The Girl with a Wine Glass
(Dame en twee heren)c. 1659–1660
Oil on canvas
78 x 67 cm. (30 3/4 x 26 3/8 in.)
Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick
inv. 316
According to Vermeer expert Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., the careful placing of the upright ancestral portrait between the two male figures focuses on the artist's concerns for the lack of moral constraint in contemporary life. The rigid pose and somber treatment of this passage enhances its none-too subtle admonitory presence. This was the only time that Vermeer included picture-within-a-picture in one of his works which represents a formal portrait. Judging by the man's costume, it seems to have been painted in the 1630s.
The brooding figure seated behind the table has been somewhat difficult to explain and it is one of the very few openly negative figures in the artist's oeuvre. The young man's dejected posture and shadowy treatment have lead critics to believe that he may either be a victim of love or simply drunk. Art historian Rodney Nevitt Jr. believes that either the man has been overcome by the narcotic effects of smoking (a rolled paper of tobacco on the table), wine (from the ceramic pitcher), or as a rejected suitor who has lost the girl to the other man. His mood and pose are reminiscent of those of the girl in Vermeer's earlier A Maid Asleep and evoke the melancholia, an affliction associated in the 17th century with depression, self-absorbed reflection, artistic creativity and unhappy love affairs.
Vermeer must have been fond of this type of wine jug since it appears in strategically important areas of three other paintings, A Maid Asleep (above left), The Glass of Wine (above center) and The Music Lesson (above right). These all-white tin-glazed containers were originally produced in Faenza, Italy. In the 1550s they were exported to all over Europe and by the late 16th and early 17th century had become very fashionable in the Netherlands as well, where they were imitated by local potters. They appear in a countless genre interior paintings between 1650 and 1670. Although it is very difficult to distinguish between Italian and Dutch versions, historian of the Dutch decorative arts Alexandra Gaba-van Dongen believes that the ones in Vermeer's paintings are original Italian.
No attempt has ever been made to decipher the iconographic significance, if it ever had one, of this oversized white cloth which drapes from the table. Perhaps, it was included for its pictorial value alone or, less glamorously, as a remedy for a problem of proportion between the seated and standing figure. Art historian John Nash wrote that "the proportion of the woman to her chair are, perhaps, a little odd; it appears, from the perspective of the floor tiles, as if she is sitting a little distance forward of the table, and yet the gallant who bends over her to press on her the glass of wine appears to be standing beyond the white tableclothe." In any case, from a compositional point of view it effectively ties the girl, the suitor and the seated man in the background together and sets off the work's brilliant color scheme.
Perhaps its most distinctive feature is the bluish tone of the shadows (given by the pigment natural ultramarine blue), rare in Dutch painting of the time. In this painting, Vermeer employed the same ultramarine blue in the gray mixtures of the background wall, the shadow of the wine jug, the blue tablecloth and even more surprisingly in the darker shadow of the girl's satin red gown. The extensive use of natural ultramarine blue might be considered the only anomaly in Vermeer's painting technique. Other painters habitually employed azurite, which was far cheaper but less intense than the imported ultramarine.
The young woman's openly expressive face is somewhat atypical for Vermeer who tends to convey his sitters' emotions through discreet gestures, the symbiosis with their environment and the nature of their activity. One early Vermeer expert has suspected that her staring eyes and awkward smile were the result of overpainting by a later hand. In any case, rather than exchanging glances with her suitor, Vermeer's girl turns towards the viewer, separating herself from him. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. believes that the woman's smiling is a knowing one, indicating not only that she is aware of the situation, but also that she is in control. Thus, it is he rather than she that is being seduced. This scenario, where the male fawns over a beautiful woman with ruby lips and ivory skin dressed in fine satins only to be betrayed or rejected, is one that was fashionable among 17th-century poets, who based their ideas of unrequited love on the sonnets of Petrarch.
