The Music Lesson
(De muziekles)
c. 1662-1664
oil on canvas
28 7/8 x 25 3/8 in. (73.3 x 64.5 cm.)
The Royal Collection, Buckingham Palace
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. But the mirror, a passage which must have been admired by Vermeer's fellow painters, revelas more than just an encounter of two young musicians. Above and to the right, a part of the foreground carpet and floor tiles can be clearly made out while with some difficulty, a leg and the crossbar of the artist's easel (see the same easel in Vermeer's Art of Painting). The easel introduces the artist 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. Vermeer subtly makes us aware of the intellect that went into the painting's creation.
Mirrors had many associations in European painting. It could 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 his interior "truth." Alternatively, the mirror can simply lead to unfortunate vanity.
In Vermeer's age, the mirror also had strong associations with the art of painting. In his theoretical treatise, Samuel van Hoogstraten wrote: "A perfect painting is like a mirror of Nature, in which things that are not there appear to be there, and which deceives in an acceptable, amusing, and praiseworthy fashion." In this Van Hoogstraten addressed the dilemma of the art of painting which must have been present to Vermeer when he painted: the more the painted image is the perceived as real, the more it is deceptive and hence, morally reprehensible.
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 instruments 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 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 instruments 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 the 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. Roman Charity (or Carità Romana) is the exemplary story of a daughter, Pero, who secretly breastfeeds her father, Cimon, after he is incarcerated and sentenced to death by starvation. She is found out by a jailer, but her act of selflessness impresses officials and wins her father's release.
How does the pciture relate to the two 17th-century Dutchmen enjoying their music? 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, frequently 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" are not documented 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 numerous 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 were considered more valuable 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 their 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 the maximum amount of daylight to enter.
Such 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 indiscreet 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 seem 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. This so-called ultramarine sickness is apparent in other paintings by Vermeer.
Viola of the second half of
the 17th century
This viola da gamba did not appear in the initial concept of work but was presumably added in a later stage for compositional and/or iconographic motives.
The viola da gamba makes four minor, but ichnographically 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 generally agree that Vermeer did not paint the marble floor tiles from life. Such a luxurious domestic feature, destined only to the very 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. To see real marble floors the artist would have had to visit the local Delft Town Hall or the nearby princely palace in Rijswijk.
Since the tiles were probably not painted from life, Vermeer could have easily drawn a basic diagonal grid of the tiles on paper with the aid of simple linear perspective. The drawing could be easily transferred onto the canvas with a number of means, including the camera obscura projection and the simple string-and-pin technique (see Special Topics below). Once the drawing was in place, the artist could color the tiles black or white producing the pattern which most advantageously accorded with the pictorial exigencies of each work. In the present painting, the white tiles were isolated from the black in order to avoid creating the so-called "accelerated" perspective which tends to dominate the viewer's attention and pulls his eyes too much towards the back of the painting. This same tile scheme is never repeated again.
Curiously, Vermeer never once arranged the tiles perpendicularly to the perimeter of the background walls like in many paintings of Pieter de Hooch.
Some critics have pointed out that the men who appear in Vermeer's group paintings 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 Dutch art 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, observes 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.
Comparing the girl with her reflection we can notice that the back of her head, directly seen, is more conventionally perceived, more recognizable, perhaps more touching, her reflected face, its detail dissolved, its humanity suspended in light, has a deeper kind of completeness. The face is reflected not only in the mirror but also in the painter's temperament. For the first time we have the sense that he has a use, however oblique, for the whole of human appearance.
Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer, 1952
c. 1662-1664 - Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Vermeer: The Complete Works, New York, 1997)
c. 1662-1663
Walter Liedtke Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, New York, 2008)
The plain-weave linen support has a thread count of 15 x 14 per cm2. The original tacking edges have been removed. Cusping occurs on all sides, more pronounced along top and bottom edges. The canvas has been lined.
The light brownish gray ground contains lead white, chalk, and a little umber, with aggregates of lead white particles. The paint is thinly and smoothly applied although some texture is present, as on the nearest edge of the bass viol, which stands out due to curling impasto.
The bottom half of the painting has a strong blue cast. The dark tiles in the foreground are blue while those further back in the composition are dark gray and contain no blue pigment. The shadow of the carpet on the table in the right foreground is dominated by a bright blue, which may be discolored. A pinhole with which Vermeer marked the vanishing point of the composition is visible in the paint layer.
