The Art of painting

(De Schilderkonst)

c. 1662- 1668
oil on canvas
47 1/4 x 39 3/8 in. (120 X 100 cm.)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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critical excerpt

signed on the map, behind Clio's collar: IVerMeer

c. 1666-1667
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. Vermeer: The Complete Works, New York, 1997)

c.- 1666-1669
Walter Liedtke Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, New York, 2008)

technicalimagegoeshere

literature

  • The artist's widow, Catharina Bolnes (1675-76);
  • transferred to her mother, Maria Thins (24 February 1676);
  • evidently sold at auction in Delft, 15 March 1677;
  • possibly Baron Gerard van Swieten, prefect of the Imperial Court Library, Vienna (d.1772);
  • his son, Gottfried van Swieten (d.1803);
  • his estate, as by Pieter de Hooch (1803-13, sold to Czernin);
  • Count Johann Rudolf Czernin (1813-34, as by De Hooch);
  • by descent to Count Eugen Czernin (d.1955) and Jaromir Czernin (d.1966);
  • Adolf Hitler (1940-45); Munich Central Collecting Point (1945);
  • transferred on 17 November 1945 to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, in 1958 to the museum's permanent collection (inv. 9128).

exhibitions

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In her groundbreaking The Art of Describing, Svetlana Alpers declared that the interpretation of maps in Vermeer's paintings merely as symbols was too restrictive point of view. An overlooked, but vital characteristic of the Dutch culture and of its art, she suggested, is "the mapping impulse." Thus, the map hanging on the wall—so perfectly rendered that it has no equal in Dutch painting—is filled with multiple meaning. First, it is a "powerful pictorial presence" which catches the viewer's attention in many ways. The details are so specific that the particular map can be identified. It is large, with many visual components, including lettering, pictures, and the lines of the map itself. Finally, Vermeer placed his signature on it. In all these ways, Vermeer likened the painting to the map and, by extension, the act of painting to the act of map-making. For Alpers, this similarity reveals something essential about the Dutch idea of painting.

The Music Lesson (detail)
Jacob Ochtervelt
1671
Art Institute of Chicago

In reference to the connection between painting and mapmaking Alpers wrote: "The aim of Dutch painters was to capture on a surface a great range of knowledge and information about the world. They too employed words with their images. Like the mappers, they made additive works that could not be taken in from a single viewing point. Theirs was not a window on the Italian model of art but rather, like a map, a surface on which is laid out an assemblage of the world."

The same map of the United Provinces appears on the background in a contemporary work by Jacob Ochtervelt (see left). However, as usual in Dutch art, it is delineated with scarce attention to the physical properties of the map itself and functions more as a compositional filler.

In 1696, two decades after Vermeer's death, 21 of his "excellent and artful paintings" were sold in an Amsterdam auction presumably collected by Pieter van Ruijven and inherited by his son-in-law Jacob Dissius. In the sales catalogue, item number 3 was described as "the portrait of Vermeer in a room with various accessories, uncommonly beautiful painted by him." This painting was sold for the low price of 45 guilders, scarcely more than twice that of the tiny Lacemaker in the same auction, thus, few experts believe it corresponds to the Art of Painting which is many times larger and a far more elaborate composition. In fact, most agree that Vermeer's intention was not so much to make a lasting effigy of himself, but rather to commemorate and define the role of the artist in history and his association with fame through the use of symbols which in those times must have been readily understood by the cultural elite. The scene which is represented differs greatly from other representations of painters' studios (a very popular theme) of the times and does not seem to be indicative of Vermeer's own technical practices.

Clio
Pierre Mignard
1689
143,5 x 115 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

In our own times, when art is often accorded merit on the basis of its originality, it is difficult to imagine a time when artists and writers regularly consulted a book of iconography before starting work. Ever since antiquity artists sought to convey abstract ideas in visual forms through the use of symbols which could be readily deciphered by men of equal cultural standing. Iconologia, originally compiled by the Italian Cesare Ripa in the late sixteenth century, is such a work.

One recurrent question which occupied painters concerned the artist's place in society. He should be considered a craftsman, on par with carpenters and goldsmiths, or a creative genius, such as poets and philosophers? Another concern was that the great artist could bestow eternal fame to his city or nation through his work.

In The Art of Painting, Vermeer presumably addressed both issues by portraying an allegorical figure, Clio, the muse of History. In antiquity, Clio was one of the nine muses, personifications of the highest aspirations of art and intellect in Greek mythology. The Muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess whose name means memory. When the Romans later separated the muses' fields of inspiration, Clio became the patron of history. Her antique symbols are a laurel wreath and a scroll.