Other critics, oppositely, have viewed the girl as a romantic victim. Walter Liedtke wrote ."...what she controls is not her suitor ... but her unsteady nerves. ... ...one would guess that this silly goose is much less capable of keeping ganders at bay than is the stiff young woman in The Glass of Wine."
A writer once opined that even though Vermeer never painted a single still life, those which are a part of his interior compositions are among the most beautiful ever painted. Sometimes the fruit has been described as a lemon and sometimes as an orange. Both were commonly found in Dutch still-lives but each carry a different iconographical meaning.
In many scenes of ritual courtship, lemons are set along side oysters served up on a silver platter. In a painting by Frans van Mieris, a young cavalier offers a fancy silver plate chock full of opened oysters, much like the one in Vermeer's painting, to a young lady who holds an unfinished glass of wine. A 17th-century Dutchman would have had no problem in deciphering the meaning of Van Mieris' scene. Oysters were believed to possess aphrodisiacal powers and therefore associated with seduction. In Vermeer's painting no oysters can be seen, which, however, does not rule out that they had been already consumed. If this is the case, judging by the protagonists' expressions, they do not seem to have produced the same effect on the girl as on her suitor.
The symbolic content of the wine jug and wine glass would appear to reinforce the work's underlying theme of an attempted, albeit, highly ritualized seduction. But lemons were also used to sweeten and temper wine, in this respect they serve symbolically to indicate the importance of moderating one's behavior, a meaning which would be in contrast to the first. In any case, the famous pointillés, or spherical highlights which specialist believe proof that Vermeer used a camera obscura as an aid to his paintings, can be observed on the silver tray.
Vermeer's painting belongs to a genre of domestic scenes prevalent in mid 17th-century Holland in which the mores of contemporary life, particularly those pertaining to love and courtship, were depicted and commented upon. Many of these themes focus on the foibles of male/female relationships and man's inability to restrain his sexual appetite, even though the narrative of Vermeer's paintings are so subtly contrived as to pose serious questions of interpretation. The young suitor, draped in an elegant cape, carefully accompanies the woman's hand which delicately holds the tip of a half-full wineglass.
His intentions have been interpreted in a number of ways by Vermeer specialists, from comic monsieur, seducer or seduced. Perhaps the story being told was far more evident to the artist's contemporaries than it appears today. But in ultimate analysis, his (and her) posture and expression are so highly formalized that they fail to furnish an unequivocal key to unlock the precise narrative meaning of the painting.
Although Vermeer's oeuvre is known for the lemon yellow/ blue color harmony, the young artist experimented with strong reds at the outset of his career. The fiery red of this dress may denote the hidden passions of the young woman who seems to be accepting the advances of the gentleman. According to Dutch costume expert Marieke de Winkel, this young woman wears a tabbaard or tabbert reserved for formal occasions. It is a combination of a stiffened tightly-fitting bodice which is laced at the back and a long matching gown. In order to further the bodice, it was sometimes fitted with a stiff planck made of ivory, wood or even iron. Obviously, the tabbaard must have been uncomfortable so it was not recommended for pregnant women. Catharina Bolnes, Vermeer's wife, owned one such gown made of black clothe, most probably for mourning.
One of the most remarkable features of the painting is this colored stained-glass window, which also appears in the Young Woman with a Wine Glass, in Berlin. The coat of arms has been identified with Janetge Jacobsdr. Vogel, the first wife of Moses van Nederveen, but it is not known how Vermeer came by it. Although Vogel and her husband had lived in Delft not too distant from Vermeer, she had died in 1624, eight years before the artist was born.
The symbolic meaning of the coat of arms is now clear and certainly required no coaxing to understand it in the time of Vermeer. The female figure, who holds a level and bridle, personifies Temperantia, or Temperance, which is very similar to an image from Gabriel Rollenhagen's Selectorum Emblematum of 1613. Rollenhagen's illustration is accompanied with the text "The heart knows not how to observe moderation and applies reins to feelings when struck by desire" The level symbolizes good deeds and the bridle symbolizes emotional control. Thus, it is very probable that, together with the staid portrait on the rear wall, it provided an incentive towards moderation an admonitory comment to the protagonists' lack of self restraint.