* Johannes Vermeer (exh. cat., National Gallery of Art and Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis - Washington and The Hague, 1995, edited by Arthur Wheelock)
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. 6;
- Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, Amsterdam/The Hague (1718), Venice (1741);
- his widow, Angela Carriera, Venice (1741-42);
- Joseph Smith, Venice and Mogliano (1742-62);
- King Georg III, Windsor Castle, as by Frans van Mieris, (1762 acquired with the Smith Collection);
- since 1762 Royal Collection, Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace (inv. 109).
exhibitions
| vermeer's life | Vermeer's income in the 1660s was probably higher than in the 1670s. In the1660s, sales of paintings and especially his mother-in-law's (Maria Thins) substantial financial contributions together probably ranged from 850 to 1,500 guilders a year. A mason earned about 500 guilders. Vermeer is elected for the first time headsman of the St. Luke's guild in Delft at the age of 30 for a two year term.. However, by this time many artists resident in Delft had left for the more prosperous Amsterdam and so his election may have had less significance than once believed. He was the youngest artist to become headmaster since the guild was organized in 1611. Many of the luxury items seen in Vermeer's interiors such as the virginal seen in The Music Lesson were economically out of reach of the artist. They may have been lent to him by affluent men of culture or clients such as Diego Duarte, a rich Antwerp banker, in whose important art collection was cited "a young lady playing a clavecin, with accessories, by Vermeer." The virginal seen in Vermeer's The Music Lesson was built by Johannes Ruckers. These rare instruments were sold at about 300 guiders, about half the cost of Gerrit Dou, a Frans van Mieris. An averge Dutch house might cost 1,000 guilders. In Delft, hese instruments were owned by the official town musician Scholl. |
| dutch painting | Pieter Saendredam ( b. 1597) dies in Haarlem. Despite its decline, Delft remained and important city of passage for artists passing from Haarlem, Utrecht and Amsterdam. It contained a number of fine art collections. Ferries parted many times a day to the nearby The Hague and Amsterdam was less than a days away on an inexpensive horse-towed barge. |
| european painting & architecture | André Le Nôtre designs park and gardens of Versailles Louis XIV begins to build palace of Versailles; he makes Charles Lebrun his chief artistic adviser. |
| music | Composer Henry Lawes dies at London October 21 at age 66. |
| literature |
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| science & philosophy | |
| history | New Amsterdam colonist John Bowne is arrested for permitting Quakers to hold meetings in his Flushing house, completed last year at what will become 37-01 Bowne Street, Queens (see Mathematician-physicist-philosopher-theologian Blaise Pascal dies at the Jansenist Port-Royal monastery in Paris August 19 at age 39. Publication of a world atlas in eleven parts by Joan Blaeu in Amsterdam. Remonstrance, 1657). Bowne is convicted of having violated Governor Peter Stuyvesant's ban on Quaker assemblies. He is jailed and banished, but when he reaches Holland and appeals to the Dutch West India Company, it acquits him of all charges, frees him, and rebukes Governor Stuyvesant, thereby establishing the right to free practice of religious worship. Blaise Pascal proposes the introduction of a public transport system in Paris. Coaches would travel along predetermined routes and take passengers for a small fee. The first coach goes into service during the following year. Founding of the Academia Leopoldina in Vienna The Royal Society receives charter from Charles II. Holland and France form an alliance against possible attack by England. |
| vermeer's life | In the early and mid-1660s Vermeer paints a series of extraordinary pictures of single women in the corner of a room absorbed in their activity. Even their most striking passages of observation are always subordinated to the impression made by the whole composition. A French diplomat and art connoisseur Balthasar de Monconys visits Vermeer in Delft. In his diary he notes that he was unable to see any paintings there and had to visit the house of a baker where he saw a painting with a single figure. De Monconys comes initially as a tourist, evidently unaware of Vermeer's presence. A few weeks later, he went to pay his respects in The Hague to Constantijn Huygens, an important art connoisseur and theorist of Dutch culture. De Monconys admired his art collection and described it in detail. However, one can only imagine how amazed Huygens must have been to hear that the Frenchman had been in Delft, without visiting Vermeer. It seems a reasonable assumption that Huygens urged de Monconys to meet with the Delft painter, given the Frenchman’s predilection for fine art. Not long afterward, de Monconys did indeed visit with Vermeer at his house, and wrote the following account in his diary journal, which was published in 1665, the year of his death: "In Delft I saw the painter Verme(e)r who did not have any of his works: but we did see one at a baker's, for which six hundred livres had been paid, although it contained but a single figure, for which six pistoles would have been too high a price." Simply put, de Monconys thought the painting he saw was worth less than a tenth of the price mentioned. c. 1663 a son named Johannes, named after himself, is born to Vermeer. |
