The Geographer

The 17th century was a time of dramatic discovery, a time when the charting of unexplored worlds was a dream shared by adventurers and traders but by geographers and astronomers as well.

As James Welu has noted, Hendrick Hondius' terrestrial globe, which rests on the cabinet in its four-legged stand, is turned to reveal the Indian Ocean, perhaps, as a note of national pride. This route was taken by the Dutch traders to reach China and Japan.

The text within the decorative cartouche on the lower right-hand side of the globe (illegible in Vermeer's paintings) reads in part: "Since very frequent expeditions are started every day to all parts of the world, by which their positions are clearly seen and reported, I trust that it will not appear strange to anyone if this description of the globe differs very much from others previously published by us...we ask the benevolent leader, that if he should have a more complete knowledge of some place, he willingly, communicate the same to us for the sake of increasing the public good." The same terrestrial globe appears in Vermeer's later Allegory of Faith but with a very different allegorical meaning.

Mapmaking in the Netherlands during the 1500s and 1600s is noted for its works of lavish decoration, particularly the cartes à figures, whose ornamental panels depicted figures, landscapes and possessions. Most of the period's maps and atlases were the work of family businesses.

To the left is a detail of an existing copy of the map showing the area which appears in Vermeer's painting (see the whole map click on Relative Image no. 7). In this sea chart one can clearly make out the Iberian and Italian peninsulas as well as part of Northern Africa with the South to the left and North to the right. Map orientation was not yet standardized in those times. Typically, sea charts showed little details of the adjacent land but focused on navigational landmarks and hazards, anchorages and soundings, together with depictions of ships in full sail and mythical sea monsters as decoration.

Vermeer surrounded his scholar with objects appropriate for his study. The black-framed decorative nautical chart of "all the Sea coasts of Europe" was made by Willem Jansz Blaeu in 1600 who had one of the largest publishing firms in Amsterdam. The actual globe, showing the Indian Ocean and the sea chart of Europe, are inscribed Orientalis Oceanus and Oceanus Occidentalis, both ways on which the ships of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) sailed for their extensive trade with overseas.

Because of its decorative cartouches, it may have been intended for framing as well as technical use. One such map can be found in the Deutsche Staatsbibliotek in Berlin.

The sea chart may imply the need to chart one's course through the world, and thus symbolically through life. Maps and charts of all kinds were very popular in the Dutch mercantile republic which owed much of its prosperity to navigation. Contemporary genre interior paintings are filled with similar representations of maps and Vermeer himself included them a number of times in his works.

Oriental carpets were very popular in the Netherlands and were represented countless times in Dutch genre interior painting. Curiously, they were rarely depicted lying on the floor since they were prized above all for their exotic decorative effect which might most advantageously displayed as a table covering. As floor covering, even the wealthiest Dutch citizens preferred the mundane but practical planked wooden floors covered by rustic mats to protect their feet from the long and gelid Northern winters. Another piece of popular furnishing was the wooden platform elevated a few inches off the ground. Many Dutch interior painting of the time represent the such platforms on which a housewife is comfortably seated on a chair near a window as she is engages in domestic handiwork

In this painting, the rendering of the carpet appears in the initial stage of the painting process. The deeply shadowed areas are delineated with free-flowing but vigorous brushstrokes in shades of brownish underpaint. The illuminated areas receive more color and the famous pointillés (spherical points of light toned paint) abound. These pointillés are usually regarded as evidence that Vermeer employed a camera obscura (a kind of primitive photographic camera) as an aid to his painting.

This carpet seems to be the same one Vermeer depicted in the Astronomer, which is very likely its pendant.

Faust
Rembrandt van Rijn
etching, 1650-1662

When viewing the original painting, a vague pentimento of the geographer's forehead can be made out to the left which suggests that the artist originally portrayed the his head at a different angle, looking down at the chart lying on the table.

Vermeer's geographer assumes precisely the position (in reverse) of Faust in Rembrandt's famous etching (see image left) which could have easily been his source of inspiration. Although the moment in which the scholar peers out the window in contemplation is magically captured, neither the questions he asks nor the answers he seeks are revealed.

Woman at a Clavichord (detail)
Gerrit Dou
c. 1665
37.7 x 29.8 cm
Dulwich Picture Gallery, Dulwich

Nowhere but in this painting can the distance between Vermeer's concept of art and that of his direct competitors, the fijnschilders, be so well observed. The principal masses of tone are rendered with the force and simplicity few of his colleagues were willing or able to achieve.