In Vermeer's painting Clio is portrayed as a girl with a crown of laurel that denotes glory, a trumpet and in her left arm she cradles a large yellow volume presumably of Thucydides' Histories. Thucydides' volume can be seen in an etching contained in Samuel van Hoogstraten's Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst, published 1678. Van Hoogstraten believed paintings should strive to become universal science which could represent all things visible.

Scholars believe that Vermeer's Art of Painting addressed a number of weighty issues which regarded both the art of painting and the fine arts in general. One of them was the so-called paragone, or the comparison of the arts.

In the past, there was an enduring and impassioned debate concerning the hierarchical status of the various arts. In the Quattrocento, Italy was the battleground on which painters, still handicapped by the classical prejudice against manual labor, fought to establish their art on the higher tier of the Liberal Arts. Practicing painters, in fact, were then relegated among artisans and craftsmen. The rivalries between painting and poetry and painting and sculpture were particularly intense although in the course of the Renaissance the kinship between painting and poetry became commonplace so much that they were considered sister arts by some.

Having worked in sculpture and painting, the great Leonardo da Vinci claimed the right to judge the value of each. While painting could imitate sculpture, sculpture could not imitate painting. Furthermore, "painting is the more beautiful and the more imaginative and the more copious, while sculpture is the more durable but it has nothing else." For Leonardo, the limitation to poetic expression lies in its use of verbal language alone: "Painting comprehends in itself all the forms of nature, while you have nothing but words, which are not universal as form is, and if you have the effects of the representation, we have the representation of the effects." that is, one word after another; painting, vice versa, renders the whole of a scene immediately evident through a single image. The artists and scholars who celebrated painting's superiority over sculpture cited its ability to imitate and surpass nature, but perhaps most importantly, its ability to deceive nature itself. Furthermore, it offered a kind of permanence that contrasts with the fleeting nature of music.

By Vermeer's time, the debate still enflamed and had been extended to science as well. It was argued that doctors and astronomers can know the visible world through the use of their university of acquired skills, but artists can not only comprehend the natural world, they can replicate it. The painter's art embraces and recreates the entire visible world, or as in the words of painter and art theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten, "the Art of Painting is a science for representing all the ideas or notions that visible nature in its entirety can produce, and for deceiving the eye with outline and color."

Deception as we know, was at the heart of Vermeer's concept of illusionist painting and perhaps nowhere more manifest than in his monumental Art of Painting.

Although Dutch art abounds in self portraits of artists in their studio, it is difficult to ascertain how true-to-life they were. Two conventions in studio self portraits dominated the 17th-century art market, both were a subtle blending of fact and fiction.

On one hand, history painters, steeped in the memories of classical models, strove to convey an idealistic view of their profession assuming the traditional guise of the learned gentleman artist fostered by Renaissance. Artists depicted themselves surrounded not only with the tools of their trade but often crowded with seemingly irrelevant props and even mythological figures brought in and arranged for the occasion to communicate specific concepts about their art through the use of symbolism and allegory. A perfect example of this mode of self portraiture is Vermeer's own Art of Painting.

The Artist in His Studio
Rembrandt van Rijn
c.1629
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

However, in the 17th-century Netherlands, a startling new development in self-portraiture began to rival the classical model and became one of the most salable genres of all. Painters presented themselves in a more unseemly light than those of the glorious past.

Dropping the noble robes of the pictor doctus, they smoked, drank, wore rags in dilapidated studios and chased women. The Dutch artistic literature of the 17th century was rife with interesting, often comical anecdotes about artists' personal lives and working methods which kindled the public's imagination and appetite for images. Dutch artists explored a new mode of self-expression in dissolute self-portraits, as Ingrid A. Cartwright called the, embracing the many behaviors that art theorists and the culture at large disparaged.

Cartwright wrote that dissolute self-portraits also reflect and respond to a larger trend regarding artistic identity in the 17th century, notably, the stereotype "hoe schilder hoe wilder" (if painter, then crazy ). Artists embraced this special identity, which in turn granted them certain freedoms from social norms and a license to misbehave.

Such self-portraits were extremely salable since they not only portrayed the artist but were considered a specimen of the artist's exceptional talent and a manifestation of his original character as well.

