Girl Interrupted in her Music

critical excerpt

No signature appears on this work.

c. 1660-1661
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. Vermeer: The Complete Works, New York, 1997)

c. 1658-1659
Walter Liedtke Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, New York, 2008)

literature

Although Vermeer's courting young couple is not actively engaged in music making, the cittern on the table and the opened music book make it clear that the picture belongs to this popular motif. In the second half of the 17th century, the association between music and love was well established in the arts and the musical duet was a metaphor for an amorous relationship. Here, Vermeer dissimulates the cavalier's pressing, but polite, attentions by means of a momentary interruption of the girl's gaze directed outside the narrative structure of the painting towards the viewer. Walter Liedtke notes that the cavalier belongs to a type of man that appears often in Vermeer's compositions who "in the company of women are mere attendants. They seek possession and lose themselves." Music making was one of the activities which permitted young people to freely associate with each other.

One of the unique features of Dutch genre painting is its interest in creating realistic scenes of everyday life which, paradoxically, contain symbolic content indicating that there is more to the picture than what meets the eye. As Arthur Wheelock wrote, "Few artists created scenes as lifelike as those of Vermeer, and none were as capable of creating figures in these interiors whose mental states seem to transcend the everyday."

Room in a Dutch House (detail)
Pieter Janssens Elinga
1668-72
62 x 59 cm
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

If Delft was considered Holland's cleanest town, Vermeer was Delft's cleanest painter.

In their research, the historians Bas van Bavel and Oscar Gelderblom have noted that in more than 250 travel accounts of foreigners visiting the Northern Netherlands between 1438 and 1795 no less than 75 of these mostly German, English and French travelers wrote about Dutch cleanliness.

In one of the earliest known accounts of Dutch cleanliness (1517), the secretary of an Italian cardinal traveling in the Netherlands, already mentioned the mopping of floors and the wiping of feet before entering a private house. At times the Dutch were even mocked what was then considered a national obsession.

Visitors of Dutch towns noted regular cleaning regime of the windows and doorsteps of private houses. Many observed that halls and stairwells, front rooms and furniture, and especially the kitchen, its hearth, and dishes, were very neat and clean. Visitors were bewildered by the habit of man and women who wore slippers inside, and even forced their guests to do so.

But it was not just private houses that were kept in order. The Dutch were concerned with cleanliness long before systematic improvement of public hygiene, or personal hygiene of the population at large, became a major issue in Western Europe, in the 19th century. Public spaces, markets, barges and inns were equally well cleansed. Several French and German travelers noted that stables and abattoirs were meticulously cleansed, and that farmers in Holland washed and sponged their cows, cutting their tails to prevent them from fouling themselves. Streets were regularly cleaned and strewn with sand. In many towns and villages the cleaning extended to canals and market places.

Vermeer took on the popular theme of courtship many times. However, both the postures and facial expressions of the protagonists of his compositions rarely give us a clue as to what they are thinking and feeling. This ambiguity, intentional or unintentional as it was, has aroused sundry interpretations by art specialists concerning both the explicit narrative or presumed hidden meaning of each work.

Art historian Rodney Nevitt points out in his "Art and the Culture of Love in the 17th century" that Dutch literary texts generally describe courtship as a perilous activity in which the possibility of sin lurked beneath the surface of a seemingly polite activities. Men and women hid their feelings even as they sought to discern those of the loved-one.

How should a lover and loved one of the 17th century behave? Dutch literature provides an extremely wide range of answers.

Jacob Cats, poet and
Grand Pensionary of Holland
and West Friesland
Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt
1634
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacob Cats, diplomat, poet and author of immensely influential moralistic literature, believed that the young woman should assume a passive role in courtship and not actively seek out male companionship. Without the presence of a chaperone she might receive love letters but she herself must not write them. On the other hand, Johan van Heemskerck, who drew guidance from antique love literature (Ovid's Ars Amatoria, The Art of Love), encouraged young people to actively seek each other out and gave tips on how to attract the attention of admirers and how to impress young ladies with witty conversation. He even considered churches as favorable places for young people to meet members of the opposite sex. Music making, of course, would have been an excellent manner to encapsulate the expression of reciprocal emotions between two lovers.

