Officer and Laughing Girl
(De Soldaat en het Lachende Meisje)
c. 1655-1660.
oil on canvas
19 7/8 x 18 1/8 in. (50.5 x 46 cm.)
The Frick Collection, New York
A portrait of Willem J. Blaeu
by Jeremias Falck
engraving
This map of Holland and West Friesland was designed by Balthasar Florisz. van Berckenrode in 1620. Van Berckenrode delivered twelve copies of it to the States General for 144 pounds on the 6th of June 1620. Victim of financial difficulties, Van Berckenrodewas was later forced to sell the rights and the copperplates to Willem Jansz. Blaeu who headed a florid publishing house in Amsterdam specialized in maps. Although this map contains no date, it must have been printed between 1621, when Blaeu received plates and privilege to publish the map, and 1629, when the privilege expired. Only one example exists (West Fries Museum in Hoorn) and confirms the precision of Vermeer's rendering. Not a single copy from the first state has survived.
Curiously, Vermeer covered the land areas with light blue paint contrary to the usual practice of using various tints of ochre. In another painting, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, the same map is rendered in darker ocher tones and appears larger although this may be an optical illusion. However, it must have been the same map since even the small folds correspond exactly in the two versions. Since the same map appears for the third time in the late Love Letter, it was probably owned by the artist himself even though it did not show up in his death inventory.
Vermeer seems to have represented four distinct types of windows in his 26 known interiors. The window in the Officer and Laughing Girl appears to be the same as the one in Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window and the Milkmaid, even though in the later the top row of characteristic lozenge shaped panes cannot be observed. In both the Milkmaid and the Officer and Laughing Girl each variation of color and unevenness of the glass panes are registered with the utmost attention. In his later interiors, Vermeer treated the windows more as abstract patterns of light and shade accentuating their geometric properties.
Vermeer never once allows us to see the world that extends beyond the window.

It is possible that the young girl who smiles at the officer was Vermeer's wife, Catharina Bolnes, although there is no proof in regards. Many critics believe that she had posed for other of her husband's compositions. Her luminous face, her unabashed smile and glittering yellow satin bodice neutralize the austere presence of the cavalier. As can be seen from an x-ray photograph, Vermeer had originally painted her with a large white collar over her shoulders obscuring much of the brilliant yellow dress. The large cap which once covered only her hair, was extended forward to frame her face and focus the viewer's attention on her expression.

The young girl's open hand contrasts effectively with that of the officer's which instead, curls back in deep shadow. In her other hand she holds a drinking glass seen in many paintings of the time which was used for drinking wine, usually white. Wine, which was more costly than beer, was a sign of social refinement. De Lairesse's manual for painters illustrates how the artist might indicate the social stature of his sitter by the way in which they hold their glasses. No. 5 (see detail left), which is comparable to the gesture seen in Vermeer's Girl with a Wineglass, is the most refined. It is difficult to understand how the young girl holds her glass in this picture.
The decorative motifs on the stem (prunts) were probably intended to prevent the glass slipping through loose fingers. These glasses were produced in large numbers in the 16th and 17th centuries in Holland and Germany.

A similar yellow bodice with black braiding appears in other Vermeer's including Woman with a Water Pitcher, The Music Lesson (see detail left) and the Girl at Reading a Letter at an Open Window. It may also be worn by the old women sewing in the open doorway of the Little Street. 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.
Although it cannot be seen in most reproductions, the girl wears a blue apron which drapes over a deep olive colored gown hidden in the deep shadow cast by the table. Aprons of this color were common in Dutch painting. Blue was favored because it hid stains better than lighter colors. A plausible interpretation for the working apron might be that the officer had arrived impromptu while the girl was going about her morning chores. Her body language and expression reveals that the cavalier's arrival, if not anticipated, seems however, more than welcomed.

Vermeer, perhaps more than any other European artist, was aware of the expressive potential of the so-called negative space: the empty space around or between objects in the artist's composition. Here, the large triangular area of white-washed wall divides the officer and laughing girl even though one senses that the diagonals of the two figures' arms converge. This kind of pictorial construction, which enhances the psychological tension between the two figures, was not casual since it was again repeated in a later painting, Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid.
Vermeer often calls attention to opposing physical textures and sensations of the objects in his pictures, rough and smooth, open and closed, dark and light, opaque and transparent. The emotional tension which crackles between the soldier and the seated young girl is an example of how these opposite characteristics evoke our emotional response towards the two figures. It is difficult to gauge the thoughts of the young officer because he turns his back towards us; we are permitted to view only an oblique sliver of his face emerged in shadow.
Quite oppositely, it is impossible for us to ignore the young girl's radiant optimism. Her smiling face is literally bathed in glittering morning sunlight. Her expression is so positively charged that even the officer's reticence is effectively dissimulated. The gesture of her open hand, palm up, seems to extend her openness and desire for communication. By contrast, the officer bends back his arm and curls his hand away from the young girl in a sign of withdrawal.

