Perspective: Immersing in Vermeer's Timeless Aesthetics

[Music] in 1584 the Dutch city of delft was the location of a momentous political event the assassination of William the silent Prince of orange and leader of Dutch resistance to Spanish rule within years the Dutch United provinces were free of Spanish domination Protestant Holland now entered a golden age of freedom and wealth with the citizens of delt sharing this Prosperity like other Dutch cities at that time Delph was also known for its thriving Art Market and in 1631 a local Innkeeper became one of delph's official art dealers his name was Rainier Yan zoon the following year he became father to delph's most famous artist Yan Vermeer Vermeer produced some of the most singular and individual works of the whole of the 17th century his works are marked by intimacy mood and Luminosity I think there's always a sense of mystery In Vermeer as well it's it's I think with good reason he's called the Sphinx of delft vermeer's work it's sensitivity to effects of light on things like glass on the plain white plastered surface of a wall where you can just get the faintest hinge of a blue hue for example it's as though Vermeer is trying to forget what he knows he's seeing and see without preconceptions Vermeer is one of the very greatest painters of the Dutch tradition this is the everyday raised to an extraordinary level of poetry I mean that's what Vermeer is in a sense all about of all the great artists of History Vermeer is amongst most mysterious we have no idea what he looked like and details of his life are scarce only three dozen paintings can be definitely attributed to Vermeer and his work was virtually unknown for two centuries after his death he was the son of an Innkeeper and art dealer so it's clear that he was surrounded by Art all of his life he also had something of a reputation for being a specialist an expert on Italian art one of his very few recorded visits outside of delft came in 1670 when he went to the Hague to judge as an expert in a dispute between the authenticity of some Italian paintings he was probably influenced by the Utrecht caravagisti the people who came back from Italy and brought back this Roman style he certainly owned some paintings by Utrecht caravagesque painters such as a painting by Dirk Van baburin that appears in the background of I think two of his paintings in the 1640s delft was the location for a distinctive School of Art Delph painters such as Carol fabricius were noted for their interest and perspective and their emphasis on the effects of light and color ultimately it would be this local approach that would most influence vermeer's work the earliest paintings by Vermeer are large-scale paintings of religious and mythological subjects the Christ in the house of Martha Mary and the diner and her companions which is in The Hague the picture in the Hague of course has to be judged very carefully because it is a damaged picture in the sense the surface of the picture is not the surface as for me I lift it however looking at those two pictures I think what is clear is that they lack narrative Drive I mean this is not the natural language of Emir both these canvases were completed in 1655 but these early Works only serve to add to the mystery of vermeer's artistic development they differ profoundly from the kind of work he produced later in his career vermeer's first known mythological painting is Diana and her companions he gives us a very unusual rendition of it because usually Diana is an opportunity for flesh unusually Vermeer gives us a very sober and clothed version of this instead of displaying herself Diner is actually having her feet bathed Christ in the house of Martha and Mary is a canvas roughly a meter and a half square and is ten times the size of many of vermeer's later paintings the significance of these early paintings lies in the artistic approaches that influenced Vermeer at that time the Dutch city of Utrecht was home to a school of painting that adopted the styles of Italian Masters such as the great Caravaggio caravagesque painters were conditioned by the Italian concept of History painting of paintings that related to texts like the Bible and the early Works show that he had Ambitions to work in that genre what seems to happen later on from about 1655 onwards is that he abandons the outer form of that historical allegory these moral Exemplar and tries to get at the same ideas through scenes of everyday life Italian influence can also be seen in Saint praxides a religious image only recently accepted as being the work of Vermeer synpraxides was a Roman saint she was canonized because she helped in a burial of early Christian Martyrs and you can see in the front of the painting there's a chalice she's leaning over with a sponge the sponge has been used to clean decapitated Christian Martyrs in 1656 Vermeer painted the procurus his only canvas to be authentically signed and dated again this is a large work depicting a scene in a 17th century Dutch brothel the strong colors and thick impasto of the procurus also indicate Italian influence but this painting offers hints of what would become vermeer's unique artistic approach this is the point when he adopted the Contemporary subject matter that would characterize his life's work this is the girl pouring milk painted around 1660. it is perhaps the most famous Vermeer of them all and virtually every feature of the canvas characterizes the artist's mature body of work she is the Dutch Maid as a symbol of the Netherlands from the Virgin Mary and the Dutch Maid was a secularization of that the Netherlands was still and is now associated with the production of dairy produce a feminine figure pouring from a jug was a figure of virtue the monumentality of this very small picture and the monumentality of the figure almost heroicization of the everyday I mean that's what these genre painters in the Netherlands do and this is what Vermeer does above all Vermeer is this great painter of light but what we get in vermeer's paintings we don't get harsh outlines the way the light comes through very subtly models so we get a slightly blurred image X-rays of this painting show that originally there