gazing at the viewer up close. They look straight out of the painting right into our world. While undoubtedly based on studies of living models they are not portraits. Vermeer was actually depicting tronies -vividly painted character heads and fantasy portraits of figures in fictional costumes -which were very popular in his time. In such works, painters explored the human face and facial expressions and effects of light and shade. Turning their head and looking over their shoulder, the women engage with us very directly. The experimental studies Girl with a Flute and Girl with a Red Hat are the prelude to Girl with a Pearl Earring, among others. In them, Vermeer strove for even greater simplicity. All attention is focused on the young woman and her gaze. Another way of getting up close is to reduce the viewer's distance to the woman, as Vermeer does in The Lacemaker. We are so close to her that we can even see the tiny threads in her hands.

Girl with a Pearl Earring will be on view at the Mauritshuis, The Hague, from 1 April 2023.

1. Green earth was used as a thin, transparent layer in the shadows of the skin. Vermeer was the only artist in the Netherlands in the 17th century who applied this pigment in such a way.
2. Like the adjacent Girl with a Flute, this work was painted on panel. Both are probably studies, as suggested by their sketchy and experimental execution.
3. In contrast to most of Vermeer's other paintings, the light in Girl with a Flute, The Lace Maker and Girl with a Red Hat falls in from the right.

Like the women in Gallery 7, these ladies look out of the picture straight at us, as if interrupted in their music-making. In fact, music is prevalent not only in these, but in many of Vermeer's paintings. Women play a guitar, a harpsichord or a virginal (a keyboard instrument). And in several paintings, a viola da gamba (a kind of double bass) stands or lies on the ground, as here in Young Woman Seated at a Virginal.

Visible in the background of Young Woman Seated at a Virginal is an existing painting by Dirck van Baburen. It features a prostitute strumming a lute while smiling at a man, who in turn offers her a coin. The painting in the background adds a layer of meaning to Vermeer's picture. The same is true of Young Woman Standing at a Virginal, which includes the painting-within-a-painting of the god of love, Cupid, as is also seen earlier in Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (Gallery 4).

1. The keyboard instruments in Young Woman Seated at a Virginal and Young Woman Standing at a Virginal appear to be identical; however, the painted landscapes on the lids differ. In the case of Young Woman Standing at a Virginal, the landscape on the lid is the same as the one on the wall.
2. In the course of his career, Vermeer stylized the rendering of fabric and texture ever further. In the white sleeve, he applied only dashes and dots of paint next to each other to achieve the effect of costly fabrics.
3. The music-making woman looking out at us contrasts with the scene in the painting on the wall behind her, in which the price of the prostitute's services is being negotiated. Music and (venal) love are unequivocally linked.

Besides paintings with a single figure seen up close, Vermeer found a new formula involving two or three figures in larger interior scenes. In his Love Letter, for instance, he situates the two women at quite a remove from us, and so, like him, we observe them from an adjacent room. Vermeer's hermetic composition turns us into furtive spectators.

The lady of the house has stopped playing her cittern (a small lute) as the maidservant hands her a missive. Is it a love letter? The seascape on the wall would suggest so. After all, love has been compared to the sea and a lover to a ship -tempestuous or calm, threatened or safe.

Letters are often the subject in Vermeer's work: the earliest three paintings depict a single figure reading or writing, and the three later ones include a maidservant. Vermeer always portrayed well-to-do women maintaining contact with the world at large through letters. For people in love, letters were an ideal means of courtship. There were even contemporary books and letter-writing manuals offering a range of examples to guide would-be lovers. Still in her elegant bed jacket, the lady in Woman in Blue Reading a Letter evokes her absent suitor by softly reading the letter out loud.

Domestic servants could deliver letters within the city - which no self-respecting lady would have done -without suspicion. In Mistress and Maid, a woman at her writing table is surprised by the letter brought in by the maid. The outside world thus comes inside here, as it does in other paintings through windows or doors. In the closely related Lady Writing, it is the woman's outward gaze, in addition to the letter, that connects the inside with the outside.

1. Vermeer painted this woman three times as the bearer of a letter. The names of his models are unknown.
2. Vermeer portrayed a very fashionable lady. However, not even wealthy burghers wore ermine: perhaps it was rabbit fur patterned with dots. The pearl eardrop, too, may not be real. It is so large, and therefore rare and precious, that it was probably made from an inexpensive material such as glass, or perhaps it is an example of artistic license on the part of the painter.
3. The casket on the table, in which jewels, letters or other valuables could be kept, may well come from Goa (a region in India). Like the map in Letter Reading Woman in Blue, the casket is a reminder of the outside.

There are many similarities between these paintings from around 1660. The fashionably dressed women are either playing music or have just stopped to take a sip of wine. The men seem to have dashed in from outside, their elegant cloaks still draped over their shoulders. They exude charm, to which the young women do not seem insensitive. One of them turns to the onlooker, making us witness to the situation. We see music books and a cittern, as love was often associated with singing and making music together. However, what exactly is transpiring here is unclear. Much is left to our imagination.