Willemijn Fock, historian of the Dutch decorative arts, has shown that it is highly improbable that the typical black and white marble floors which appear in Vermeer's and so many Dutch interior paintings were done directly from life. Such an exclusive luxury item could be found only in the homes of the rich and, thus, were beyond reach of Vermeer's financial possibilities.
Instead, the kind of small ceramic tiles in the present work were far more common even though the Dutch generally preferred the practical large-planked wooden floors. According to London architect and Vermeer specialist Philip Steadman, the minute details of the cracks and chips of the foreground tiles suggest that they were indeed observed by Vermeer. Through reverse geometry, Steadman calculated that the ceramic tiles are exactly half the size of the larger black and white marble ones in the following pictures. This lead him to believe that Vermeer used the underlying geometrical grid drawn from the real tiles to project the luxury marble ones which he had never directly observed.
Willemijn Fock, historian of the Dutch decorative arts, has shown that it is highly improbable that the typical black and white marble floors which appear in Vermeer's and so many Dutch interior paintings were done directly from life. Such an exclusive luxury item could be found only in the homes of the rich and, thus, were beyond reach of Vermeer's financial possibilities.
Instead, the kind of small ceramic tiles in the present work were far more common even though the Dutch generally preferred the practical large-planked wooden floors. According to London architect and Vermeer specialist Philip Steadman, the minute details of the cracks and chips of the foreground tiles suggest that they were indeed observed by Vermeer. Through reverse geometry, Steadman calculated that the ceramic tiles are exactly half the size of the larger black and white marble ones in the following pictures. This lead him to believe that Vermeer used the underlying geometrical grid drawn from the real tiles to project the luxury marble ones which he had never directly observed.
The blank white-washed walls are so typical in Dutch interior genre painting that it is easy to take them for granted.
From a technical point of view, their depiction represents one of the most challenging problems of pictorial illusionism. In some manner, the tone and hue of the wall must be altered in order to describe the varying intensities of light that falls upon it. Painters generally resorted to a set formula whereby the brightest areas of the wall were painted with pure white or nearly-pure white. The infinite gradations of shadow were achieved by adding black and raw umber (a slightly greenish brown) which constituted one of the most useful pigments on the artist's palette.
As a rule, Vermeer employed the same three pigments for painting nude walls although in some cases he added a very small amount of ultramarine blue to create a more vibrant and clean gray. In this painting ultramarine blue has been indeed detected along with white and raw umber. The addition of blue lends the gray a decidedly greenish cast which vibrates against the bright red mass of the satin costume. It may be that Vermeer had assimilated this technique from Carel Fabritius who is known to have added ultramarine blue to the light gray background of his famous Goldfinch.
special topics
critical excerpt
c. 1662
Albert Blankert, Vermeer: 1632–1675, 1975
c. 1659–1660
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Vermeer: The Complete Works, New York, 1997
c. 1659–1660
Walter Liedtke, Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, New York, 2008
c. 1661–1662
Wayne Franits, Vermeer, 2015
The fine, plain-weave linen with a thread count of 14 x 15 per cm² retains its original tacking edges; on both left and right sides are selvedges; The support has been glue/paste lined. The double ground consists of a white layer, containing chalk, lead white, and umber, followed by a reddish brown layer. The ground was left uncovered along several outlines of the figures and the wine jug. It extends a few millimeters over the tacking edges.
Parts of the window, red dress, chair, and many of the highlights were painted wet-in-wet, with impasto in the highlights, the fruit, and the red skirt of the figure in the window. Ultramarine is used extensively in the window, the background, the tablecloth, and in the underpaint of the shadows of the girl's red dress. The position of the heads of the standing man and the girl, and the bows in her hair, have been slightly altered. Some parts of the painting appear unfinished, such as the wall between the male figures, and the arm and cuff of the girl. There is degraded medium in the ultramarine mixtures and the pigment appears discolored.
