The Music Lesson

In the tilted dark ebony framed mirror, we catch a glimpse of the young girl's face, turned slightly to the right a bit more than one would expect from viewing the backside of the figure itself. But the mirror, a passage which must have been admired by Vermeer's fellow painters, tells more than just the encounter of two young musicians. Above and to the right of the girl's reflection, a part of the carpet and floor tiles can be clearly made out while with some difficulty, one leg and a lower crossbar of the artist's easel (see the same easel in Vermeer's Art of Painting). The easel introduces the artist himself into the narrative scheme of the painting. Consequentially, the viewer witnesses a scene of a young woman making music with a respectable cavalier as they are being painted by an unseen artist. We become aware of the intellect that went into the painting's creation.

Mirrors had many associations in European painting. A mirror can stand for either truth or vanity. Mirrors provide images of a viewer that reflect what others see. The self-awareness they allow can lead to fruitful introspection and the viewer's attempts to get to "truth." Alternatively, the mirror can simply lead to unfortunate vanity.

Dutch art theorists of the era of Vermeer likened painting to be "mirror" of nature which through deception allows the artist to "delightfully" describe the appearance of nature. Some critics have drawn a spiritual parallel to the mirror in Las Meninas by Velásquez even though the two great baroque artists were not aware of each other's work.

One such ebony-framed mirror was listed in the front room of Vermeer's house shortly after his death.

The virginals, or virginal, is a box-shaped keyboard instrument; the more familiar harpsichord looks more like a piano and is triangular in shape. Closed, the typical Flemish virginal looks like an elongated linen closet. Opened, its visual effect is striking. The keyboard is often surrounded by decorative block printed papers. These papers also cover the front of the case and line the inside of the fallboard as well as the case above the soundboard, and the interior of the lid. Mottoes, such as the one seen in the Music Lesson, were a frequent embellishment. Many, if not most, of the instruments were constructed without legs, and would be placed on a table for playing. Later models were built with their own stands analogous to the one in the Music Lesson.

The lining paper on the keywell of Vermeer's instrument, decorated with flowers, foliage and sea-horses, also occurs on instruments depicted by Metsu (A Man and a Woman Seated by a Virginal) and Steen (A Young Woman Playing a Harpsichord), both in the National Gallery, London. There are specific sources for the patterns used on the lid and the fallboard, but no source for the pattern on the keywell has yet been discovered.

The music written for the virginal was measured in rhythms, and nuances of timing were carefully conceived and executed. The lyrics often accompanying the music were about human and spiritual love and about the comfort (solace) that one can obtain from it.

Although writers have often evidenced that a virginal would have been considered a luxury item at the time, Walter Liedtke points out that virginals were more frequently cited in household inventories that is usually thought. For example, two Ruckers virginals were owned by the organist Dirck Scholl during the 1660s.

In any case, it is not surprising that not a single keyboard instrument is present in Vermeer's death inventory of 1676. Dutch music expert Edwin Buijsen believes that they could have been seen at the home of the music lover Cornelis Graswinckel, who was related by marriage to Vermeer's patron Pieter van Ruijven. Nor is it impossible that on one occasion Vermeer traveled to nearby The Hague to admire the famous collection of musical instruments belonging to Constantijn Huygens. He could have borrowed such instruments from his clients or upper-class art lovers with whom he was in contact.

There is no doubt that the virginal which Vermeer represented in the Music Lesson came from the workshop of the Ruckers family who dominated the Antwerp production of keyboard instruments from the end of the 16th until the middle of the 17th century. Their harpsichords found their way into all European countries and some even traveled as far as South America.

Laboratory analysis shows that Vermeer adjusted the shape of the virginal's lid to improve the painting's composition. The lid is slightly wider to the right of the girl than it is to her left, a shift of alignment that lessens the tendency to visually connect the two halves of the lid design through the girl.

The virginals, or virginal, is a box-shaped keyboard instrument; the more familiar harpsichord looks more like a piano and is triangular in shape. Closed, the typical Flemish virginal looks like an elongated linen closet. Opened, its visual effect is striking. The keyboard is often surrounded by decorative block printed papers. These papers also cover the front of the case and line the inside of the fallboard as well as the case above the soundboard, and the interior of the lid. Mottoes, such as the one seen on the lid of the virginal in Vermeer's Music Lesson, were a frequent embellishment. Many, if not most, of the instruments were constructed without legs, and would be placed on a table for playing. Later models were built with their own stands.

The lining paper on the keywell of Vermeer's instrument, decorated with flowers, foliage and sea-horses, also occurs on instruments depicted by Metsu (A Man and a Woman seated by a Virginal) and Steen (A Young Woman playing a Harpsichord), both in the National Gallery, London. There are specific sources for the patterns used on the lid and the fallboard, but no source for the pattern on the keywell has yet been discovered.