| dutch painting | Rembrandt depicts himself as a bit player in his painting The Raising of the Cross. Jan Steen paints The Drawing Lesson. Adriaen van de Velde paints Cattle near a Building. Pieter de Hoogh, who had moved away from Delft to Amsterdam to seek more patronage, returns to Delft at least once in this year. |
| european painting & architecture | Bernini: Scala Regia, Vatican, Rome Building of Castle Nymphenburg, near Munich. Nicolas Poussin paints The Four Seasons. France's minister of finance Jean-Baptiste Colbert appoints painter Charles Le Brun director of the Gobelins, which will grow under Le Brun's direction from a small tapestry manufactory into a vast enterprise that supplies all of the royal houses. The Academy of Painting and Sculpture is reorganized, with Le Brun as its director. |
| music | Mar 7, Tomaso Antonio Vitali, composer, is born. Pascal: L'Equilibre des liqueurs (posth.) |
| literature | The Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (the Academy of the Humanities) is founded in Paris. John Milton marries Elizabeth Minshull. |
| science & philosophy | Isaac Newton discovers the binomial theorem. Physicist Otto von Guericke invents the first electric generator. It produces static electricity by applying friction against a revolving ball of sulfur, and Guericke will show in 1672 that the electricity can cause the surface of the sulfur ball to glow. |
| history | Dutch forces hold the best pepper ports of India's Malabar Coast, giving them a virtual stranglehold on the spice trade once controlled by Portugal. A Third Navigation Act adopted by Parliament July 27 forbids English colonists to trade with other European countries. European goods bound for America must be unloaded at English ports and reshipped, even though English export duties and profits to middlemen may make prices prohibitive in America. |
| vermeer's life | In a death inventory of the English sculptor Jean Larson, who lived in the Hague, is listed "a head by Vermeer." Some critics believe it may have bee the Girl with a Pearl Earring. In the early to mid-1660s Vermeer refined all the qualities of his mature style. In his orderly designs, Vermeer gave new life to familiar patterns of contemporary genre painting by closely studying the subtleties of appearance. |
| dutch painting | Pieter de Hoogh paints Young Woman Weighing Gold Jan Steen: paints The Christening Feast. Frans Hals, one of the most fashionable portraitists of his time and now in his late sixties, paints two of his most significant group portraits, the Regents and Regentesses of the Old Men's Alshouse at Haarlem. Owing to his dire poverty he will be given a small allowance by the town of Haarlem. |
| european painting & architecture | Nicola Poussin paints Apollo and Daphne John Vanbrugh, Eng. architect and dramatist, is born. Christopher Wren: Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. Francisco de Zurbaran, Spanish painter, dies. |
| music | The French horn becomes an orchestral instrument. Oratorio: Christmas Oratorio by Heinrich Schütz at Dresden. |
| literature | William Shakespeare - the second impression of the Third Folio, which added seven plays to the thirty-six of the First Folio and the Second: Pericles, Prince of Tyre and six works from the Shakespeare Apocrypha. Thomas Killigrew and the King's Company stage Killigrew's The Parson's Wedding with an all-female cast. Killigrew attempts a similar all-female production of his play Thomaso, though the project is never realized. |
| science & philosophy | Robert Hooke discovers the Great Red Spot (an extremely persistent storm) on Jupiter and uses it to determine the period of Jupiter's rotation, which is astonishingly less than ten hours despite Jupiter's great size. Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, calculates the orbit of a comet and finds that it is a parabola (not a circle, ellipse, or line as expected in various earlier theories). Descartes' Traité de l'homme et de la formation de foetus (treatise on man and the formation of the fetus), printed posthumously, describes animals as purely mechanical beings; that is, there is no "vital force" that makes animals different from other material objects. Christiaan Huygens proposes that the length of a pendulum with a period of one second should be the standard unit for length. |