* Johannes Vermeer (exh. cat., National Gallery of Art and Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis - Washington and The Hague, 1995, edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.)
literature
- (?) Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven, Delft (d. 1674);
- (?) his widow, Maria de Knuijt, Delft (d. 1681);
- (?) their daughter, Magdalena van Ruijven, Delft (d. 1682);
- (?) her widower, Jacob Abrahamsz Dissius (d. 1695);
- Dissius sale, Amsterdam, 16 May, 1696, no. 9;
- Anton Ulrich, Duke of Braunschweig [Brunswick], (before 1710);
- in 1714 to the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (inv. 316).
- Berlin April–May, 1929
Die Meister des holländischen Interieurs
Galerie Dr. Schaffer
"Nachtrag" no. 103a and ill. - Schaffhausen 1949
Rembrandt und seine Zeit. Museum zu Allerheiligen
76, no. 188 and ill. - Brunswick September 6–November 5, 1978
Die Sprache der Bilder: Realität Und Bedeutung in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jarhunderts
Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum
164–168, no. 39 and ill. - Tokyo April 24, 1984–June 10, 1984
Dutch Painting of Golden Age from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis
National Museum of Western Art - Madrid February 19–May 18, 2003
Vermeer y el interior holandés
Museo Nacional del Prado
168–169 no. 33 and ill. - Tokyo August 2–December 14, 2008
Vermeer and the Delft Style
Metropolitan Art Museum
176–178, no 28 and ill. - Kassel November 18, 2011–February 26, 2012
Light Structure - The Light in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer
Museum Hessen - Rome September 27, 2012–January 20, 2013
Vermeer. Il secolo d'oro dell'arte olandese
Scuderie del Quirinale
210. no. 47 and ill.
| vermeer's life |
Around 1659 or 1660, Vermeer's brother-in-law Willem Bolnes left his irascible father's house in Gouda to live on one of the family's properties in Schoonhoven. Willem incurrs in debts and borrowing money from his mother, Maria Thins, since his father had become too impoverished to help. Willem apparently had no kind of work. He was later to become a serious problem for Vermeer and his wife. In the late 1650s Vermeer, paints two exceptionally luminous interiors, inspired by genre models of the time. In both Officer and Laughing Girl and The Milkmaid he uses his famous "pointillist" technique (thick points of light colored paint in the most intensely light areas of the composition called pointillés. This technical artifice conveys a sense of brilliancy rarely seen in any other of his works. Vermeer never again painted a humble sitter, such as the common milkmaid. |
| dutch painting |
Jan van der Weff is born. Johan Willem, Elector Palatine, whom he had met in 1696, appointed him Court Painter in 1697 at a salary of 4,000 guilders on condition he work for him six months of the year. In 1703 this was increased to nine months, and he was made a knight. He remained in Rotterdam, making trips to Düsseldorf to deliver pictures and paint portraits. Jan Janz de Heem (d. 1695) is born. Son of the celebrated still life painter Jan Davidsz de Heem he was baptized on 2 July, 1650 in Antwerp. From 1667 to 1672 he worked in Utrecht with his father who sometimes retouched the son's work. There has undoubtedly been much confusion between the work of father and son. Jan Jansz is last recorded in a document of 1695. |
| european painting & architecture | 1659–1661 Michael Sweerts, Flemish painter, created his rosy Portrait of a Youth. |
| music | Mar 7, Henry Purcell, English organist, composer (Dido & Aeneas), was born. Purcell was one of the greatest composers of the Baroque period and one of the greatest of all English composers. He wrote fantasias for viols, masterpieces of contrapuntal writing in the old style, and some at least of the more modern sonatas for violins, which reveal some acquaintance with Italian models. In time Purcell became increasingly in demand as a composer, and his theatre music in particular made his name familiar to many who knew nothing of his church music or the odes and welcome songs he wrote for the court. |
| literature | Oedipus (Oedipe) by Pierre Corneille 1/24 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, Paris |
| science & philosophy |
Christiaan Huygens of Holland used a 2-inch telescope lens and discovered that the Martian day is nearly the same as an Earth day. He also discovers the rings of Saturn. He also constructs a chronometer for use at sea; however, it is influenced by the motion of the ship and does not keep correct time. English physician Thomas Willis, 38, gives the first description of typhoid fever. Elementa curvarum by Jan De Witt gives an algebraic treatment of conic sections using the newly developed analytic geometry. It appears as part of an edition of Schooten's Geometria a Renato Des Cartes. |