In any case, Dutch youth generally had an increasing choice in their marriage partners even though they had to some degree accept the of medaling of their parents. Then as now, issues of class, religion, age and money were all factors to be considered.

Great debate has ensued in the last century regarding the extent to which Dutch genre painters employed literary sources as a means for enriching the message of their paintings. Most scholars agree that the imagery of two of Vermeer's paintings (The Art of Painting and The Allegory of Faith) are strongly related to Cesare Ripa's Iconologia while some of the props (perhaps the background Cupid in the present work) refer to figures in popular emblem books. Emblem books were published in outstanding numbers rivaling even the Sacred Bible.

The Amorum Emblemata is considered to be one of the most important and influential of all emblem books. The collection was designed by Otto van Veen (1556-1629) and first published in Antwerp in 1608 in three polyglot versions: Latin, French & Dutch; Latin, Italian & French (as in this copy); and Latin, English & Italian. Its success and popularity lead to many further editions and adaptations, while its images were subsequently used by decorative artists throughout Europe.

In producing a book of love emblems, Van Veen was following a trend which began in Amsterdam in 1601 with the publication of Quaeris quid sit Amor, a compilation of twenty-four love emblem prints produced by the artist Jacques de Gheyn with accompanying Dutch verses by Daniel Heinsius.

Title page of
Quaeris quid sit Amor
Jacques de Gheyn

The Quaeris quid sit amor? was the very first love emblem book in the Dutch language. When this emblem book was first published, probably in 1601, it had no specific title. Consequently, these days it often carries two titles; either Quaeris quid sit amor?, after the first words on the titlepage, or Emblemata amatoria, after the title it was given in reprints. The author of the 1601 edition identified himself as Theocritus à Ganda. This turned out to be the pseudonym of Daniël Heinsius, a riddle most of his (literary) peers would probably be able to solve; in Greek, Theocritus means Daniël and à Ganda is the French translation of from Ghent, the native town of Daniël Heinsius. Van Veen's volume is far more comprehensive, consisting of 124 emblems. The amorous maxims which accompany and interpret the pictures are mostly, but not always, taken from Ovid. Addressed to young people, the book depicts love as an overruling power which should be followed to gain happiness.

The well-to-do Dutch had a wide array of household furnishings from which to choose. Solid, carved furniture was produced by local craftsmen, glassware was both imported from Germany and made in Holland, exotic carpets were brought from the Middle East, and porcelain was imported in huge quantities from China. One Englishman noted that Dutch houses were "not large, but neat, beautiful outside and well-furnished inside, and the furniture is so clean and in good order that it appears to be more an exhibition than for daily use."

On the table lie a cittern, a ceramic Delft vase, an inconspicuous glass of wine and an opened sheet with musical score. Although the cittern has regained popularity after centuries of disuse, it cittern was one of the most popular musical instruments of the mid-17th century and it was also the one most frequently depicted by Vermeer. While its form may recall the more familiar lute, it has a very different history and above all, it emits a very different sound. The cittern's brass strings produce a cheerful sound comparable to the modern banjo although a good cittern sounds a bit like the virginal. The cittern achieved its apex in the 16th and 17th century and was held in high esteem both as an accompanying instrument for the singing voice or for dance music. Many compositions were written expressively for it, often intricate and difficult to play. The solo repertoire, however, required a substantial technical virtuosity.

Music expert Albert P. de Mirimonde noted that the sheet music which appear in Vermeer's paintings does not make musical sense. Whether Vermeer's inaccuracy was accidental or deliberate cannot be known. Music songbooks flourished in the Dutch Republic. French and Italian models were popular since Dutch music was considered uninventive and undistinguished.

Marieke de Winkel, Dutch costume expert, points out that such caps were partly ornamental and served to protect the hairdo before and after dressing.

The Low Countries had been famous for cloth manufacture since the Middle Ages. It remained the most important part of the Dutch industrial economy, benefiting greatly from the emigration of large numbers of textile workers from the south.

Linen was Haarlem's most famous product. Workers specialized in bleaching and finishing locally woven cloth as well as cloth shipped in from other parts of Europe. The bleached linen was used to make clothing such as caps (mutsen), aprons, night shawls, collars, and cuffs which are often seen in Vermeer's paintings.