was a painting on the back wall but I quite rightly Vermeer removes this it would have been a strange inclusion in a kitchen interior and by using a plain back wall as well you have all the possibilities of light falling on bare plaster at the time many artists chose to paint on wooden panels but for virtually the whole of his career Vermeer chose canvas as the surface for all his works we only know of 30 Vermeer paintings a small number which cannot be solely explained by losses over the centuries history is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world we aim to bring you only the most dramatic and fascinating stories of the past through our award-winning documentaries find out about the rise of leaders such as Cleopatra and Napoleon in our latest offering of exclusive documentaries sign up now for a free trial and prospective fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code perspective at checkout despite vermeer's limited output his paintings succeed in capturing all aspects of the feminine character female care and attention to the task in hand can also be seen in woman holding a balance a canvas from around 1664 which has also been seen as a symbol of temperate virtue for a long time it was called both a woman weighing gold and a woman wearing pearls but microscopic analysis has shown that the pans of the scales don't contain anything the meaning of the painting is added to by what's going on in the background there's a painting of the last judgment the fact that there's a balance in the foreground and the fact that the last judgment is you know the weighing of cells I mean I didn't think that would have escaped for me I mean but I think this is more as a witty reference it's more subtle and clever reference it is some tremendously heavy going symbolic argument vermeer's women are not always Paragons of virtue his depiction of the procurus reveals the artist's early identification of the other side of the female character the girl with the wine glass is also far from being a depiction of goodness there is little doubt that this young woman is already experiencing the effects of the alcohol being offered by this unsubtle Suitor with this 1657 canvas girls sleeping the message is even clearer Temperance is certainly not the subject matter of this canvas which is also notable for the marvelously textured oriental rug this is a device which Vermeer had already used in the procurus and which would often appear in his later works but in most of vermeer's images of women we are not presented with either idolized virtue or moral fecklessness instead we see female figures in ordinary everyday scenes image of a woman with a water jug is typical Vermeer does have a remarkable insight into an idea of Womanhood it's not Womanhood as perceived by women from a womanly position but actually women as a projection of men's desire as a kind of muse or a personification that can Elevate the masculine position to a kind of state of spiritual desire I do think it's worth imagining these women not as for example vermeer's wife or his daughter or his mistress or his maid or whatever actual people but as kind of allegorical figures many of vermeer's finest images of women convey a strong sense of silence and are almost studious in nature this calm meditative sensation can even be detected in the Vermeer canvases depicting women with musical instruments music is very often associated with love and of course just like letters can bring tokens of love music can be associated with love as well we also often get men included in this musical element so these might be teachers of music but they might also be used to introduce a kind of flirtatious note in this canvas from the mid 1600s we can immediately recognize the artist's Mastery of light even though the painting has survived the centuries in a poor state of repair few artists of history have handled light with the genius of yan Vermeer there was a community of interest in these effects among artists in delft and they were all interested in studying these effects of course Vermeer is by far the greatest of all these I mean he really is able to render light in the most subtle and clever manner he uses the pigments that everybody had in their palette I mean he just to put it very simply Does It Better the reason for the window on the left is I think very practical most painters are right-handed so you set an easel up and you have the light coming in from the left so your right hand isn't masking your work and shadowing it as you paint it and you can see exactly this going on in vermeer's own painting of the artist in his Studio or the allegory of painting as it's sometimes called vermeer's fan is for musical instruments is reflected in many of his best known works in this painting the detail and warm coloring of the cello are matched by a skillful depiction of the keyboard instrument known as the virginals there is a mathematical sense of order influencing this rendition of physical space which is unsurprising as delft's artists maintained a strong interest in the techniques of perspective Vermeer entered into this tradition with a passion around about 1650 a group of artists came together who seemed to have been interested in recreating the optical visual effects of light on the retina and this came out both in perspectival distortions and the effects of light and space and the mathematics if you like a vision it's something that's evolving from a northern tradition a northern pictorial tradition something like the icon interest in mirroring the world but it's blending with and merging into what we might see as an Enlightenment interest in a kind of detached objective concept of vision and that crystallizes around the issue of vermeer's use of the camera obscura the camera obscura was an early Optical device it was basically a box with a lens and a slanted mirror so an image would go in through the lens and it would be diverted by the slanted mirror to create a smaller reversed image of the original image so it's been suggested that Vermeer used this and traced these to get his perspectival Arrangements in certain of amir's paintings the use of a camera obscura is suggested because we