A Lady Standing at a Virginal

The Lute Player (detail)
Hendrick Maertensz. Sorgh
1661
52 x 39 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

While most Dutch interior painters delighted in showimg bits and pieces of city life (see detail left) through the windows, Vermeer never once gives alludes to the world ouside his carefully assembled mise-en- scène. This must have been a deliberate choice since even though his studio was above the street level, some sort of architectural element would have been visible.

A Vermeer critic wrote that the artist permits us to see on the opened lid of the virginal what we cannot see through the closed window. In fact, the size and shape of the window's lower casement reflects to a fair degree the size and shape of the lid. Moreover, the gradation of pale blue to light lemon yellow of the window, which is far more apparent when viewing the original painting, recalls the color scheme of the landscape. Vermeer may have intended some sort of visual pun or musical echo to reinforce the painting's evident symmetry and musical theme.

This intricately-carved French gilt frame is the only object which stands by itself and does not overlap with any other object on the picture plane. Its luminous sparkle seems to purposely contrast with the somber geometry of the Cupid's ebony frame.

The conventional-looking landscape has been associated with a Mountain Landscape with Travelers by the Delft artist Pieter Groenewegen, a friend of Vermeer's father, whom Vermeer must have known well. If Vermeer did use Groenewegen's landscape, and not some lost work as a starting point, he freely adapted it to his needs. One can see that only the right half of Groenewegen's painting was utilized, perhaps to make it fit into the gilt frame which had visual priority. Some billowing clouds were added, perhaps to echo the billowing silk sleeves of the mistress. A castle which silhouettes against the sky was removed. A highly stylized version of Groenewegen's landscape appears again in full on the lid of the virginal.

Until recently, experts had more or less passed off the landscapes in Vermeer's interiors as a sort of decorative filler unable to make any significant iconographic connection with the scenes which unfolded beneath them. However, art historian Elise Goodman astutely reveals that like versifiers and composers of the 17th century, Vermeer utilized his framed landscapes to comment and enhance the meaning of the figures. The idea that woman was a "masterpiece of nature" to be admired, possessed and displayed appeared in countless poems, songs and tracts on beautiful women in the 17th-century Europe.

What seems at first glance to be a patient rendering of a gold frame is, on close observation a series of quickly applied dots and dabs, a sort of painted Morse code made of thick lemon yellow paint which literally dances upon a deeper ocher toned base. Vermeer expert Walter Liedtke has likened the rendering to "the lady's rhythmic curls, pearls, ribbons and the lace trim on her sleeve (its billowing combination of blue and white is echoed in the landscape's sky)." One might also envisage a certain musicality not far from the staccato effect of virginal music.

The provenance of the large-scale Cupid has been traced to two sources. Dutch art historian Eddy de Jongh was the first to point out that the Cupid with a raised arm was derived from an engraving of Otto van Veen's popular emblem book Amorum Emblemata published in 1608 in Antwerp. The Cupid holds aloft a card on which appears a number one which visually echoes the engraving's caption: "a lover ought to love only one." By including it, Vermeer most likely alludes to the concept of love which includes fidelity. In turn we know that Vermeer's Cupid may be the one mentioned in the inventory of his widow's possessions in 1676. It cannot be excluded that Vermeer was aware of the Van Veen emblem or even that painting itself was based on the same. In any case, the figure strongly recalls the classicist style of Cesar van Everdingen.

The obsessive search for an iconographic interpretation of Dutch genre painting in recent decades has proven particularly vexing in Vermeer's case. Moreover, it may be that the painter was deliberately ambiguous so as to leave room for diverse interpretations, each, according to the viewer's inclination. In any case, eventual symbolic meaning should not preclude our appreciation of the picture's purely visual value. The same Cupid appears in three other paintings by Vermeer including the Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window where it was later painted out. It is very likely a lost work of Dutch classicist Caesar van Everdingen and perhaps the Cupid listed in Vermeer's death inventory of 1676.

We have no record of who might have posed for this picture. In any case, it was not meant to function as a portrait because Vermeer did not define the young woman's individual physiognomy with any precision even though her inflexible expression draws us into the hollow cube of space that she confidently inhabits.

Curiously, the deep shadows of her face are painted with a dull green tone readily visible when observing the original. Vermeer used the same green tone in other late paintings for the same purpose. Painters of the time invariably used warm brown for darker flesh shadows although this unusual technique had been experimented by a few nearby Utrecht Caravaggists. Vermeer specialist John M. Montias hypothesized that the young Vermeer may have studied in Utrecht but still, this specific technical/stylistic tie is tenuous at best.

In the 17th century, pearls were an extremely important status symbol. Pearl necklaces are represented nine times in Vermeer's compositions and are used to underline the refined world of his sitters and may have functioned as a symbolic element as well.

As a painter and consumate observer, Vermeer must also have been fascinated by their visual qualities since he experimented with different and surprising technical solutions to paint them. Perhaps the most daring solution can be seen in this picture. If carefully observed, the outer edge of the necklace has barely been indicated by thin grayish paint. The lack of a definite contour suggests the pearl's transparency while the thick globular highlights inform us of the reflective quality, spherical form and the position of each individual pearl.

The young lady wears a formal silk garment called a tabbaard, a combination of a stiffened gown and a matching bodice called a tabbaardslijft. These bodices were heavily boned making them very uncomfortable and were thus worn only in formal occasions. The strange calligraphic brush strokes of the silk sleeve and lacey red ribbons are characteristic of his later works.