The perspective lines of the table and chairs, and the windows in the left wall create a convincing spatial illusion. Vermeer placed the figures in the foreground, allowing us to approach them up close, giving rise to a greater sense of intimacy between the viewer and the scene depicted.

1. The man wears a cloak made of trijp: an expensive, velvety fabric made from the wool of the angora goat. The cloak's semi-circular folds suggest that he is standing with his left hand tucked in at his side, a pose radiating self-assurance. Such a cloak is also found in Girl Interrupted at her Music.
2. The woman in the stained-glass window holds curling straps of a coat of arms in her hands. The ornate family crest suggests an ancestral decorum at variance with the amorous scene.
3. The man grasps the white wine jug, which is in the heart of the scene. His white cuff fans out subtly around the jug.

This is one of Vermeer's few works in which a man takes pride of place. Together with some books, a terrestrial globe rests atop the cabinet behind him. The geographer studies the maps on the table, a pair of dividers in his hand. His gaze, however, drifts off into the distance.

Unobstructed by any scientific instruments, the light falls directly on the geographer's papers and his forehead, emphasizing the scientist's intellectual focus on the world. The outside world is thus drawn into the seclusion of the study.

The pendant to this painting, The Astronomer (Louvre, Paris), features a scholar studying a celestial globe.

Vermeer painted a small group of works around 1662-1664 depicting a woman standing at a table and a variety of objects. The women are captured engrossed in a hushed moment of contemplation. For instance, a lady is at her toilette in front of a mirror in Woman with a Pearl Necklace. In Vermeer's time, this was seen in a negative light because it was 'worldly,' that is, vain and focused on appearances.

The same holds true for Woman Holding a Balance, in which a lady stands at a table with precious jewels. She holds a pair of scales to determine their monetary value. Hanging behind her is a painting of the 'Last Judgment' from the Bible, making it clear that one day she too will be 'weighed,' that is judged.

Vermeer was familiar with Catholic devotional literature through his Jesuit neighbours. In his Allegory of the Catholic Faith, he presents a variety of symbols that the viewer can dwell on mindfully. The believer is thus led along the path to inner values.

1. Vermeer used a handbook to determine the symbols for his allegory. The main figure, 'Faith,' overcomes all that is worldly, vain and transitory by placing her foot on a terrestrial globe.
2. The figure of 'Faith' looks intensely at this reflective glass sphere, which -like faith -can capture what cannot be captured. For this, Vermeer used an idea derived from Catholic theology, with which he may have become familiar through his Jesuit neighbours.
3. Hanging in the house where Vermeer lived were two paintings of the 'Crucifixion of Christ'. Perhaps one of these two works is shown here on the back wall. It is a quintessential subject for Catholic devotion.

1632

Johannes Vermeer is born in Delft, the second child of Reynier Jansz and Digna Baltens. He is baptized in the Dutch Reformed Nieuwe Kerk (New Church). His father is an innkeeper, a silk worker and an art dealer.

1641

The family lives in the Mechelen Inn on the Marketplace in Delft. Johannes probably attends a small academy on Voldersgracht, where he possibly learns the rudiments of drawing and geometry.

1653

Vermeer marries Catharina Bolnes in the Catholic church of Schipluiden, a village near Delft. Acquaintances call them Trijntje and Jan. Like his father, who died in 1652, he works as an art dealer. He joins the Guild of St Luke, a professional organization of artists. From then on, he is an independent painter.

1653-1655

Paints works with biblical and mythological subjects.

1656

Paints and signs The Procuress.

1657-1659

Paints Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. He borrows money from Delft art lovers Pieter Claesz van Ruijven and Maria de Knuijt, his principal patrons.

1653-1660

The Vermeer family settles in a rented house on Dude Langendijk. His mother-in-law Maria Thins later also lives at this address. Their neighbours are Jesuit priests. Vermeer subsequently depicts paintings in Thins' possession in his own works. Eleven of the couple's fourteen or fifteen children survive infancy.

1658-1661

Paints The Milkmaid, The Glass of Wine and View of Delft.

1662

Elected headman of the Guild of St Luke for a two-year term.

1662-1667

A productive period, during which he paints Woman with a Pearl Necklace, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, The Lacemaker, Woman Holding a Balance and Girl with a Pearl Earring. Vermeer is hailed as an important painter.

1668-1670

His mother dies. Vermeer now owns the Mechelen Inn and is re-elected headman of the Guild of St Luke. He paints The Geographer and The Love Letter.

1672

The Year of Disaster in the Dutch Republic. Due to the deteriorating economy, Vermeer hardly sells any paintings.

1674

Is a member of the civic guard as a pikeman.

1670-1674

Paints Allegory of the Catholic Faith, Young Woman Standing at a Virginal, Young Woman Seated at a Virginal and Woman Writing a Letter, with her Maid.

1675

Johannes Vermeer dies at the age of 43 in the second week of December from an unknown illness lasting a day and a half. Fourteen pallbearers carry his coffin to his grave while funeral bells ring in his honour. His wife Catharina and their eleven children are left penniless with a large debt. She pays off a sum of over 600 guilders at the bakery by pledging The Guitar Player and Woman Writing a Letter, with her Maid.