| history | The Spanish infanta Marie Therese introduces the French court to cocoa, which will be endorsed by the Paris faculty of medicine and received with enthusiasm until it becomes surrounded with suspicion as an aphrodisiac in some circles and as a mysterious potion in others. |
| vermeer's life |
Vermeer is appointed one of the headman of the Guild of Saint Luke to a term of two years. This fact has been interpreted as a testimony of the high esteem in which the artist was at the time held. However, by the time Vermeer was elected headmaster, many of the painters resident in Delft had left for the more prosperous Amsterdam and so his election may have had less significance than usually thought. Vermeer and his wife bury a child in the Old Church in Delft. The same document states, Vermeer and his wife were then living in the house of Maria Thins on the Oude Langendijk in Delft. At the time, the household included Vermeer, his wife, his mother-in-law, and three children, not counting an infant who had died and at least one female servant. The house had a basement, a lower hall with a vestibule, a great hall, a small room adjoining the hall, an interior kitchen, a little back kitchen, a cooking kitchen, a washing kitchen, a corridor, and an upper floor with two rooms, one of which was taken up by Vermeer's studio. Vermeer's family situation was unusual. Very few married men in the Netherlands lived with a parent or parent-in-law for an extended period of time. Vermeer's marriage too, must be considered exceptional in as much as he married outside his own family's religion and social class. He moved from the lower, artisinal class of his Reformed parents who lived on the Delft Square to the higher social stratum of the Catholic in-laws who instead lived in the somewhat segregated "Papist Corner," the Catholic quarter of the city. The burial of his child is the earliest known record of the artist's residence in Maria Thin's house. |
| dutch painting |
Jan van Mieris is born. Son of the famous Frans van Mieris, Jan painted principally history subjects, but his earliest works were apparently genre scenes in his father's manner. Jacob van Ruisdael paints Jewish Cemetery. The painting's ruinous, glowering scene exemplifies the trend toward turbulence in Dutch landscape at mid-century. Adriean Coorte is born. Coorte devoted himself to the precise rendering of simple objects in small paintings. His paintings often have strong illumination that gives the composition an enchanting stillness. |
| european painting & architecture | Diego Velázquez, Spanish painter, dies. |
| music | Alessandro Scarlatti, Italian musician and composer, father of Domenico is born. |
| literature | |
| science & philosophy |
Marcello Malpighi discovers that the lungs consist of many small air pockets and a complex system of blood vessels. By observing capillaries through a microscope he completes the work of Harvey in describing the circulation of the blood. Robert Boyle announces in New Experiments Physico-Mechanical Touching the Spring of Air that removing the air in a vacuum chamber extinguishes a flame and kills small animals, indicating that combustion and respiration are similar processes. |
| history | May 28, George I, king of England), is born.
May 29, Charles II, who had fled to France, is restored to the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth. Charles made a deal with George Monck, a general of the New Model Army, and with the old parliamentary foes of his father. The British experiment with republicanism came to an end with the restoration of Charles II. Dec 24, Mary I Henriette Stuart (29), queen of England, dies. The Dutch crafted an early version of a boat they called a "yacht." 1660s The British began to dominate the trade in port wine from Portugal after a political spat with the French denied them the French Bordeaux wines. Brandy was added to the Portuguese wines to fortify them for the Atlantic voyage. |
Not a single sitter in Vermeer's painting has ever been identified. The most obvious, but completely wrong candidate would be Janet Vogel, whose coat of arms stands out on the opened window. Documents show that she had died eight years before Vermeer was even born. Another candidate might be Maria de Knuijt, the wife of Vermeer's wealthy Delft patron, Pieter van Ruijven, since it is almost certain that this painting was part of their family collection. We know that in her will Maria bequeathed to Vermeer 500 florins. This sum was comparable to the cost of one to three expensive cabinet pictures. Such a bequest, made to a painter who was not a family member, was possibly unique in 17th-century Netherlands. It must count as a gesture of special esteem and commitment to the painter's well-being.