| history | Aug 29, Adriaen Pieck/Gerrit de Ferry patented a wooden firespout in Amsterdam. New Amsterdam handed over by Peter Stuyvesant to the English, who renames the city New York Amsterdam passes a regulation banning the sale of "rotten, spoiled, or defective spinach, cucumbers, and carrots, ears of corn, radishes, or other fruits [vegetables] because pride could not be taken in or from such things." Slavery is introduced into the Caribbean island of Montserrat and will not be abolished until 1834. The Black Death kills 24,000 in old Amsterdam while the English are taking Nieuw Amsterdam. The plague spreads to Brussels and throughout much of Flanders, and in December it kills two Frenchmen in London's Drury Lane. Men who put the dead into the deadcarts keep their pipes lit in the belief, now widespread, that tobacco smokers will somehow be spared. Samuel Pepys buys forks for his household, but most Englishmen continue to eat with their fingers and will continue to do so until early in the next century lest they be considered effete or, in the opinion of some clergymen, even sacrilegious. A man going out to dinner has for centuries brought his own spoon and knife, the spoon being folded into the pocket and the knife carried in a scabbard attached to the belt; more men now carry folding forks as well. The Kronenbourg Brewery founded in Alsace will continue into the 21st century to produce beer. |
The Chess Players
Cornelis de Man
1670
97.5 x 85 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary
The quintessential, pristine Dutch interior of the Music Lesson scarcely reflects Vermeer's personal circumstances and may have been largely contrived. It is a well known fact that the luxury objects such as carpets, marble flooring, silver trays and musical instruments all which appear in the same room were seldom found in any but the wealthiest homes. Oppositely, none of common household objects listed in the artist's posthumous inventory such as cradles, beds and shabby furniture ever upset Vermeer's perfect compositions. Genre interior artists like Vermeer were selective in what they painted.
In general, the density of furnishings in Dutch homes must have been much higher than what ever appeared in Vermeer's paintings (see image left). Vermeer's uncluttered and perfectly ordered spaces were deliberately set up and painted in order to convey an idea of harmony and peace of refined and elegant living that would have appealed to the married couples who hung them in their homes. They are closer to cinematic mise-en-scène than to snapshots of real-life circumstances.
Thus, Vermeer might qualify as a metteur en scène, "putter on scene," (the French title given to a film director), who carefully arranges the sets, props, actors, costumes, and lighting on his set.
Jacob Cats
"Quid Non Sentit Amor"
Proteus, ofte, Minne-beelden verandert in sinne-beelden
1627
National Gallery of Art Library, Washington D.C.
The relationship between music and love as a pictorial theme was frequently explored by Dutch 17th-century painters with varying shades of meaning. In The Music Lesson, Vermeer alludes metaphorically to the harmony of two souls in love, suggested by the unattended bass viol on the floor before the couple. The juxtaposition of the two instruments, the virginal and the bass viol, may refer to an emblem by Jacob Cats, "Quid Non Sentit Amor" that describes how the sound of one instrument resonates on the other just as two hearts can exist harmoniously even if separated.
Jesuit Church on the Oude Langendijk
(pen and ink drawing)
Abraham Rademaker
Gemeentearchief, Delft
Although much has been theorized about Vermeer's working methods in conjunction with the room(s) in which he worked, we do not know in how many different rooms he worked in, or even the house in which his studio was located. However, informed specialists believe that Vermeer worked in at least three different environments during his twenty-year career. What is certain is that he did not work in the modest circumstances in which artists such as Rembrandt and Adriaen van Ostade enjoyed portraying themselves.
It has been reasonably hypothesized that Vermeer worked in his the same house as his living quarters. From 1660, we know that Vermeer was living with his mother-in-law, Maria Thins on Oude Langendijk, directly across his father's inn Mechelen on the Market Square in the center of Delft. Vermeer's biographer John M. Montias believed that the Thins house is pictured on an 18th-century drawing of a Jesuit church on Oude Langendijk by Abraham Rademaker (the Thins/Vermeer house is the furthest one to the right but may also be one or two houses over to the right, just outside the drawing). The drawing shows us a series of modest houses, each one having a ground floor, an upstairs floor, some with an extra floor and an attic.
The Music Lesson provides most probably a very good idea of how Vermeer's studio was structured.
Title page of Sinne- en minnebeelden
Art historians believe that emblematic literature constitutes one of the prime resources for comprehending the hidden meaning in Dutch genre painting. In the present work, an emblem by Jacob Cats, "Quid Non Sentit Amor," has often been called into play.