The music written for the virginal was measured in rhythms, and nuances of timing were carefully conceived and executed. The lyrics often accompanying the music were about human and spiritual love and about the comfort (solace) that one can obtain from it.

Although writers have often evidenced that a virginal would have been considered a luxury item at the time, Walter Liedtke points out that virginal were more frequently cited in household inventories that is usually thought. For example, two Ruckers virginals were owned by the organist Dirck Scholl during the 1660s.

In any case, it is not surprising that not a single keyboard instrument is present in Vermeer's death inventory of 1676. Dutch music expert Edwin Buijsen believes that they could have been seen at the home of the music lover Cornelis Graswinckel, who was related by marriage to Vermeer's patron Pieter van Ruijven. Nor is it impossible that on one occasion Vermeer traveled to nearby The Hague to admire the famous collection of musical instruments belonging to Constantijn Huygens. He could have borrowed such instruments from his clients or upper-class art lovers with whom he was in contact.

There is no doubt that the virginal which Vermeer represented in the Music Lesson came from the workshop of the Ruckers family who dominated the Antwerp production of keyboard instruments from the end of the 16th until the middle of the 17th century. Their harpsichords found their way into all European countries and some even traveled as far as South America.

Laboratory analysis shows that Vermeer adjusted the shape of the virginal's lid to improve the painting's composition. The lid is slightly wider to the right of the girl than it is to her left, a shift of alignment that lessens the tendency to visually connect the two halves of the lid design through the girl.

Cimon and Pero (Roman Charity)
Matthias Stomer(?)

Like other Dutch genre artists of the time Vermeer used background pictures for his painted mise-en-scène much as a modern stage director utilizes reproductions, photographs, posters and furniture to identify an environment, to evoke a mood or to make an ironic comment on a scene. Although it can barely be made out, art specialists have identified this picture as a Caravaggist work based on an original by Gerrit van Honthorst or Matthias Stomer. Maria Thins (Vermeer's mother-in-law with whom he and his wife would reside until their death) already owned one such work in Gouda which appeared in the inventory list made up at the time she and her husband legally separated.

Vermeer reveals about two-fifths of this "Roman Charity," principally the back side of the head and the chained arms of Cimon, whom we know to be, but cannot see, sucking his daughter's breast. As John Michael Montias pointed out, the picture on the wall hints, by focusing only on Cimon in chains, that the gentleman-listener in the Music Lesson, however, restrained, is captivated by the young woman. "He is bound by virtual fetters, a metaphor for Cimon's irons. The analogy may be extended a step further: milk and music, each in its way, assuage the pains of captivity."

Giovanni della Volta with his Wife and Children (detail)
Lorenzo Lotto
probably 1547
104.5 x 138 cm
National Gallery, London

By the 13th century, merchant travelers like Marco Polo had remarked on the beauty of the Oriental carpets they encountered in their journeys. Soon after, carpets began to be imported into Venice and then distributed throughout the rest of Europe. While early carpets of this kind are rarely preserved, European great masters, from Giotto and Ghirlandaio to Holbein, Van Eyck, Lotto (see detail left) and Vermeer, frequnetly depicted those from Turkey and Iran.

The fact that so many carpets appear in Dutch interiors of the time might lead us to believe that they were an integral part of Dutch living. However, they do not occur so frequently in death inventories and moreover, these "turkse" and "persiche tapijten" never occur in appreciable quantities on the cargo of Dutch merchant ships.

It is known that some painters supplied clients with the carpets themselves and a single carpet might be used for generations of artists. Vermeer himself seems to have used a least one of the carpets more than once.

Carpet expert Onno Ydema writes that the carpet in the Music Lesson is a 16th-century Ushak type, from Turkey and is faithfully described by the artist. Most carpets were depicted as table coverings. They were simply too expensive to be thrown on the floor where they would be soiled.

Perched on top of the Ushak carpet sits a thin-necked jug with a remarkable creamy-white tin glaze and topped by a metal lid. 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 Holland they were imitated by local potters. They appear in many 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 Italian.

The pitcher Vermeer depicted once had a thinner neck.

The vase is set upon a flat, elaborately decorated silver tray. Rich urban dwellers often invested their money in furniture, silver objects, carpets, tapestries and porcelain which in many cases cost more than paintings which hung nearby. The extravagant embossing and engraving of silver objects done by the best Dutch silversmiths required years of training and enormous skill. Some were the greatest artists of heir time.

Curiously, the great part of paintings did not possess a comparable artistic "aura" as they do today and were collected for a variety of reasons.

This is the only painting in Vermeer's oeuvre which shows two sets of windows. The design of the panes is comparable to that of the Woman with a Water Pitcher (see detail left). Large windows were characteristic of Dutch buildings because they permitted to enter the maximum amount of daylight.