Although De Knuijt may have been acting on behalf of her husband, she had brought a great share of money to their marriage, and her taste must have been taken into account. As a supporter of the Orthodox wing of the Reformed church, De Knuijt might have found particularly appealing the chaste dignity that informs Vermeer's interpretations of femininity. However, the presence of the Janet Vogel's coat of arms would be in conflict with Maria de Knuijt's social identity which must have been central question of her life. It cannot be ruled out that Vermeer's own wife, Catharina Bolnes, had posed for the painting but in a sense, the sitter's identity is besides the point.
Amorum emblemata
Otto van Veen
1608
Following the atrocities of the war of independence with Spain, the people of the Netherlands turned their thoughts to the lighter sides of life, including naturally, love. Consequentially, in the second half of the century courtship and of lovemaking had become one of the most popular subjects among Dutch genre artists. Painters had ample sources to draw from including moralizing literature, love poems, songbooks, guides to courting etiquette, plays as well as increasingly popular collections of prose love stories. Several of these were printed in Vermeer's home town Delft and Vermeer's paintings show that he was no doubt aware of them. Earlier 17th-century art images typically displayed merry outdoor garden parties populated with Dutch youth decked out in the latest fashions engaged in courtship, dancing and music making. These paintings descend from the iconography of the garden of love . To a certain degree such images must have derived from the popular pastoral festivals (Fêtes Champêtres), which recalled the ideals of ancient Arcadia popular in the court of Louis XIV and XV.
By the 1650s, when Vermeer crafted his first interiors, the garden of love theme had undergone significant changes. The gatherings were reduced to two or three members which no longer took place in open spaces but within the intimate confines of well-to-do homes. Vermeer drew most of his compositional and thematic models from Gerrit ter Borch, who captured the finest nuances of costume and gesture, and Pieter de Hooch, who was the first artist to stage them in the sunlit corner of a room.
The Glass of Wine in Berlin and the present Girl with a Wine Glassappear to represent a very similar theme. The presence of the ceramic tiles and ornate stained-glass windows in both pictures would suggest that they were painted in the same room. For this reason Vermeer experts tend to date these two works very closely. However, on close inspection the two paintings present notable technical disparities which may suggest that they were painted within a somewhat larger interval of time.
The Berlin painting present a rougher surface with loaded color reminiscent of the grainy textures found in Officer and Laughing Girl and the famous Milkmaid. Instead, the Girl with a Wine Glass presents a very smooth, almost polished surface. Following this work, Vermeer's paint application became evermore subtle. Art historian Mariët Westermann has suggested that Vermeer had begun to work in the so-called net, or smooth manner, which was in vogue among the most sought-after painters of the time. The new, smooth manner went along with the more genteel and elegant themes. The rouw, or rough manner of the great Rembrandt was criticized and rejected by the most art writers of the time such as Samuel Hoogstraten and Gérard de Lairesse.
As with other Vermeer's group scenes, an air of ambiguity lingers around the present picture. The standing figure of the stained-glass window is surely a symbol of Temperance which symbolizes good deeds and emotional control. Likewise, it is very probable that the staid portrait on the rear wall provides some sort of admonitory comment to the scene which unfolds.
However, are we to make of the male figure slumped in the background? Is he, as the window, a caution against overindulgence? Is he drunk, dozing or does his pose suggest lovesickness and melancholy?
Most probably the ambiguity which permeates Vermeer's work is present in certain 17th-century still life paintings, many of which seem to walk a fine line between an invitation and a condemnation of sensual pleasure.