Portrait of the Painter's Family (detail)
Jan Miense Molenaer
c. 1636
62.3 x 81.3 cm
Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

Although we know nothing of Vermeer's tastes in music and the arts, the people he chose to represent would have ideally belonged to the haute bourgeoisie who wrote and spoke several languages and who collected European poetry and songbooks. Songbooks, one of which can be observed on the table complete with musical notes, played a conspicuous role in the rituals of modern courtship.

Since Dutch music was in great part uninventive, Dutch songbooks contained as many French as native airs. Amateur musicians like the two which Vermeer represents in this painting probably collected them in numbers. Music making provided the ideal ground on which both parties could approach each other without the presence of parents or older guardians.

Young musicians had a vast choice of foreign and local songbooks, which were called liedboeken, or collections of love songs. The Dutch music expert Louis Peter Grijp pointed out how these books frequently reflected the local culture containing references to favorite meeting places for lovers, taverns and etc. Some songs proclaimed the beauty of local women over those of other towns while others demonstrated a growing affection for national Dutch identity. The dedicatory preface of Den Nieuwen Lust-Hof was to the Young Ladies of the Netherlands. One author from Utrecht complained that the local youth had not purchased his previous works because they had preferred the more richly songbooks of Amsterdam and Haarlem.

Some songbooks included risqué' lyrics while others were polite. In a single volume, one may occasionally find refined Petrarchan-inspired love songs, vulgar songs of prostitutes, festive drinking as well as pious hymns and even patriotic tunes. While many emphasized moral integrity, the readers themselves were never directly admonished assuming that they were already of impeccable character.

By the time Vermeer created his well-known interiors, imagery of courtship situated in Dutch middle-class interior settings had already become an extraordinarily popular motif although until the 1630s they had been primarily set in outdoor garden parties in which numerous young men and women caroused playfully.

Merry Company
Willem Buytewech
c. 1620-1624
103.5 x 84.3 cm
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen

The key innovator in this area was Willem Buytewech nicknamed "Geestige Willem" (Witty Willem) although his surviving output as a painter is tiny. His pictures of dandies, fashionable ladies, soldiers, and lusty wenches are among the most spirited Dutch genre scenes, and instituted the category known as the "Merry Company."

When Buytewech lost interest in this successful garden motifs he brought his foppish youths indoors. They are surrounded by fancy furnishings and such luxury decorative items as elaborate silverware and large-scale wall maps. The same items would eventually find their way into the compositions of Vermeer and his close colleagues decades later. The women too are dressed in the latest fashion sporting silk skirts and beautifully embroidered bodices. Although Buytewech's scenes might strike the modern eye as somewhat naïve, art historian Wayne Franits pointed out that "Buytewech's inventive scenes of elegant companies, however cramped, constitute the seminal examples in terms of indoor setting and subject matter of what would develop into one of the most popular themes in 17th-century Dutch genre painting."

Although Buytewech's figures seem to be psychologically and even comically disconnected from one another, they nonetheless set the stage for the finely nuanced dialogues and subtle control of body language by grouping the protagonists closely in age and social conditions within the confines of a restricted environment.

Dutch art historians are undecided on how Buytewech's subjects should be understood. In most current literature it is assumed that he is castigating the foolish young men and warning them of the transitoriness of mortal existence. Other suppose that they were essentially true-to-life characterizations of idle young men, depicted with humor and little moralizing intention: the Dutch already knew what was wrong and what was right. In any case, Buytewech may have drawn his imagery from farces in current popular literature and plays.

Although such imagery was generally disparaged by traditional art establishment, the more open-minded art theoretician Gérard de Lairesse admitted that one might occasionally find "little dramas" in genre paintings that are comparable to the more noble subjects of grand historical events and religious themes which were considered the only proper subjects for the arts. In any case, buyers from the social elite snatched up great number of these new courtship theme despite their elevated costs.

The Voice of the Ghost [1.62 MB]
Anthony Holborne
performed by Lee Santana

The Cittern

In Italian Renaissance humanist culture the cittern was regarded as a classical revival of the ancient Greek kithara even though it seems to have its direct development from the medieval citole. It presents some similarities with the fiddle, as its plucked form.

The structure and tuning of the cittern varied almost from country to country. While in England, France and northern Europe the small four-course-instrument was commonly used, Italian musicians preferred the larger six-course instrument.

