The Art of painting

A period chandelier in the Delft Stadhuis (Town Hall)

Nowhere in Vermeer's oeuvre has iconographic interpretation proved so complicated as in the Art of Painting. Experts generally believe that the glittering golden chandelier surmounted by a double-headed eagle, imperial symbol of the Habsburgs, refers to an earlier era when that dynasty ruled the Netherlands. The fact would bring it into relation with the vertical crease in the map (made before the wars and Treaty of 1648) which accentuates the divisions between the Spanish south and the United Provinces of the independent North.

One critic has suggested that the eagle may have been an allegorical symbol of sight, one the five senses meant to strengthen the focus of the painter's activity. It has also been seen as an image of the phoenix, a symbol of a resurrected and reunited Netherlands.

Whatever its iconographical meaning, it is hard to image that Vermeer - perhaps the most "optical" artist of the Netherlands - was not attracted by the formidable technical challenge it posed to his craft. The highlights are painted with astonishingly thick opaque blobs of light toned paint which seems to dance above the surface of the painting imitating the shimmer of sunlight.

Prof. J Fock, Dutch historian has noted that chandeliers permitted artists to demonstrate their expertise at rendering shimmering and refractive brass under changing light conditions. However, multibranch chandeliers were rarely found even in the houses of the wealthiest burghers (which had one at most), and in the very few inventories where chandeliers are listed they are called kerkkroon (church chandeliers), because examples of this type were more often hung in churches or civic buildings than in houses. However, it is not impossible that it was a possession of Vermeer's well-to-do Catholic mother-in-law, Maria Thins.

The fellow painter Gerard ter Borch utilized the same chandelier as a prop for his interiors over and over again in his compositions even though he never dedicated such attention to it as Vermeer.

Woman at the Clavichord
c. 1665
37.7 x 29.8 cm
The Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

From a visual point of view, the drawn-back tapestry functions as a repoussoir. Repoussoir is a means of achieving perspective or spatial contrasts by the use of illusionistic devices such as the placement of a large figure or object in the immediate foreground. By covering only small portions of the map, the trumpet and still life, Vermeer entices the observer to pull it back all the way thereby involving him not only visually, but physically in the painting's illusion.

Vermeer may have had in mind the famous contest of Greek antiquity held between two renowned painters Parrhasius and Zeuxis to see who was the finest. This story was cited by Plinius the Elder from a Greek source in his Naturalis historia, 77 A.C. Zeuxis had produced a still life so convincing that birds flew down from the sky to peck at the painted grapes. Zeuxis then asked Parrhasius to pull aside the curtain from his painting. When it was discovered that the curtain was a painted one and not a real one, Zeuxis was forced to concede defeat, for while his work had managed to fool the eyes of birds, Parrhasius had deceived the eyes of a human beingt.

A popular story goes that Rembrandt's students had once painted coins on the floor of his studio for the pleasure of watching him bend down and try to to pick them up. The pervasive illusionism in Vermeer's Art of Painting is based on a firm understanding of perspective, awareness of optical laws and longstanding cultural significance.

Dutch painters working around the same themes as Vermeer had pioneered and perfected the curtain devise years before him. Gerrit Dou, the renowned fijnschilder included such curtains in a few of his more ambitious compositions (see left).

Willem Weve, a Delft architectural historian, notes that although domestic construction was not standardized in the city in the mid-17th century, the type of ceiling shown in this painting is one among several arrangements used in houses, and surviving examples can indeed be found. The timber members are small beams, probably of pine, supported by a wall plate over the windows, as seen at top left in The Music Lesson. It is likely that the beams were supported at their other ends on a wall which would be on the right of Vermeer's pictures, but is always out of sight. The ceiling beams in Vermeer's Music Lesson, Allegory of Painting and Allegory of the Faith all be seen to slope downwards from left to right. The fact that they slant in all three cases suggests the possibility that this is a physical property of the room and not an inaccuracy in Vermeer' drawing.

Various painters represented this same map in their compositions. However, the two lateral strips of town views we see in the Art of Painting are not present in their works. The city views and title scripts were each printed separately and then glued together as were the 9 separate sections which compose the body of the map. The city views may be linked to the notion that a successful painter bestows fame and glory on the cites were they were born, a concept greatly appreciated in Vermeer's time.

