The Allegory of Faith

In order to appreciate the full rich meaning of the Allegory of Faith, one must acknowledge the community of believers at the Delft Papists' Corner. Vermeer's painting of faith, the real presence of Christ on the altar, and the penitent saint Mary Magdalen, met the needs of the Catholic community in a private devotional setting. Vermeer's work is a finely painted masterpiece that ties Vermeer to his community, family, and home. In the domestic sanctuary depicted in Vermeer's Allegory of Faith, the New Testament of Christ is renewed in the Holy Sacrament of the altar. The open curtain reveals the altar on which the historical Crucifixion depicted in the painting on the back wall is perpetually renewed in the sacrifice of the Holy Mass. The figure of Faith, Mary Magdalen, personifies the enduring belief in the miracle of the altar, the real presence of Christ's body and Blood.

Valerie Lind Hedquist. "The Real Presence of Christ and the Penitent Mary Magdalen in the "Allegory of Faith" by Johannes Vermeer." Art History 23 (September 2000)

c. 1671-1674
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Vermeer: The Complete Works , New York, 1997)

c. 1670-1672
Walter Liedtke (Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, New York, 2008)

The light brown ground contains chalk, lead-white and umber.

Underdrawing lines, which appear to be in black chalk, are visible between the floor tiles and the line separating the ceiling from the wall.

The paint has been thinly a smoothly applied, though some impasto in the curtains and in the blue areas is apparent. Areas of the curtain were painted wet-in-wet as were some of the flesh tones. The vanishing point of the painting is visible as a small depression in the paint layer.

* Johannes Vermeer (exh. cat., National Gallery of Art and Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis - Washington and the Hague, 1995, edited by Arthur Wheelock)

literature

exhibitions

Portrait of Michiel van der Dussen,
his Wife, Wilhelemina van Setten
and their Children (detail)
1640
159 x 210 cm.
Gemeente Musea Delft;
Collection Stedelijk
Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft

Nearly every scholar concurs that the Allegory of Faith was commissioned, presumably by someone who had Catholic ties. Some believe that a Jesuit publication which contains the only contemporary reference to a glass ball (which hangs from the ceiling) and the indisputable Jesuit leanings of his strong-willed mother-in-law point towards the Jesuits themselves. But as Walter Liedtke points out, Jesuits were more inclined towards conventional imagery. He suggests that Michiel van der Dussen, a well-to-do Catholic and important supporter of the Delft Bagijnhof, a community of Catholic lay-women, as a likely candidate.

While Catholics still formed a sizable segment of the population when the United Provinces came into being, gradually they were submerged in the rising tide of Protestantism, particularly Calvinism. The Catholic faithful were compelled to worship in private - their churches were stripped of their altars and often were taken over for use by Protestants. In these circumstances, the Church could no longer supply the rich commissions that had nourished artists since the beginning of the Renaissance.

Title page of
Iconologia or Moral Emblems
English edition, 1709
Ceasar Ripa

There is little doubt that Vermeer derived most of the components of the Allegory of Faith from the1664 Dutch translation of Ceasar Ripa's Iconologia, a well-known guide to the symbolism. It was used by orators, artists and poets to give substance to qualities such as virtues, vices, passions to the arts and sciences. The concepts were arranged in alphabetical order by their Italian names. It was very influential in the 17th century and went through a number of editions. There were 9 Italian editions and 8 editions in other languages. Both the text and the emblems included in these editions vary greatly.

Vermeer did not adhere blindly to the prescriptions of the Iconologia. None of the four allegorical figures of Faith match exactly. Ripa recommends that the figure of Faith, who represents most important virtue, should be painted with white which relate to light and purity. Instead, blue represents the heavenly sky. The hand which is posed on Faith's breast indicates that living faith lies within the heart. The cornerstone which has crushed the snake represents Christ who defeats Satan.

Fede Cattolica
from Cesare Ripa
Iconologia
1644, Amsterdam

Other important elements such as the glass ball and the crucifix are not mentioned in Ripa's volume while the Eucharistic chalice and Missale point to the Holy Mass. However, Vermeer followed to the letter Ripa's description of Faith who "has the world under her feet" by including the terrestrial globe

Vermeer also consulted the Iconologia for the figure of the muse Clio for his Art of Painting.

Modern critics underline the contrived nature of the picture and most place it among Vermeer weakest works. It is hardly a favorite of the public either even though it contains passages of exquisite pictorial facture. However, any presumed lack of artistic participation should be taken with caution. Tastes for subjects and pictorial styles change insidiously through the centuries and it would appear that Vermeer's contemporaries thought very differently about the painting. In a posthumous sale, the Allegory of Faith was described as "powerfully and glowingly painted," a statement which was objectively backed-up by the considerable sum it was able to fetch, the highest documented sum for a Vermeer painting sold in the years during or shortly after the end of the artist's activity.