Although Cats was hardly known outside of Holland, among his own people for nearly two centuries he enjoyed an enormous popularity. His countrymen is shown their affection by his nickname, "Father Cats." His diffuseness and the antiquated character of his matter and diction, have, however, come to be regarded as difficulties in the way of study, and he is more renowned than read.
Cats took his doctor's degree in law at Orléans, practiced at The Hague, and, after visits to Oxford and Cambridge, settled in Zeeland, where he accumulated wealth by land reclamation. Becoming a magistrate, he was successively pensionary of Middelburg and Dordrecht and, from 1636 to 1651, grand pensionary of Holland. He took part in diplomatic missions to England in 1627 to Charles I and in 1651-52, unsuccessfully, to Cromwell. His background gave him an international outlook, and he was in sympathy with many of the English Puritan writers.
Although Cats was a scholar and diplomat, he was primarily a writer of poetic emblem books, a type of literature popular in the 17th century that consisted of woodcuts or engravings accompanied by verses pointing a moral. These books offered provocative texts and intriguing images that educated young readers in the subjects of love, such as choosing one's partner, marital fidelity and the possible pangs of love. He used this form to express the major ethical concerns of early Dutch Calvinists, especially those dealing with love and marriage. By being the first to combine emblem literature with love poetry, and by his skill as a storyteller, he achieved enormous popularity. The sources on which he draws are chiefly the Bible and the Classics and occasionally Boccaccio and Cervantes.
His first book, Sinne- en minnebeelden (1618; "Portraits of Morality and Love"), contained engravings with text in Dutch, Latin, and French. Each picture has a threefold interpretation, expressing what were for Cats the three elements of human life: love, society, and religion. Perhaps his most famous emblem book is Spiegel van den ouden ende nieuwen tijdt (1632; "Mirror of Old and New Times"), many quotations from which have become household sayings. It is written in a more homely style than his earlier works, in popular rather than classical Dutch. Two other works, Houwelyk (1625; "Marriage") and Trou-ringh (1637; "Wedding Ring") are rhymed dissertations on marriage and conjugal fidelity. In one of his last books, Ouderdom, buyten-leven en hof-gedachten (1655; "Old Age, Country Life, and Garden Thoughts"), Cats wrote movingly about old age.
Most Flemish virginals had their soundboards painted with flowers, fruit, birds, caterpillars, moths and even cooked prawns, all within blue scalloped borders and intricate blue arabesques. Natural keys were normally covered in bone, and sharps were of oak or, less commonly, chestnut. The case exteriors were usually marbled like the ones in Vermeer's Lady Standing at the Virginals and Lady Seated at the Virginals. Occasionally the inside of the lid bore a decorative scene; more often it was covered with block-printed papers embellished with a Latin motto, usually connected with morality or music.
Some typical mottos include:
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MVNDI (Thus passes the glory of the world)
MVSICA DVLCE LABORVM LEVAMEN (Sweet music is the solace of labour)
MVSICA DONVM DEI (Music is the gift of God)
The Motto on the virginals in Vermeer's Music Lesson reads:
MVSICA LETITIAE CO[ME]S MEDICINA DOLOR[VM]
(Music is the companion of joy, balm for sorrow)
By the time Vermeer painted the Music Lesson he was in full command of the painting medium. He had learned to exploit every stylistic and technical component in order o enhance the meaning of his images, including linear perspective, the most formidable tool for creating an illusionist image.
Perspective was held in high esteem since it enabled the artist to deceive the viewer into believing that the painted scenes were real, one of the prime concerns of Dutch realism. One of the few surviving accounts of Vermeer's art by a contemporary signaled his works as "perspectives." Perspective was also important because it provided the mathematical basis for painting a fact which could itself elevate its traditional lowly hierarchical status from the Mechanical Arts to the Liberal Arts. This concept must have been of considerable importance to Vermeer who later dedicated his most ambitions work to the edification of the status of the painter in the renowned The Art of Painting.
In ancient times, the Liberal Arts were those considered to be fitting pursuits for free and noble citizens, being above the labor of handicrafts. Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy and Music represented the scientific Liberal Arts because they were based on mathematics. Grammar, Dialectic and Rhetoric represented the rational side because they dealt with language. Both painting and sculpture on the other hand were classed among the mechanical arts because they required manual labor.
Vermeer used perspective not only to create depth but to clarify his message. In the present work, if we trace the orthogonals of the perspectival system, we find that they converge upon the eye to the spiritual heart of the painting, the standing young musician.