Vermeer's hometown, Delft, is not represented. It is curious that Vermeer, who was at the height of his powers, was mentioned only briefly in Beschryvinge der Stadt Delft (Description of the City of Delft) published in 1667 by Dirck van Bleyswick while other painters, now considered far less important, receive great praise. Ironically, Van Bleyswick also lamented that at times the fame due to great artists comes only after their death. Located precisely to the left of the standing Clio is a view of the Hof in The Hague (see image above), seat of the government of the 17 Provinces.

Various painters represented this same map in their compositions. However, the two lateral strips of town views we see in the Art of Painting are not present in their works. The city views and title scripts were each printed separately and then glued together as were the 9 separate sections which compose the body of the map. The city views may be linked to the notion that a successful painter bestows fame and glory on the cites were they were born, a concept greatly appreciated in Vermeer's time.

Vermeer's hometown, Delft, is not represented. It is curious that Vermeer, who was at the height of his powers, was mentioned only briefly in Beschryvinge der Stadt Delft (Description of the City of Delft) published in 1667 by Dirck van Bleyswick while other painters, now considered far less important, receive great praise. Ironically, Van Bleyswick also lamented that at times the fame due to great artists comes only after their death. Located precisely to the left of the standing Clio is a view of the Hof in The Hague (see image above), seat of the government of the 17 Provinces.

The female figure on the top of the cartouche symbolizes the "unity and separation" of the Seventeen Northern and Southern Provinces. She is holding the coat of arms of the North and South in her left and right hands respectively.

A number of empty chairs populate Vermeer's interiors. Some critics have supposed that their emptiness alludes to someone missing from the scene. In this picture, it seems to have a function as a repoussoir device to augment the illusion of depth.

The two red velvet, fringed chairs in this painting seem identical to the one in the foreground of Vermeer's Woman with a Pearl Necklace. Walter Liedtke has supposed that the foreground chair in the Art of Painting may have been provided for a hypothetical connoisseur visiting the artist's studio.

When this map was made, the official separation and resulting peace of the Northern (today's Netherlands) from the Southern Provinces (today's Belgium) which it represents was about to be officialized. The map may be seen as an extensive panorama of military history of the war of liberation of the 17 Provinces from Spanish rule. The inscription inside the decorative cartouche addressed the map's military theme: "The tremendous wars waged in these countries in bygone days, and still waged in these days, bear sufficient witness to the whole wide world of the great strength, power and wealth of these very countries." Naturally, this inscription cannot be read on Vermeer's representation.

Only one complete original copy of this map has survived. It was discovered in the double bottom of a chest that had been locked for years, in "Skokloster," the house built by the Swedish admiral Wrangler, near Uppsala in Sweden. Vermeer's map includes a title band on the top, a series of town views along the sides which frame the central part of the map. The central part was printed with nine separately engraved sheets. Seventeenth-century catalogues advertised maps which could be purchased "with or without their ornamentation."

A single map could be composed in several ways making it a made-to-order-work-of art. Other painters including Jacob Ochtervelt and Nicolas Maes appear to have used the same map six times in their paintings. Only in Vermeer's painting do we find it attached with the vertical series of town views. Very few wall maps of this kind have survived even though catalogues, inventories, interior paintings and other documents tell us that they must have been printed in great numbers. All the maps in Vermeer's painting were printed in Amsterdam which was then one of the principle centers of map-making in the world.

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

Vermeer's easel was identical to those depicted in numerous Dutch paintings, such as the one pictured in early self-portrait by Rembrandt (see left). The crossbar on which the painting is poised could be lowered and raised by a very simple system of pegs and holes. Some critics have noted that the left-hand leg of the easel seems to have not been painted as it approaches the tiled floor. However, if one carefully projects the upper contours it can be seen that it fits snugly behind the two left legs of the stool on which the painter is seated.

Although Vermeer specialists do not believe that this painting was conceived as a self-portrait in the strict sense of the term, there is no reason why the artist would have not wished to leave at least some testimony of himself, perhaps, in the soft long hair which gracefully flows out from under the black beret. It has been remarked more than once that the black beret is barely modeled.

Specialists generally agree that this demure young woman represents Clio, the muse of history, as described in Cesare Ripa's 16th-century book of emblems and personifications, Iconologia. Translated into Dutch in 1644, Ripa's volume was widely consulted by history painters. Vermeer also used it for least one other allegorical painting, the late Allegory of Faith.