Two Trumpet Duets, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber

performed by Clarino Consort
http://clarinoconsort.com/mp3.htm

Natural trumpet made by Paul Hainlein,
Nürnberg 1666
National Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota
http://www.usd.edu/smm/Brass/Trumpets/NaturalTrumpets/
Hainlein/3873/HainleinTrumpet3873.html

The trumpet as one of the oldest instruments, is already mentioned in the Bible (the "trumpets of Jericho" or the "trumpets of the Last Judgement"). Its ancient precursors were widespread in Africa and Europe, mainly made from ivory, animal horns or shells (triton) or from shavings of tree bark. Long straight metal trumpets were used in the ancient Egyptian culture both for signaling but moreover as cult- and symbolic instruments demonstrating the royal power of the Pharaos. Two of these instruments, made of silver and bronze, were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun (1333-1323 B.C). Similar functions of the instrument like in the Egyptian culture are traced in the ancient Greek and Etrusco-Roman empire (called there "Salpinx", "Tuba", "Lituus" or "Buccina") as well as in the Byzantine era.

After the fall of the Roman empire the trumpet disappeared from Europe and was not reintroduced until the Middle Ages, when during the Cursades the instruments were taken from the Saracens as war booty and soon became widespread in Europe. The trumpet's most important functions were both the military signaling in the battles as well as the marking of power and status, as only a king was allowed to have trumpeters at his court.

In the 16th and 17th centuries the Royal Trumpeters and Ketteldrummers held a privileged position at the Habsburg court in Vienna and were the first to get the rights of founding a guild, unique in the Holy Roman Empire in that time. The guild regulated the number of trumpeters and ensured the trumpet's exclusiveness by restricting where it could be played and by whom.

Further courts, like that of the Emperor of Saxony in Dresden or that of the Bishop of Olomouc in Kremsier (today Kromeríz, Czech Republic) as well as the courts in Bologna and London were well-known for their orchestras, especially for the splendid sound of their trumpet choirs. Some of the most renowned trumpet players (P. Vejvanovský, G. Fantini) and composers (J.H. Schmelzer, H.I.F. Biber, J.J. Fux) wrote intricate compositions for the trumpet or complete brass choir.

In the medieval towns and cities of Europe the loud, signaling sounds of the trumpets were used for the warning of fire or other dangers, like the approach of enemies. The so-called "waits," a group of trumpeters and shawm-players, observed the area from the church towers or other central towers to communicate any danger to the bell ringers, watchmen and the citizens in general. Later their task became a more ceremonious and decorative adjunct of civic life, providing musical entertainment at official city proceedings. J.S. Bach sincerely appreciated the important tradition of the "Turmblasen" by the municipal "Stadtpfeifer" in Leipzig. Until today a military music corps, consisting mainly of brass instruments, above all trumpets, plays on all official state ceremonies.

The form of the natural trumpet which had been developed in the late Middle Ages was a twice folded or closed S-shape, consisting of three yards, with a bell-shaped flare of exact mathematical proportions. The mouthpiece, as the supporting sound generator, is inserted into the first yard. The joint of the first two sections is concealed under a tightly fitted cover which in the Baroque period had a ball-shaped decoration surrounding it. This ball, called the "boss," is not a merely decorative element but strengthens the joint that attaches the bell to the rest of the instrument and serves as a grip to hold the instrument. The mouthpiece has to support and contain the vibrating membrane, i.e. the player's lips, and to produce a complementary edge-tone.

The natural trumpet is able to produce only the notes of the harmonic series. The sound of the trumpet is generally produced by blowing air through closed lips as to produce a "buzzing" effect through vibration with the support of the mouthpiece. The player can select the pitch from a range of harmonic series or overtones through altering the amount of muscular contraction in the lip formation, supported by a certain tongue manipulation.

Boy Blowing Bubbles (detail)
Frans van Mieris
1663
26 x 19 cm
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Although the picture of the artist's studio is a far cry from the realistic working conditions of a Dutch painter, Vermeer nonetheless shares with the modern viewer one of his "trade secrets." Near the top of the canvas the painter has begun depicting the model's laurel wreath in fluid brushstrokes. Curiously, the leaves are colored a decidedly blue instead of the deep green one would expect. This was not a mistake.

It should be remembered that 17th-century painters had a handful of pigments, a fraction of those available to any artist today. One of the serious lacunas of his palette was a deep, stable green indispensable for rendering foliage. Dutch painters remedied this by employing a technique called glazing. First, the area intended to be green was modeled in pale shades of blue. Once thoroughly dry, the same area was painted over with a syrupy mixture of a transparent yellow paint and drying oil, usually linseed or poppy oil. This transparent yellow glaze, as it was called, produces an exceptionally natural, deep green without concealing the dark and light modeling beneath.

This particular glaze was utilized extensively by Dutch still life painters. Altering the intensities and proportions of the blue underpainting and the yellow glaze, still-life painters could obtain a wide range of natural greens which were not available as single pigments.