The art historian Paul Taylor has recently taken a fresh look at Vermeer's celebrated compositions in the light of 17th-century concepts of composition, or ordinantie, as described by the influential Dutch artist and art theorist, Gérard de Lairesse.
Taylor reveals that one of the key terms in Lairesse's discussion of composition is "the concept of probability, waarschynelykheid; indeed de Lairesse tells us that 'Probability is the most important thing to bear in mind when composing a picture.'" According to de Lairesse "one must make it evident not only in the general disposition, but also in each particular object, and attentively reject things which are in conflict with it." "As an example debLairesse's tells us that if we are painting a dining room we should make it clear whether a meal is about to take place, or has already taken place; if the latter, we should depict empty vessels lying in disorder, empty plates."
Gesture, dress and the proper posture and their disposition were all marshaled to clarify the narrative and strengthened its message. Fussy details had to be avoided lest they detract from the overriding message. De Lairesse even illustrated how the artist might suggest the social position of his sitter by the way in which they hold their glasses. Position No. 5 (see detail above) is comparable to the gesture seen in the present work, which was the most refined. As de Lairesse wrote, "A prince holds it handily and cautiously below on the foot."
What is unusual about de Lairesse's concept of composition is that he seems oblivious to the formal, purely aesthetic concerns which, instead, dominate modern understanding of pictorial composition, in favoring above all the "force of narrative."
Although it often goes unnoticed, the great majority of 17th-century Dutch genre interiors are set in the left-hand corner of a room. The side wall has a window which provides illumination and the background wall runs parallel, except in rare cases, to the picture plane. The origins of this pictorial formula may be linked with the fact that an artist usually painted with the light source coming from the left so that the shadow projected by his hand did not disturb the area on which he was working. The fact that western spectators read from left to right also contributes to the success of this formula.
Woman Drinking with Soldiers
Pieter de Hooch
1658
Oil on canvas, 69 x 60 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris
It is an accepted fact that Vermeer drew much of his compositional and thematic contents directly from his Dutch collegues. In particular, the painting which seems to have inspired the present work is Pieter de Hooch's Woman Drinking with Soldiers (1658).
In the 1650s, just before De Hooch left Delft for Amsterdam in 1660 or 1661, he produced some his best pictures admirably presenting cool daylight which gently filters through open widows, bathing the interiors with a light interrupted only by the presence of a few selected figures and objects.
Although similar figure groupings had been devised by earlier artists, De Hooch was the first artist to set them in a coherently-defined three-dimensional space illuminated by a bright light. In a certain sense, for the first time, De Hooch had made the description of space as important as the figures themselves. Some critics assert that Vermeer went one step further and made space and light the true subject of his canvases.
The Book of the Courtier
Baldassare Castiglione
(English translation of Il Cortegiano)
Perhaps the long hair and loose-fitting dress of both men in this work reflect a purposely "negligent" or "nonchalance" style which had become fashionable among men by the 1650s. Widely circulated manners books noted that it was not considered manly for one's dress to be too neat. Long hair became popular in different classes (perhaps because it could be achieved by those who could not afford expensive clothing). This fashion caused such alarm that church councils generating a controversy known as "The Dispute of the Locks" in 1645.
At least some of the inspiration for these fashions came from Baldassare Castiglione's book The Courtier (1528), which describes the ideals and behavior for the perfect gentleman whose appearance, referred to as sprezzatura, should appear effortless and even offhanded.
Peter Burke describes sprezzatura as "careful negligence" and "effortless and ease" maintaining that the ideal courtier is someone who "conceals art, and presents what is done and said as if it was done without effort and virtually without thought."
re of the formal portrait that looms in the background is a comment on loosening mores which earlier generations of stoic Dutchmen criticized. The term sprezzatura was eventually applied to a loose style of painting such as that of Giogione, Titian, Velasquez and in the Netherlands, Rembrandt.
Teasing the Pet
Frans van Mieris
1660
27.5 x 20 cm.