Painting conservators have recently discovered that instead of the complicated mathematical calculations necessary to build a coherent perspective on a flat surface of a painting, Vermeer availed himself of an ingenious, yet devilishly simple technique evidently in common usage among Dutch artists who prized perspective in their art. X-ray examinations of Vermeer's extant paintings have proved that in theirteen works with complicated perspective problems, there is a tiny hole (later filled in with paint) which in every case coincides exactly to the perspective's vanishing point. In this hole was once inserted a pin (most likely to a wood panel temporarily fastened to the back of the canvas) to which a string was attached. By rubbing chalk on the string, the painter could pull it taught and with a snap produce a perfectly straight orthogonal on the surface of the canvas which could then be traced. During the later stages of the painting process, the complicated perspective of the tiles could be easily verified by pulling the string straight just above the surface of the canvas.
"A Toye" [1.30 MB]
Giles Farnaby (c. 1563-1640)
from: Ancient Instruments – Tuxedo (various artists)
http://www.emusic.com/album/10589/10589854.html
The virginal (or virginals), together with the harpsichord, has its origin probably in the medieval psaltery with a keyboard applied, to be able to play polyphonic music (i.e. melody with accompanying chords). It is mentioned for the first time c. 1460 in a treatise by Paulus Paulirinus of Prague. Although limited in its tonal resources, the virginal occupied a crucial position in the musical life in the 16th and 17th centuries as it was smaller, simpler and cheaper than the harpsichord which is rather rarely represented in paintings, drawings etc.
The main center of virginal- and keyboard making in general was undoubtedly Antwerp/Flanders, with the renowned families of Ruckers and Couchet. Italy was the second center, and since King Henry's VIII's purchase of five virginals it enjoyed considerable appreciation in England. Until the 18th century the virginal remained in use both as solo instrument, even in private circles of music making, as well as for accompaniment of the singing voice or melodic instruments, like the viola da gamba.
The virginal usually appears with a rectangular case, although polygon forms in various sizes were built as well. The metal strings, here only in single choir, runs roughly parallel to the keyboard. They are plucked by plectra mounted on jacks. The jacks (one for each key) are arranged in pairs and placed along a line running from the front of the instrument at the left to the back at the right. They pluck in opposite directions, so that the pairs of jacks are separated by closely spaced pairs of strings. Each pair of jacks is usually served by a single slot in the soundboard, together with another slot below in a thin guide above the keys. Leather on the soundboard and lower guide provides a quiet bearing surface for the jacks.
The typical Flemish "muselaar" type (probably invented by Hans Ruckers) has the keyboard to the right side, their strings plucked at a point near the centre for virtually their entire range, producing a powerful, flute-like tone. Though since the jacks and keys for the left hand are inevitably placed in the middle of the instrument's soundboard, any mechanical noise from these is amplified and the central plucking point in the bass strings makes repetition difficult because the motion of the still-sounding string interferes with the ability of the plectrum to connect again. Thus the muselar is better suited to chord — and melody-music without complex bass parts.
The spinet virginal has its keyboard placed off-centre to the left. The jacks run in a line close to the left-hand bridge; therefore the point at which the jacks pluck the strings is close to the mid-point in the treble and well away towards the left end in the bass. Thus the timbre of the spinet gradually changes from flute-like in the treble to reedy in the bass.
"Zy blinckt, en doet al blincken"
engraving from P. C. Hooft
Emblemata Amatoria, 1611
Although not all of Vermeer's paintings make use of symbolism, literary references and background paintings to sharpen the focus of the theme of his compositions, The Music Lesson has been linked to multiple sources.
Vermeer expert Arthur Wheelock cites an emblem entitled "Zy blinckt, en doet al blincken" (it shines and makes everything shine) drawn from P. C. Hooft's Emblemata Amatoria as a very probable connection.
"Hooft's emblem contains two vignettes, Cupid holding a mirror reflecting sunrays in the foreground, and a man standing near a woman playing a keyboard instrument in the background. The accompanying verses explain that just as a mirror reflects the sunlight it receives, so does love reflect its source in the beloved. What love one possesses comes not from oneself, but from the beloved. Although the image of Cupid with the mirror depicts quite literally the message of Hooft's verses, the figures in the background - the man looking with rapt attention at his beloved, whose music has so moved him - expand upon them metaphorically. The compositional relationships between the emblem and the Music Lesson suggest that Vermeer had a similar concept in mind when conceiving his work. Not only do the figures in the background of the emblem bear a striking resemblance to those in the Music Lesson, the emphasis on the mirror in the emblem parallels the prominence given to the woman's reflection in the mirror in Vermeer's painting."