get the details of very intense color we also get effects in the foreground that make foreground figures look bigger and of course in the painting the soldier and the Laughing girl we have this enormous soldier sitting in the foreground the camera obscura when it reflects on to a shiny or a polished object gives you these little beads of light and that's another element that's very characteristic of vermeer's paintings you get these little raised Elements of Light paint quite heavily impacted whether he actually used a camera obscura in the sense of looking through it and setting up his subjects and then looking through it and transferring somehow the camera obscura image to his canvases I'm kind of doubtful I just think he knew what that looked like and if one thinks of a camera as providing an objective experience of the world which lots of people do that it's a true record or something like that then again one can equate this with science vermeer's technique was remarkable repeatedly he incorporates a diagonal checkerboard tile floor to accentuate the sense of space within the canvas this can be seen in one of his later works the love letter from 1669. here it is the female that provides what is for Vermeer an intriguingly narrative human element the exchanged glances between the lady of the house and her maid urge the viewer to imagine the contents of the letter but from an artistic point of view this canvas is a Triumph of perspective with the curtain pulled away to let us into a three-dimensional World in which every object contributes to the overall effect in a number of vermeer's paintings as a spectator we're gently seeing what's unfolding in front of us if you like we're a privileged viewer in some of the paintings as well there's a chair in the foreground again we're being invited in vermeer's works are famous for their paintings within paintings and it is unlikely that his choice of subject matter was accidental in the painting of the woman holding a balance the fact that the lady is standing in front of an image of the last judgment can hardly be meaningless there is a contrast between the physical Material World of precious metals and jewels and the Eternal spiritual world in this later work depicting a lady playing the virginals Vermeer uses the painting within a painting idea to illustrate the concept of Love by depicting Cupid to this day vermeer's purpose is still debated objects that seem to have a perfectly rightful place within the composition can be seen at a closer look or at another look to have connotations and resonances that refer to abstract things rather than just being a simple depiction of the interior and a very obvious example of that is paintings within the painting the subject matter of the painting within the painting May comment on the subject matter of what's going on in the painting as it were the great example is the procurase this painting by baburan which hangs in the background of the girl with the original because it shows a procurus does that make her a prostitute I think this is most unlikely I mean I think this is just undecorous I don't think this is really what happened in this 17th century I think that picture is there because we know that he owned this picture it occurs in one of them called the concert where you have a single man and two females and of course by introducing this element of sexuality into it it might intimate that this threesome is going to degenerate into something else now the virginal was the instrument that was called the virginal because it was appropriate for young women to play so I think in this instance the inclusion of the painting wasn't meant to suggest anything the girl was going to do it was actually a contrast between if you like one way of life and The Simple Pure maidenly way of life that this girl follows many students of Vermeer are also fascinated by the artist's enthusiasm for depicting maps in many of his finest canvases this early painting is a classic example it is typically Vermeer in its perspectival layout and in its handling of light its subject matter is also familiar a cheerful woman in conversation with a soldier whose body language suggests that his intentions are not entirely platonic but the viewer cannot help but be drawn to the map shown in the background although it is shown tilted through 90 degrees in the fashion of the time we can recognize this as a map of vermeer's home country are they patriotic symbols do they refer to the tradition of netherlandish painting are they about travel or about knowledge of the world nobody is ever going to know I think if he did write and I intended it would be I intended to allow you to think about this and to think about what this might mean and to enrich to produce a very very rich semantic kind of experience for viewers they are deeply symbolic the paintings I think but not simply symbolic map making was an important profession and in one of the few Vermeer canvases to feature an individual male the artist captures the high status of the geographer this is an image of science an image of the Age of Reason and measurements an image which shows man as the master of his planet this sense of reverence for science can also be seen in the astronomer a canvas usually bracketed with the geographer this is another confident image of vermeer's time a subtly lit scene in which the relationship between humanity and earth is made clear knowledge is the key to this relationship here visually represented in the text material on the table it is possible that the figure shown here was a real man of science indeed he may be none other than Anthony van leuvenhoek the inventor of the microscope it was a fertile period of artistic activity an artist like de hook often chose to paint the city that formed the center of this artistic golden age on two occasions Vermeer also traveled outside delft to depict the city on canvas on the second of these occasions the result was simply astounding the unrivaled master of the Interior scene created a landscape regarded by many as the greatest ever created but vermeer's first outdoor artistic expedition was also remarkable the little Street the painting in the Rex museum is because