Mauritshuis, The Hague
One of the most distinctive characteristics of Vermeer's working method was his penchant for assimilating multiple motifs and stylistic elements drawn from the works of his colleagues. In the present composition by Vermeer, we find traces of Pieter de Hooch's rationalized interiors, the luxurious satin costumes of Gerrit ter Borch and the interactive "body language" of the figures found in the works of Frans van Mieris, bound together into an original, artistic solution.
In the Teasing the Pet of Van Mieris, which is often related to the present work, Vermeer may have appreciated the dynamics between the two figures where the less-than-subtle cavalier who attempts to make contact with the young girl by pulling her little dog's ear. Van Mieris is credited for having invented this motif which was later frequently repeated by his colleagues.
As usual, Vermeer rarely quoted his sources verbatim. Instead of the innocent puppy, he chose to formalize the encounter by replacing the anecdotal puppy with a more ceremonial offering of wine. While the lady in Van Mieris' work, at least for the moment, shuns her courtier's advances, the women in Vermeer's paintings looks out to the viewer and does not let precisely know her feelings. Thus each viewer may project into the picture his own thoughts and expectations becoming a participant e in the work's narrative.
Bergerette Dont vient cela (4 lutes) [892 KB]
from: Tilman Susato, Dansereye (1551)
http://www.amazon.com/Susato-Dansereye/dp/B0017ZH6LI/ref=dmusic_cd_album/102-4581861-1477717
The Refused Glass
Ludolf de Jongh
1650–1655
117 x 92 cm.
National Gallery, London
Even though the present work has been most frequently linked to models by De Hooch (Woman Drinking with Soldiers, see related artworks number 1, below) and Frans van Mieris, art historian Roland E. Fleischer has provides evidence that Vermeer's initial inspiration may have a been a painting of the Dutch artist Ludolf de Jongh, The Refused Glass (see image left). Analyzing the particularities of the two figures' costumes in De Jongh's work Fleischer dates the painting somewhere between 1650 and 1655, which suggests that it was the inspiration for not only Vermeer's but for De Hooch's painting as well. De Jongh was not of Delft where Vermeer and De Hooch traded ideas but he was almost certainly taught De Hooch in Rotterdam before the latter moved to Delft. It is known that the two remained in contact even after the De Hooch's move to Delft in the 1660s.
The pictures also may be more closely tied in theme than is apparent at first glance. Although the traditional title The Refused Glass is "based on the gesture of the seated lady's right hand, by which she supposedly declines the drink offered by the gentleman who bends towards her," Fleischer notes that on closer examination, "the man's right had, which holds the glass between the thumb and index finger may gracefully support the woman's hand with the remaining three finger. Instead of spurning the offer of wine, the lady may be coy recipient." Analogously, the lady in Vermeer's composition shows no sign of refusal.
De Jongh's work is uncharacteristically large for a genre painting and the Brunswick picture by Vermeer is one of the few large-scale interiors by Vermeer. Furthermore, both woman wear red satin dresses and fruit is displayed in both.
Fleischer conjectures that the subject may be a translation of a classical theme Venus Ceres and Bacchus in harmonious relationship. The three classical deities formed a popular trio in Western thought through the centuries based on Terence's proverb, "without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus is chilled" that is, without food and wine love grows cold. Thus, De Jongh and Vermeer would have artist given a contemporary setting of everyday life "a deeper significance by investing it with a time-honored universal truth already expressed in Ancient literature, thereby uniting the category of genre with those of allegory and history."
Woman Drinking with Soldiers
Pieter de Hooch
1658
69 x 60 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Frans van Mieris
1660
27.5 x 20 cm.
Mauritshuis, The Hague
Frans van Mieris
1661
27 x 20 cm.
Mauritshuis, The Hague
Ludolf de Jongh
1650–1655
117 x 92 cm.
National Gallery, London
Gerrit ter Borch
c.1660
41.6 x 31.9 cm.
The Royal Collection, London