Vermeer's late compositions are strangely devoid of all incidentals which are so noticeable in his earlier paintings. Light and shade are more clearly defined and contours become sharper lending these paintings a crystalline quality. The young woman's elegant silk gown has a unique pale yellow tone different from that of the bodice. Vermeer's wife Catharina Bolnes had only one such gown made of black cloth which was probably meant for mourning.

One critic, noting the utmost simplicity with which it is rendered, wrote that it recalls the flutes of a classical Greek column.

P. C. Hooft "Sy blinkt, en doet al blincken" (detail)
Emblemata Amatoria, 1611,
in Werken, Amsterdam, 1671
National Gallery of Art, Washington

The virginal was an instrument greatly admired by the Dutch upper class during the mid-17th century. The lyrical yet restrained tones that resonated from its keyboard underscored the refinement in taste that accompanied the increase of wealth and influence enjoyed by this society.

Although Vermeer enjoyed economic security for most of his career, in his later years when this picture was painted, he had encountered serious economic difficulties due to the French invasion and subsequent crash of the art market. Thus, it is unlikely that the artist possessed such a luxury item at that time. It is generally held that he had contact with one the most illustrious art connoisseurs and men of culture in the Netherlands, Constantijn Huygens, who was himself a composer of great stature. Diego Duarte, who in turn was connected to the illustrious Huygens family, was an immensely rich Antwerp banker and possessed a "a young lady playing the clavecin, with accessories, by Vermeer." Duarte was an accomplished organist.

This particular kind of chair with a light blue (velvet?) covering was represented only one time in Vermeer's interiors even though similar chairs appear in other Dutch genre interiors such as those of Frans van Mieris (see detail left).

A conspicuous number of empty chairs populate Vermeer's single figured interiors and critics believe that they may allude to an absent male counterpart, perhaps a lover. The blue natural ultramarine pigment employed in the darker areas of the shadows has somewhat deteriorated.

Mountain Landscape with Travelers
Pieter Groenewegen
c.1658-1660

Art historian Gregor Weber, who has long been involved in research into the paintings Vermeer incorporated in the background of his masterpieces, was the first to point out that both the landscape on the lid of the virginal and the landscape in the golden frame on the back wall are derived from a single painting by the Delft artist Pieter Groenewegen (see left). Other than the overall composition and the successive light and dark layers of rocks and trees, the roofs of the houses and the waterfalls of two landscapes were virtually identical. Weber concluded that they were both based on the same painting.

Although many Dutch landscape painters composed their works along these lines, Weber noted a much greater similarity with the work of Pieter Groenewegen from Delft and concluded that the work must have been by him. By coincidence, Weber saw a photograph of Groenewegen's Mountain Landscape with Traveler and informed the two Amsterdam art dealers, John and Willem Jan Hoogsteder, of his finding who were amazed when they discovered they were the owners of the very picture in question.

Using computer montage, Weber further analyzed the two depictions in Vermeer's painting in reference to the real Groenewegen. And although it was evident that Vermeer had used some poetic license in adapting Groenewegen's landscape to his expressive exigencies, the coincidences were so compelling that they swept away any reasonable doubt of Weber's original conjecture.

What remains to be understood is the scope of Vermeer's pictorial trickery. It may be that the two landscapes were meant to deliberately "echo" each other in order to create a visual analogy to the musical theme which is at the heart of Vermeer's composition. Visual "echoes," some obvious and some more subtle, seem to be a standard tool in Vermeer's pictorial repertoire. One example is the curling locks of the youthful Guitar Player which closely well echo the dangling foliage of the landscape behind her. Another is the snow-white cap of the maid and the billowing clouds of the landscape behind her in the Love Letter.

In his late years, Vermeer moved away from a faithful recording of natural phenomena towards stylization. The remarkably free-flowing brush strokes of the veins of the marble floor tiles reveal the painter indulging himself in recording the movement of his own hand rather than the pleasure in recording the appearance of the tiles.

Other than two simple white jugs seen in his earlier compositions, these hand-painted baseboard tiles were the only homage Vermeer paid to the renowned Delft porcelain production. The humble tiles, which were so cheap that they sometimes served as ballast in ships sailing abroad, protected the plaster walls from the daily assault of brooms, mops and scrubbing brushes. Each tile was decorated separately with scenes of daily life including children's games such as walking on stilts or flying kites. The tile directly to the left of the woman's gown depicts a Cupid who is fishing.

Art historian H. Rodney Nevitt Jr. pointed out that the tile to the right of the woman's skirt is similar to a print of Hooft's Emblemata amatoria which plays on the conventional comparison between fishing and courtship. Other elements which reinforce the theme of love are the large painting of Cupid in the black frame and the virginal, traditionally associated with pure love.

The puffy silk sleeve of the mistress constitutes a veritable tour de force of bravado brushwork. On close examination, the brilliant chiaroscural effect of the silken material is evoked by deftly placed dots, dabs and dashes of light-toned paint over a light gray base. Such a daring approach is not unusual in the artist's very latest works.

Some critics believe that this technical innovation was a consequence of the artist's need to abbreviate the painting process for commercial motives while others see an accommodation to the growing taste for French mannerism which had begun to influence Dutch interior painting.