The now neglected but once immensely popular Leiden-based school lavished technical attention to their work reaching unprecedented illusionist effects. The level of microscopic detail of their paintings is astounding even today. Gerrit Dou, who perhaps carried the fijnschilder approach to its inevitable conclusion, painted each knot, one by one, of his repoussoir curtains (see image left). More amazing is the overall dimension of the work, just 37.7 x 29.8 cm. Thus, the detail to the left comprises a fraction of Dou's composition. Vermeer's curtain is boldly indicated only by its simple contour.

A repoussoir, whether it is a person or an object, is placed usually in the margins of the foreground and is often shadowed so as not to draw too much attention to itself. Sitting at the margin, it implies the viewer's position outside the space of the painting. In the other direction, the scene of the painting, usually in brighter light, is "pushed back." The repoussoir is therefore a formal device for creating an impression of space.

Repoussoir motifs were generally positioned on the left-hand side of the composition. It seems that Westerners are conditioned in our mode of observation by the direction in which we read. Scientific evidence indicates that our eyes tend to rapidly scan images starting from the left to the right as when reading. By consequence, Vermeer's repoussoir is suited to be looked at by the reading eye, which, after a brief moment's delay at the repoussoir, is directed immediately toward the key moment of the representation, in this case the momentary gesture of the geographer, exploring the rest of the painting afterwards. Vermeer used the same repoussoir curtain even more dramatically in the Art of Painting and in the Allegory of Faith.

Art historian and map expert James Welu believes that, given the translucence the large rolled chart on the table with a few faint lines, it may be a nautical chart. Unfortunately, the details and pictorial nuance in this area has most likely suffered from repeated restorations although some experts believe the painting was not fully completed.

The presence of a slightly lighter area of paint with curved outlines reveal that Vermeer had eliminated a sheet of paper which once laid on this stool most likely in order to darken the corner of the composition and guide the viewer's eye towards the center of the composition. On the stool lies a square for measuring can be made out by the attentive viewer.

Vermeer altered the opening arc of the dividers that served the geographer to make measurements on his maps. They originally pointed downwards rather than across the his body. The final alignment follows the direction of the rolled yellow scroll and the incoming light more naturally.

The basic structure of the window seems to be the same as the one in the Astronomer, considered by many critics to be a pendant of the Geographer. However, minor shifts in color in each of the window's panes are described more accurately in the Geographer while in the Astronomer a portion of what is most likely red and yellow colored coat of arms can be partially observed. Parts of the window casement appear rather sketchy.

Oddly, there are two signatures on the Geographer. Scholars once believed that the noticeable signature on the background wall (with the date in Roman numerals) was not original even though the date, MDCLXVIIII (1669) was compatible with the date most Vermeer experts have ascribed to the painting. On the contrary, recent restoration of the painting have demonstrated that both signatures are original.

Anthony van Leeuwenhoek
Jan Verkolje
1653
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

This type of imported Japanese robe was much in vogue in mid-17th century Netherlands. A similar garment is worn in the portrait of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (see image left), the internationally known Delft scientist who has been associated with Vermeer through their mutual interest in optics.

In those days such keizersrokken, or Imperial kimonos, were precious gifts given in batches of thirty or more to Dutch merchants who passed the test of their annual visit to the Imperial court in Edo (Tokyo). This visit was their only permitted sojourn on the Japanese mainland; at all other times they were confined to Deshima, the island for the duration of their stay in Japan. Thus these robes, also called Japons, were neither merchandise in Japan nor clearly for sale back home in Holland. There honorary significance made them suited for indoor wear by scholars, amateurs, scientists, gentlemen and even mayors. Only by the mid 18th century were they mass produced in Europe from imported Indian and Chinese silk. In Vermeer's day, then, for his geographer to wear a Japon is to wear a rare and as yet not commodified garment.

The contrast between the Japon's cool blue and the warm orange and the angular folds of the garment stimulate the eye and imply the passion of the young geographer's intellectual inquiry. Vermeer's stylization of drapery was to become even more exaggerated in his later pictures.

More than one critic has suggested that this picture is not finished. The wooden window frame, the carpet and the floor all are defined in their essential features but lack color and nuance characteristic of Vermeer's works of the period. The cupboard, presumable made of light-colored wood, appears particularly vague and the play of light and shadow on the decorative inlay particularly tentative.