In Vermeer's slim oeuvre, this work has always been noted for its dissimilarities than for its ties with the rest of the artist's oeuvre. Most scholars are not in agreement why such a scene unfolds in a fashionable Dutch Interior. John Montias has speculated that the artist's home may have served as a place of worship and that the work's subject is drawn from a real-life situation. As Vermeer expert Walter Liedtke points out, it is more probable that the painting simply belongs to a long Netherlandish tradition of representing religious events within the confines of a contemporary house.

In a revealing study, Valerie Hedquist investigates the placement and relationship of objects in Jan Vermeer's unusual Allegory of Faith in the context of Dutch Roman Catholicism in the 17th century. Contemporary illustrated mass books, Jesuit writings, and primary sources regarding the Roman Catholic mission to the Netherlands suggest that Vermeer depicted a genre scene that served as a domestic church setting where the eucharistic miracle is celebrated. Additional pictorial and iconographic evidence supports the identification of the richly attired woman in Vermeer's painting as the penitent saint Mary Magdalen, representing the figure of faith.

The Jesuit Church on the Oude Langendijk
(pen and ink drawing)
Abraham Rademaker
Gemeentearchief, Delft

In the past decades much ink has flowed concerning Vermeer's religious convictions. Nothing is known of Vermeer's religious thoughts before his marriage, except for the fact that he was baptized on 31 October 1632 in the Reformed Church in Delft. It now seems settled among historians that the young artist converted to Catholicism upon his marriage to Catharina Bolnes even though all the information in regards is circumstantial. His mother-in-law, Maria Thins, was a devoted Catholic and was instrumental in the painter's conversion. She was also a Delft patrician with excellent family ties who had grown up in the stronghold of Dutch Catholicism, in the town of Gouda. There, her family celebrated mass secretly in their home, De Trapjes (The Little Steps.) Her sister became a nun in Louvain.

Given Vermeer's conversion to Catholicism, it would have been natural for him to settle in the Papists' Corner (Papenhoek - see left) where his influential mother-in-law had a large house. The inn Mechelen where he lived before marriage was frequented chiefly by Protestants and was not a good place to bring up children in the Catholic faith. The Papist Corner was not a ghetto because many of the families who chose to live there did so by their own free will were prosperous. Although Catholics were not actively repressed, they were not altogether free to act as they wished. Vermeer himself was married in a hidden church in the nearby village Schipluiden.

Although not common, religious conversions happened. Perhaps Vermeer's conversion was inevitable. The Council of Trent had decreed matrimonial unions between Catholics and non-Catholics null and void. Thus, the marriage between Catharina as a Catholic and Vermeer as a non-Catholic would not have been accepted. According to the Council of Trent the Roman Catholic Church had always taught the dogma of the Holy matrimony as part of the Seven Sacraments, contrary to the Protestant Church (see Martin Luther, Von den Ehesachen. Wittenberg 1530). The apostolic vicar to The Netherlands, Phillip Rovenius, writing in 1648,equated the marriage of a Catholic to a nonbeliever to a pact with the devil.

In the case that Vermeer did indeed convert, did he do so to placate his influential, strong-willed mother-in-law, Maria Thins or was his conversion a spontaneous one dictated by inner spiritual necessities? This we will never know. Most likely, it was a good decision for both families.

By the time Vermeer's parents were married in 1615, the suppression of the Catholic faith in Delft was complete. But even though national decrees denied the Catholics the right to serve public office, many areas of the Netherlands remained solidly Roman Catholic. Despite the hostility, Dutch Catholics continued to worship and educate throughout the 17th century. In large cities like Amsterdam, Haarlem and Utrecht, commercial concerns dampened repeated calls for anti- Catholic laws. Although intolerance existed in the United Provinces, on the whole Dutch Catholics enjoyed remarkable freedoms compared with religious minorities elsewhere in early modern Europe. Penal laws against Catholics were occasionally enforced and Catholics were vulnerable to extortion, things could have been far worse.

Vermeer very probably converted to Catholicism upon his marriage to Catharina Bolnes although there is no sign that his decision had negative repercussions on his career. The most influential painter in Delft and friend of the Vermeer family, Leonaert Bramer (Delft's most prestigious artist) and Jan Steen were noted Catholics.

The Jesuits, who had established their first Dutch mission in 1592, moved to a permanent location in Delft in 1612. In 1650, Catholic inhabitants of Delft had the "choice" between three schuilkerken (hidden churches): two (dated from 1630-1650) in the Bagijnhof at the Oude Delft canal, dedicated to St. Hippolytus and St. Ursula and attended by secular priests, and the third one, established 1617 in an old warehouse at Oude Langendijk, dedicated to St. Josef and supervised by the Jesuits.

Due to the increasing population the hidden church at Oude Langendijk had to be enlarged c. 1835 and was rebuilt to a so-called "waterstaatskerk," the today's Maria Jesse Church. For this reason the house where Vermeer and his family had lived nearly 300 years earlier, had to be demolished.