The cittern achieved the height of its diffusion in the 16th and 17th centuries. Above all in Italy and in England it was held in high esteem both as an accompanying instrument for the singing voice or for dance music. Many compositions written expressively for it, often intricate and demanding to play.

The great number of paintings depicting a cittern proves the instrument's great popularity in the 17th-century Netherlands. With its flat back it was more robust in structure than the fragile lute, therefore cheaper and more portable. The cittern's easy playability made it the preferred instrument especially of the middle and upper classes for song accompaniment and dance music.

The cittern has a shallow round or pear-shaped body tapering from the bottom towards the neck. The body is carved from one piece of wood and only the soundboard and fingerboard were added separately. The use of metal strings plucked with a quill or plectrum gives the instrument its sprightly and cheerful sound, one of the reason for the cittern's great popularity.

The present painting shares much with the Glass of Wine (see left), a larger and more complex work. Both portray a gentleman of good society as he attends to a young lady in her well-to-do dwelling, captured, evidently, in a delicate moment of ritualized courtship. In the two works, the male stands behind the seated female, with a table with a few objects to the left and a turned chair that assumes a curiously similar "attitude" as if it was meant to signify something more than and inanimate piece of furniture. For some reason, Vermeer did not feel obliged to elaborate significantly on the "still life" composed of a simple piece of Delft ceramic, a few music books and a cittern except for the inclusion of a glass of wine in the Girl Interrupted in her Music.

It is impossible to establish which of the two pictures was painted first although the Glass of Wine is generally held as the superior work. Technically, the Glass of Wine is more brilliant but it should not be forgotten that the Girl Interrupted in her Music is in a near-disastrous state of conservation even though its best passages hint of a much finer work. From a formal point of view, both are wider than taller and both rely on a circular composition to bind the figures in their intimate dialogue. Even the solemn pictures on the background walls play a similar function as silent commentators of the action which takes place before them.

Perhaps the strongest difference between the two is that in the present painting, the figures, the table and standing chair are abruptly cut off by the lower edge of the painting. No pavement can be seen. Thus, the viewer feels he is much closer to the action of the scene. The girl's direct gaze makes it impossible for the observer to revert to the comfortable, disengaged viewing position of the Glass of Wine. Perhaps Vermeer attempted to revitalize his own compositional formula or those which had been invented by Pieter de Hooch.

While these similarities between the two works are striking, no scholar has ever advanced the idea that they were more than consecutive attempts at a similar motif and composition which, however, were meant as independent works to be viewed separately.

Loose Company
Dirck van Baburen
1623
110 x 154 cm
Mainz, Landesmuseum

Leon Battista Alberti, who invented linear perspective, wrote what was to become one of the most influential art treatises in the western tradition, De Pictura, published in 1435. Alongside his discussions of perspective, Alberti also furnished detailed instructions for making paintings. Among these, he suggested that artists might include a "commentator" to guide the painting's viewer where to look and what visual connections to make. This sort of knowledgeable "insider," who straddles two worlds - that of the painting and that outside the painting - is simultaneously in the work, but not of the work.

Although they may have had a somewhat less noble function, pictorial commentators were common staple in Dutch genre paintings. Semi-comical figures, often self portraits in the guise of a wily rake who is onto something more than his companions, appeared as a standard fixture in an unlimited number of bawdy bordello scenes (see image above) painted by Utrecht Caravaggists. The far left-hand figure in Vermeer's own Procuress is one such example and is generally believed to be a self portrait. Whoever he may be, Vermeer's burlesque figure appears to serve no more than to encourage us to put aside our moral reserves, lift our spirits as he lifts his toast and join in merry making.

However, when Vermeer turned his hand to the measured interiors of the haute bourgeois, the young ladies who look out of the picture to have more on their mind than a light-hearted pictorial diversion. In the present picture, the girl's gaze is far more enigmatic than that of her smiling counterpart in the Girl with a Wine Glass.

If she was meant to be a sort of pictorial ambassador of picture's quite narrative, she seems unwilling or unable to tell us anything. Rather, the very vagueness of her expression allows, or even solicits the viewer to project his own reactions into the scene whose story, although clearly defined in terms of drawing, space and light, cannot be fully understood.