These windows were typically composed of four casements. The bottom two had shutters on the outside (see Vermeer's Little Street) and at times, two upper shutters attached on the inside. The shutters controlled incoming light and air flow. Curtains were also hung to filted light and indsicreet eyes from outside. Presumably, the two windows of the Music Lesson faced north onto the central Market Square. Painters have always preferred a northern exposition for their studios since northern light is cooler and relatively constant throughout the working day.

As in all of Vermeer's paintings (and this separates them from works by his contemporaries), this window reveals no view outside heightening the sense of privacy and silent dialogue between the figures.

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 which can clearly be 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 works 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 real geometrical property of the room and not an inaccuracy in Vermeer's drawing.

Vermeer, like many of his colleagues, represented these common so-called Spanish chairs countless times. Its basic model had evolved in Spain by the 15th century and was rapidly adopted all over Europe. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable numbers. Perhaps the hand-carved lion-head finials were made by a specialized artisan or a sculptor.

The light blue coloring may not have been the color intended by the painter. The main blue pigment, natural ultramarine, is known to lighten considerably in unfavorable circumstances. The so-called ultramarine sickness is apparent in other paintings by Vermeer.

Viola of the second half of
the 17th century

This viol did not appear in the initial stages of work but was added later for compositional and/or iconographic motives.

The viola da gamba makes four minor, but iconographically significant, appearances in Vermeer's musical theme paintings. Never once does he portray it being played, in all four paintings it remains quietly unattended, perhaps awaiting someone who will gather it up and make music. Together with the lute, the viola da gamba is probably the most frequently represented instrument throughout the centuries, whether in painting, sculpture or miniature. The viol's soft but clear tone imitates the human voice and is the perfect complement for the lute. Its deep tone and unusual stature are associated with the male while the virginal is associated with the female.

Dutch art specialists agree that Vermeer did not paint the marble floor tiles from life. Such a luxurious domestic feature, destined only to the rich, was economically out of the reach of both Vermeer and his mother-in-law with whom he lived and in whose house he kept his studio. Period inventories reveal that marble floors, rare in any case, were generally restricted to one room, the voorhuis (the main entrance) where they would have been seen by most visitors. Wooden flooring was far more practical during the long gelid Dutch winters, stock features even in the wealthiest Dutch houses.

Since the tiles were not drawn from life, Vermeer probably created a basic diagonal grid of the tiles on paper with the aid of simple linear perspective which could be easily transferred onto the canvas with a number of means, including the simple string-and-pin technique (see Special Topics below). He could then color the tiles black or white producing the pattern which most advantageously accorded with the pictorial exigencies of a particular work. In the present work, the white tiles were isolated from the black in order to avoid creating the so-called accelerated perspective which pulls the viewer's attention too much towards the back of the painting. This tile scheme is never repeated in his interiors.

Vermeer never once arranged the tiles perpendicularly to the perimeter of the walls like in many paintings of Pieter de Hooch.

Some critics have pointed out that the men who appear in Vermeer's group themes are rarely active and seemed to have been intentionally relegated to an oddly passive role. In this case, the upright gentleman has been taken for a music teacher, based on his authoritative pose and paintings of analogous theme by Vermeer's colleagues. Walter Liedtke, however, notes that the man's mouth is opened and that, consequentially, he must be singing and since no music books are present he must know the music by heart.

Technical examinations have revealed that Vermeer initially positioned the man closer to the girl. The girl's head also was once turned more toward the man as it appears in the mirror now. By distancing the man and by turning the girl's head back, Vermeer loosened their bond and allowed them to work more coherently in the total composition.

As Vermeer expert Arthur Wheelock pointed out, by obscuring the woman's hands and music from the viewer, "Vermeer emphasized less the specifics of the woman and her music than the abstract concepts her music embodies: joy, harmony in love, healing, and solace."

"The theme of healing and solace...is reinforced through the painting partially visible on the rear wall. Just enough of its image is visible to identify it as a depiction of Cimon and Pero, a story taken from Valerius Maximus that is better known as Roman Charity." Furthermore, the Motto on the virginal reads: MVSICA LETITIAE CO[ME]S MEDICINA DOLOR [VM] (Music is the companion of joy, balm for sorrow)

The young musician wears a light satin yellow jacket that can be found in two other works, The Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window (see detail left) and the Woman Holding a Water Jug. Marieke de Winkel, Dutch costume expert, points out that this kind of garment was usually worn as daily wear and that it was sometimes called a schort except in Leiden where it was referred to as a wacht. Only a few examples of these bodices have survived.

More than one writer has pointed out that the three black bands approximate quite closely Vermeer's typical monogram with which he signed various works.