one of the most outstanding magical works by the Miami it has often been described as photographic and it was described as such of course in the late 19th century it's because it sort of takes an apparently random street scene and this may well have been the view from vermeer's actual house in doubt I mean looking out of his Studio window to the street at the back here it is the color and texture which takes Center Stage especially in the brickwork and the wooden window shutters The Mirror's always playing with what is a picture he often shows Reflections on window panes he's playing with the idea of these rectangular surfaces and if you look at something like the little street it's not just windows it's doors and buildings and all these rectangles all the time in the Italian tradition a painting was a window onto another world this is a crucial definition of painting for the Italian Renaissance the idea that you're looking through something transparent to another world but although this is a townscape scene Vermeer does not eliminate the human element from the canvas the individuals depicted going about their day's business also have a role to play in this Scene It does come over as a very quiet scene indeed we've got just three little groups of human characters there's a woman making lace in the door there's another housewife through a doorway there are some children as well I think it's intriguing that this is just about the only image that for me a paints of children and after all his wife did have 11 children and it's often been speculated why are there so few children in vermeer's works it seems to me he might have had enough of them at home and not included them in his art small human figures can also be seen in the second and the greatest of vermeer's outdoor scenes his 1661 view of delft an unusually large work this painting is over one meter square and inspired the greatest landscapists it shows the city of delft on an early evening when sunshine and Cloud are jostling for dominance in the Milky Netherlands sky but the human element is not left behind in the foreground we see a number of citizens discussing the concerns of the day this is one of the features making this such a masterpiece the view of delft is one of the greatest masterpieces of Western Art the scale of course is quite remarkable to paint for Vermeer himself and for this type of town view the way that he distinguishes the texture of you know the river the riverbank the sky and of course this extraordinary Town viewer he indicates recession by using tonality by using Color I mean that's how the picture recedes Vermeer managed to avoid bankruptcy in his lifetime but it is clear that he experienced serious money troubles some students of Vermeer have suggested that the 1667 canvas is indicative of the Vermeer family's problems at the time could this be Catherine receiving Grim financial news from her maid we cannot be sure all that we do know is that following vermeer's death in 1675 his widow was left with crippling Financial burdens but his final Years also included two subtly different works this is the artist studio another unusually large canvas the artist studio is one of two allegories that Vermeer paints so an allegory is the telling of one story by another story so it's most likely this is an allegory of painting so what we've got is we've got the artist seated as it's easel and he's looking at a female figure this is the female figure of Clio one of the muses of History we can tell this because she's wearing a laurel Crown she's got a book of Greek history by the author thucydides and she's also got a trumpet The Trumpet Of Fame in this picture he is using an allegorical language which is a different from the language he uses when representing ordinary domestic interiors and yet of course there are elements within the picture space which are very familiar I mean the black and white tiles on the floor the stool at which he sits the easel the way the light falls from the lift in the way that it does in so many of his paintings so it's is an allegory placed in a space which is recognizable as his Studio or room in his house he's dressed in Burgundian dress from the period when the Netherlands belonged to the Dukes of burgundy and in that way I think that there's a self-conscious adherence to a tradition of painting that goes back to Jan vanich who was a court painter to the Dukes of burgundy is this artist at work Vermeer himself if this is Vermeer it is our only image of him Jan vermeer's death was as mysterious as his life he died on December 13 1675 at the age of 42. in the final year of his life Vermeer painted what was probably his last work the allegory of faith throughout the 18th and 19th century Vermeer works are sold but they don't attract very high prices his rediscovery is down to a single person a man called tearfield Torre Burger in 1866 he wrote a series of two articles in the Gazette de Bazaar in France all about Vermeer Bruce wrote this famous description of the view of delft and really Vermeer has been established since around about 1900 as one of the very great painters of the western tradition interest in vermeer's work coincides with the popularization of Photography so a kind of imagery which allows the appreciation of the formal qualities of his work and also with the emergence of impressionism a kind of art that is attempting to recreate a vision of the world without preconception he was a master of color texture and especially light perhaps no other artist in history has asserted his genius so triumphantly in such a limited body of work and the mysteries of his life only add to the story of yan Vermeer [Music]

Channel: Perspective

Views: 32,857

Keywords: 17th century painter, Art interpretation, Art masterpiece, Art preservation, Art symbolism, Artistic genius, Baroque artist, Baroque paintings, Classic art, Classic portraits, Cultural heritage, Dutch Baroque painter, Dutch Golden Age art, Dutch art, Dutch art culture, Fine art history, Historical paintings, Oil painting techniques, Perspective, Traditional artist, Vermeer paintings

Id: 251SZ_SnFF8

Length: 29min 0sec (1740 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2023