Clio's crown of laurel denotes glory and eternal life. The trumpet signifies fame. The thirst for fame was considered a fundamental stimulus to artistic production. By placing Clio at the center of his allegory, Vermeer emphasizes the importance of history to the visual arts. Theorists argued that the highest form of artistic expression was history painting which comprised biblical, mythological, historical and allegorical subjects. Curiously, Vermeer himself practiced true history paintings only at the outset of his career. By placing this allegory in a contemporary context, perhaps he wished to prove that the lofty values of history painting could also be achieved when representing modern themes and settings. In any case, this painting proves that Vermeer, far beyond being a typical Dutch artisan/painter, was aware of the major artistic debates which circulated among the culturaly elite.

Title page of the Eglish
edtion of Iconologia by Cesare Ripa

The young woman, who represents the muse of history Clio, holds in one hand a trumpet and in the other a large book, perhaps a volume by Thucydides or Herodotus. Vermeer's portrays the back side of the volumes where one would not expect to see an inscription avoiding the temptation of becoming overtly didactical precluding our purely visual enjoyment of the work.

The trumpet stands for fame. In Samuel van Hoogstraten's Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst (Introduction to the Art of Painting, 1678) an image of Clio that is depicted, almost exactly as described in Cesare Ripa's Iconologia, a famous early iconographic dictionary which was widely used by painters of historical and allegorical subject matter.

Dutch costume expert Marieke de Winkel challenges the long-held idea that the artist's peculiar dress was outdated and was meant to reflect gone bye times. Although this kind of slashed doublet was not universally worn, it was an item of contemporary dress. This fashion had occurred in earlier times and had become popular again in the 1620s and 1630s but had reached its extreme form in the 1660s, when Vermeer painted the Art of Painting.

Other painters, such as Eglon van der Neer, Caspar Netscher and Gabriel Metsu, depicted very similar garments. By Vermeer's times they were referred to as "innocents," a term which also means "retarded" or "simpleton" most likely because they had become so short and revealed so much of the undergarment that they appeared somewhat foolish. Thus, it seems likely that does not place the artist outside his time, but as Eric Jan Sluiter noted, "beyond the ordinary, which is fitting for a figure representative of this honorable art."

Most experts believe that Vermeer created this painting with the aid of a camera obscura, a precursor of the modern photographic camera. This device, a marvel of its day, was well known to painters and men of science. One of most conspicuous indications of the use of the camera obscura can be seen in the unfocused rendering of the drapery which hangs over the edge of the table. The true focus of the painting was further to the background. This optical phenomenon, known as depth of field is not evident in normal vision since the eye is constantly refocusing as it moves from one object to the next at various distances. Moreover, experimentation with period camera obscuras shows very similar effects when soft materials are not in focus.

The inclusion of this large bound volume may support the idea of art theorists that painting was a liberal art and that the painter was no craftsman but an educated intellectual on the level of poets and philosophers. Leonardo da Vinci's introduction to his Treatise on Painting reads: "Painting has every right to complain of being driven out from the number of Liberal Arts, since she is a true daughter of nature and employs the noblest of all the senses. It was wrong, oh writers, to leave her out from the number of Liberal Arts, because she deals not only with the works of nature but extends over an infinite number of things which nature never created."

In the Studio (detail)
Micheal Sweerts
1652
73.5 x 58.8 cm
Detroit Insititue Museum of Arts, Detroit

Some experts believe that this inverted mask symbolizes the art of painting. Drawing from plaster casts of antiquity, considered "more perfect than nature," was a fundamental requirement of an artist's training. The Accademia di San Luca in Rome (founded in 1593) devised a curriculum to combat the decline of art (Caravaggio and his followers who practiced painting directly from nature) which was based on drawing from classical sculpture, perspective, anatomy, and foreshortening. The evident foreshortening in Vermeer's rendering may allude to such classical training.

It is also possible that the mask alludes to the so called paragone, or the comparison of the arts (see special topics below).

The detail to the left of Michael Sweert's An Artist in his Studio (1652) shows a young painter in front of two plasters casts of classical sculptures of faces similar to the ones in Vermeer's Art of Painting.

Self Portrait
Michiel van Musscher
c. 1665-1667
47,6 x 36,8 cm
Vienne, Liechtenstein Museum

Most experts believe that Vermeer did not reveal significant information about his own working methods in this painting. Both the artist's palette and chest with drawers which would have contained the rest of the necessary materials are both conspicuously absent (see image left).