One would imagine that the cupboard served to contain the various instruments and charts of the geographer.

Curiously, the Geographer bears two distinct signatures, the present one of the cupboard and one with a date MDCLXVIIII (1669) on the background wall. Although scholars once thought that neither was original it seems now likely that they both are authentic.

This chair may be the same one that can be seen behind the table in Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Necklace and the Concert. The decorative flower motifs on the upholstery match closely.

Such chairs appears to have been of local Delft manufacture. It is hardly possible to find this kind of upholstery in the paintings of masters who came from elsewhere. In the Municipal Museum at Delft six of the 41 chairs are preserved, which in 1661 were delivered by Maximiliaan van der Gucht, the famous Delft tapestry weaver, to the town for the use of the members of the Town Council, "The Forty."

Cross-staff, Northern Germany(?)
signed: L. Dankbaar, dated 1790
Ebony, brass 75,5 x 1,7 x 1,7 cm
3 sliders (51 cm, 34 cm, 17 cm)
with binding screws
Altonaer Museum Hamburg
- Norddeutsches Landesmuseum, Hamburg

According to some Vermeer scholars, this detail of one section of the window grate is in reality a part of a Jacob's or cross-staff even though it may be difficult to recognize. Specialists have noted that on close observation the contours with a microscope one of the cross-staff's perpendicular vanes or sliders, placed in front of the stony window lintel, are clearly visible.

The cross-staff was developed in the early 14th century although similar devices for measurement were traced to the Chaldeans (c. 400 BC). The instrument was mainly used for measuring the angle of the elevation of the sun and stars as well as measuring the heights of buildings or topographical features such as mountains and hills, which made it a usual device both for astronomers and geographers.

Baruch Spinoza

Owing to its relatively tolerant political and religious attitude, the Netherlands had become a magnet for some of the great thinkers of the century such as John Locke and Baruch Spinoza. Theirs was an age of observation and scientific discovery in which religious faith was no longer sufficient guidance for all men. Optical instruments, such as the telescope, microscope and camera obscura (Vermeer certainly knew the latter) had become means to scrutinize the "anatomy of the universe" and sight itself had become an issue of intense philosophical speculation.

In recent years, various authors have endeavored to link Vermeer's measured art and his concerns with optics with these revolutionary intellectual currents. Accordingly, the artist would have employed the camera obscura not merely as a mechanical means for studying and transcribing outward appearances but for its philosophical implications. The historian Robert Huerta promoted the Delft artist to the role of the natural philosopher.

Vermeer and Spinoza had some things in common. Spinoza was born in the same year as the artist, 1632, and died in 1677, two years after Vermeer. Spinoza's Tydeman home, just an hour twenty-minute walk to Vermeer's house in Delft, was seven miles away. There is no proof that Vermeer knew Spinoza or even if Spinoza's ideas were discussed in Delft but in the age when books were still expensive commodities, five folios and twenty-five assorted books reported in the inventory of the artist's estate testify that he was not unlearned. Whether or not Vermeer occupied himself with the scientific and philosophical debates of the time remains uncertain but he left two powerful images which al least show his admiration for the scientists of his time, The Astronomer and The Geographer painted between 1668 and 1669.

Spinoza had a solid grasp of optical theory and of the then-current physics of light, and was competent enough to engage in sophisticated discussion with correspondents over fine points in the mathematics of refraction. We know that Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the distinguished scientist and lens-grinder, almost certainly knew Vermeer since both lived in Delft. We would expect Van Leeuwenhoek was aware of Spinoza's reputation for either for his work with lenses or for and free-thinking heresies which came under fire in the late 1660s.

Some writers have associated Spinoza's praise of the contemplative and intellectual life as the highest of man's achievements with the people that appear in Vermeer's paintings, many of whom are pictures absorbed in rapt contemplation or engaged in intellectual pursuits. From a formal point of view Vermeer compositions have an uncommon air of equilibrium as if every element had been examined and exactly ordered within the perimeters of his composition according to some unknown plan. As one author wrote, Vermeer's thoughtful compositions stand for the independent mental activity of his figures. His penchant for geometrical forms have been indirectly linked to the subtitle of Spinoza's Ethics, ordine geometrico demonstrate (arrange according to geometric principles).