Unfortunately, this method sometimes had disastrous consequences. The yellow glaze, if not properly executed or exposed to negative environmental conditions, may fade in time. The foliage in Vermeer's own Little Street has suffered from such a malady. A spectacular example of this defect can be seen in Frans van Mieris' Boy Blowing Bubbles (see above).

Much has been written about Vermeer's professional and social aspirations. His family background would be described today as lower middle-class. His grandparents were illiterate and so was his mother. But Vermeer was ambitious.

The Delft artist demonstrated throughout his career the willingness to disengage himself from his original social standing and define himself as an artist/gentleman rather than a painter/artisan. Many Dutch artists were more than content to churn out less-than-original paintings and as long as they received adequate pay they were happy to consider themselves artisans.

Vermeer married the daughter of a well-to-do Delft patrician which entailed a significant move from the lower, artisan class of his Reformed parents to the higher social stratum. His mother-in-law seems to have had a discreet art collection and connections with a few noted Dutch painters. Archival evidence shows that in 1654, the artist is mentioned for the first time as "Meester-schilder" (Master painter) indicating he had by this time improved his professional and social status. By 1655, the "Sr " (signior or seigneur) preceding Vermeer's name in an archival document is a sure sign of the artist's improved social status. Vermeer's father was never distinguished in such a way in any of the numerous documents which regard him. Furthermore, Vermeer was elected various times to headof the St Luke Guild of Delft. In 1663, the dignified French diplomat Baron Balthasar de Monconys visited his studio most likely acting on advice from Constantijn Huygens, an influential politician and one of the foremost connoisseurs of Dutch art.

However, the most graphic indication of how Vermeer defined his position as an artist is manifested in his show-case piece, The Art of Painting. In this painting, Vermeer identifies himself with an elitist spiritual and intellectual role of the artist rather than the workaday life of the artisan. Few of the real painter's tools are shown visible while many of the props in the composition denote "inspirational" value and awareness of the issues connected with the art of painting.

Historically, one's occupation was evaluated on the basis of its proximity to, or distance from, physical labor since manual work had been associated with slavery in antiquity. Though early Renaissance artists were certainly not considered slaves, their mechanical labor placed their social ranking firmly on the lower side of the cultural divide.

In an effort to prove painting's superiority to sculpture, the great Leonardo da Vinci argued that painting involved less physical effort than sculpture. Sculpture "causes much perspiration which mingles with the grit and turns to mud." The sculptor's face is "pasted and smeared all over with marble powder, his dwelling is dirty and filled with dust and chips of stone." The painter on the other hand "sits before his work at the greatest of ease, well dressed and applying delicate colors with his light brush". His home is "clean and adorned with delightful pictures" and he enjoys "the accompaniment of music or the company of the authors of various fine works." Vermeer's Art of Painting could not have been too far from what Leonardo had in mind.

From about 1400, artists attempted to elevate their status in society. Renaissance painters attempted to qualify not only as themselves, but the entire profession as members of the Liberal, rather than Mechanical Arts. They seized on self-portraiture to help them prove their point. This was done by stressing the intellectual components in art and its production, emphasizing the artist's genius inherent and recasting the artist as a member of the social and artistic nobility as well as a part of the "reflected glory" of famous artists in history.

"Monuments Man" Lt. Daniel Kern and mine
worker Max Eder inspect The Art of
Painting, found inside the mine at Altaussee.

Adolf Hitler wanted Vermeer's Art of Painting for one of his most ambitious projects, the giant art museum he planned to create in Linz, his Austrian birthplace. In 1940 he purchased it for 1.65 million Reichsmarks from Jaromir Czernin, the brother-in-law of Austria's prime minister from 1934 until Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938. The painting had been in Czernin's family since the 19th century.

As Hitler saw Vermeer as the embodiment the great artist he desired The Art of Painting to be one of the main attractions in the new Führer Museum in Linz, which he intended to fill with the art he had looted from all over Europe. At the end of the war, American troops found it stashed in a vault with a handful of other masterpieces in an Austrian salt mine along with thousands of other plundered works, including Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna and Vermeer's own Astronomer. In the final months of the war, after Hitler issued his famous Nero Decree calling for the destruction of all German infrastructure, orders were issued by the local Nazi gauleiter to destroy the artworks by blowing up the mines. His plan was foiled because lower-echelon Nazis saw no reason to ruin a perfectly good salt mine and had decided to destroy the entrance to the cave.

The Czernins began petitioning the Austrian government for the restitution of the painting in the 1960s, without success. The government argued that the sale was voluntary and the price adequate. The family has now come back with a study of the sale that they claim shows that it was made under duress.

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