Vermeer's seated painter applies paint in full color directly to the top of the canvas where the laurel leaves are represented. Instead, we know that after the initial drawing Vermeer blocked in the basic forms and lighting of his composition with brownish pigment. Successively, color was added. This monochrome stage is known as underpainting and was widely employed by Northern painters of the time, especially among artists whose compositions were more elaborate and drawing precise.

Perhaps the only element of Vermeer's technique which is accurately portrayed is the so-called maulstick, or painter's stick. The maulstick was standard studio equipment and served to steady the artist's hand for detailed work while distancing it from the wet paint on the underlying canvas. In Vermeer's death inventory, one maulstick was noted.

To identify the source for the map in The Art of Painting, we need not look beyond the painting itself. A lengthy Latin inscription found at the top of the map (partially obscured by the chandelier) may be read as follows: NOVA XVII PROV[IN]CIARUM [GERMANIAE INF]ERI- [O]RIS DESCRIPTIOI ET ACCURATA EARUNDEM ...DE NO[VO] EM[EN]D[ATA]...REC[TISS]- IME EDIT[AP]ERNICOLAUM PISCATOREM. Thus, this map (designed with north to the right), which shows the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands (Germania Inferior), can be attributed to Nicolaus Visscher (Nicolaus Piscator).

To identify the source for the map in The Art of Painting, we need not look beyond the painting itself. A lengthy Latin inscription found at the top of the map (partially obscured by the chandelier) may be read as follows: NOVA XVII PROV[IN]CIARUM [GERMANIAE INF]ERI- [O]RIS DESCRIPTIOI ET ACCURATA EARUNDEM ...DE NO[VO] EM[EN]D[ATA]...REC[TISS]- IME EDIT[AP]ERNICOLAUM PISCATOREM. Thus, this map (designed with north to the right), which shows the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands (Germania Inferior), can be attributed to Nicolaus Visscher (Nicolaus Piscator).

The large, thin folio which hangs over the edge of the table has been interpreted as both an architectural drawing folio or music manuscript even though its present state of conservation does not permit it to be identified with certainty. In such a carefully composed and carefully articulated allegory such as the present work, it is doubtful that Vermeer would have left its meaning unclear. Some critics have also understood it as being a large folio containing preparatory drawings which the artist would have consulted while working. Painters often made many drawings from nature which were used during the actual painting process. Few painters actually painted directly from life.

In conjunction with this manuscript Vermeer specialists have noted that in the inventory of Vermeer's house taken after the artist's death, were listed "five books in folio size; another 25 books of all kinds." Unfortunately, none of the books were identified. The draping page, which barely touches the artist, plays an important role linking the figure of the painter and his model who would have been physically divided and hence thematically isolated.

The knife-like form of this acute triangle of brilliant white wall does much to invigorate the entire composition. It's effect is even more pronounced when the painting is observed directly. The irregularities produced by the notable paint build-up and the vigorous brushstrokes add sparkle to the pure white paint (white lead). Prepared artificially since the earliest historical times and used until the nineteenth century, this warm white is very opaque, has outstanding brushing qualities and mixes well with every color on the artist's palette. As the name lead white suggests, it is a by-product of lead, and whatever the form of manufacture used, the purity of the color depends on the purity of the lead. White lead produced in the Netherlands was particularly prized. In the "Dutch" or "stack" process strips of lead rolled up into spirals were placed in closed earthenware jars containing acetic acid, and then pots were then buried under tanner's bark or dung; the heat evolved by fermentation aids in the formation of white lead through an increase of carbonic acid. Very soon a thin coat of white coating forms. The white lead is then washed of and cleaned. White lead is extremely poisonous and must be handled with care.

Because these splendid marble floors can been seen in most genre pictures from the middle and the third quarter of the seventeenth-century, we have been led to believe that they were present in nearly all well-to-do interiors. However, it seems doubtful that Vermeer could have directly observed and painted this type of marble tile in his own studio. Willemijn Fock, a historian of the decorative arts, has demonstrated that floors paved with marble tiles were extremely rare in the Dutch seventeenth-century houses and that only in the houses of "the very wealthy where floors of this type were sometimes found, they were usually confined to smaller spaces such as voorhuis, corridors and upper story sleeping or storage rooms." Fock reasons that the abundant representations of these floors in Dutch genre painting may be explained by the fact that artists were attracted by the challenge involved in representing the difficult perspective of receding multicolored marble tiling.