In representational painting, there exist two basic kinds of shadows, those attached, so to speak, to the objects and those projected by the objects. Attached shadows lie directly on the objects by whose shape, spatial orientation and distance from the light source they are created. Perceptually, attached shadows and projected shadows are quite different. The attached shadow is sensed as an integral part of the object, so much that in practical experience it is generally not noted. A cast shadow, instead, is read as an imposition or interference by one object on another. One of the foremost difficulties of the painter is to determine the color and paint quality for rendering them both.
A cast shadow not only defines more accurately the position of a given object in space, it creates shapes and forms of their own which may be transformed into compositional elements. Vermeer seems to have been particularly interested in cast shadows and art specialists have noted that their shapes are frequently altered to suit the artist's compositional goals.
In the Music Lesson, a shadow is projected from the window down towards the tiled floor, its flow being slightly interrupted by the left-hand corner of the standing virginal. The resulting diagonal lines play a vital part in bonding the right-hand side of the composition, with its accumulation of objects, and the empty left-hand side.
In the same painting we find for the first time in Vermeer's oeuvre evidence of another phenomenon which reveals the artist's powers of observation and his interest in cast shadow: the double shadow of the ebony-framed mirror. The wider, external shadow is caused by the acute angle of incoming light as it enters from the window nearer to the background wall. But it is partially weakened, and here the double shadow appears, because the light from the middle window shines on part of the original shadow. The same phenomenon appears on the shadows cast by the right-hand lid of the virginal. Similar double shadows can be seen in the Concert and A Lady Standing at the Virginal.
Painters were advised to avoid double shadows since they might confuse the viewer.
Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow
Piet Mondrian
1930
Art connoisseurs have long underlined the remarkable sense of geometry which seems to pervade Vermeer's compositions. In the work of no other European painter do we find an equal prevalence of straight lines, rectangles and triangles. Perhaps for this reason, Vermeer's art had been championed by some exponents fo the art-for-art's-sake movement where didactic, moral or utilitarian functions had been banished from the artist's creed. The American painter Philip Hale: "if ever a man believed in art for art's sake it was he. He anticipated the modern idea of impersonality in art...he makes no comment on the picture. One does not see by his composition what he thought of it all." As late as 1981, Arthur Wheelock wrote that although abstract design principles are generally associated with the 20th century, "One cannot approach this work [The Music Lesson] without realizing that Vermeer calculated his compositional elements every bit as carefully as did Mondrian.
Curiously, 17th-century art writings make no mention of a purely aesthetic or geometric organization of the painting's surface. As art historian Paul Taylor has written, composition, or ordenitie, was first foremost a matter choosing and arranging the motif in order that they might together clarify and strengthen the painting's narrative and not its aesthetic or visual balance. Does this mean that Vermeer was not aware of the geometrical order of his compositions?
Although we do not know how aware Vermeer was, geometry had gained importance in philosophical and scientific circles. As Nobert Schneider observed, "One need only to think of the subtitle of Spinoza's Ethics: 'ordine geometrico demonstrata' (arrange according to geometric principles). Spinoza asserts that ethics can be based on a geometric model in which axioms and propositions follow each other with logical necessity. At that time, geometry stood for clarity and demonstrability, values which may have appealed to Vermeer.
Emmanuel De Witte
c. 1665-1670
Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Jan Steen
1659
42.3 x 33 cm.
The National Gallery, London
Jan Steen
c. 1660
36,5 x 48,5 cm
Wallace Collection, London
Frans van Mieris
1658
31,7 x 24,7 cm
Staatliches Museum, Schwerin
Gabriel Metsu
c. 1665
38.4 x 32.2 cm
National Gallery, London
Gabriel Metsu
between 1650-1665
24 cm x 32 cm
Louvre, Paris
Cornelis de Man
83 x 66 cm
1650-1710
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Willem Cornelisz. Duyster
43 x 36 cm.
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Jacob Ochtervelt
1670 - 1672
97.1 x 78.1 cm
Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
"Quid Non Sentit Amor"
Proteus, ofte, Minne-beelden verandert in sinne-beelden
1627
National Gallery of Art Library, Washington D.C.