The color of military uniforms often had a practical function. Red as a warning color was frequently used for uniforms. Even in times of war the regulation of the colors and signs was essential to survive as each soldier could be more easily identified by the colors and signs he wore, to avoid an attack of the own fellows in the tangle of a battle. The soldier in Vermeer's Procuress also wears a red uniform.
The black sash which hangs around the young man's shoulder tells us that he is most likely an officer. But more than his military identity, the viewer's imagination is caught by his striking visual and psychological presence. Vermeer, as many Dutch painters of the time, employed the officer as a device called repoussoir: the placement of a large figure (objects, such as curtains, were also commonly used) in the immediate foreground. Repoussoir dramatically increases the illusion of depth in the rest of the picture. Caravaggio had become famous for his paintings of ordinary people or even religious subjects in repoussoir compositions. Gerrit Van Honthorst, an immensely popular painter from Utrecht who had traveled to Italy to study Caravaggio's revolutionary works, applied repoussoir in his own compositions (The Procuress 1625) which must have been known to Vermeer. As Vermeer expert Arthur Wheelock has observed, the bold red color of the officer's jacket was chosen for this color's association with passion and power. Had it been green or beige, the mood on the painting would have been entirely different.

This so-called Spanish chair presents two finials with lion heads with rings through the muzzles. Vermeer took great care in their rendering and must appreciated them for their evocative potential. Some examples of these chairs can be found in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Prinsenhof Museum in Delft, Vermeer's home town. The same chair is represented in the same position other times in Vermeer's compositions. In the Woman with a Lute, it appears with a large piece of drapery heaped up in front of it. The different lighting scheme in the Glass of Wine (detail left) lets us observe how finely carved the finials were.
Soldiers Playing Cards (detail)
Pieter de Hooch
1657-58
51 x 46 cm
Private collection
Vermeer's cavalier sports a fine, stiff felt hat made of beaver pelt. This kind of wide-brimmed hat could be made of wool or other materials. Felt made from beaver hair produced a wide-brimmed version which held its form and was more weather resistant. Such a hat could not be afforded by all. Vermeer undoubtedly owned one or more hats but in the 1676 inventory they have been left out.
Gentlemen's hats played a role in the social ceremonies - both indoors and outdoors. Although a gentleman's hat was normally kept on his head, a few ceremonies required him to take it off such as during prayer, the first time when offering food or when an esteemed person toasts to somebody's health. Thus, the dashing soldier who keeps his hat on during his visit to the young girl is not displaying disregard.
During the 17th century, beaver pelts imported from the New World were at the center of a lucrative web of trade since the beaver population of Europe had been largely depleted. The beaver-rich New World territory-eventually named New Netherlands-came under the jurisdiction of the Dutch West India Company in 1621, as per the conditions of the Company's charter.
The pelts were first sent to Russia, where they were valued for their shiny outside fur. Russian customers would eventually sell the furs back into the trade. Once they were worn, dirty and sufficiently greasy, they could be properly felted and converted into felt hats, and resold. Hatters used mercury to mat beaver fur's dense, warm undercoat. Exposure to the toxic chemical, however, caused severe mental disorders and is the source of the otherwise strange expression, "mad as a hatter." By 1660 the brim had become so wide that the corners were turned up forming the tricorner.
- map making in the Netherlands
- observation & the "inferiority" of Northern painting
- Vermeer's debt to Pieter de Hooch
- the soldier's & girl's encounter
- the camera obscura
- Gerrit van Honthorst: Vermeer's inspiration?
- the white walls in Vermeer's paintings
- "guardroom" paintings: military life
- problems in interpretations: what does the map signify?
- listen to period music
- signature
- date
- provenance
- the painting with its frame
- how big is this picture?
- related works 1 2 3 4 5 6
critical excerpt
No signature appears on this work.
c. 1658-1660
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. Vermeer: The Complete Works, New York, 1997)
c. 1657
Walter Liedtke Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, New York, 2008)
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. 11;
- Charles Scarisbrick sale, London (Christie's), 10 May 1861, no. 89, as by De Hooch, to Lee Mainwaring, said to have been purchased in an unidentified London sale by Double;
- Léopold Double, Paris (Double sale, Paris [Pillet], 30 May 1881, no. 16 to Gauchey for Demidoff);
- Prince Demidoff di San Donato, Villa di Pratolino, near Florence;
- Samuel S. Joseph, London (1891); Mrs Samuel S. Joseph (1900);
- [Knoedler, New York, 1911]; Henry Clay Frick, New York (d. 1911);
- The Frick Collection, New York (acc. no. 11.1.127).
exhibitions

The links between cartography to art are as old as the field itself. The art of painting has always been present within maps, which, in turn have always been regarded as a combination of scientific and artistic skills. One of the most prominent examples of the harmonic duality of maps as scientific tools and objects of culture is witnessed in the Netherlands during the 17th century, when the Dutch were world leaders in the field of cartographic production.
Dutch mapmakers of the time were usually combining more skills: they were surveyors, cartographers, painters of landscapes and even more. On the other hand, many 17th-century Dutch painters such as Hals, Vermeer, Ter Borch, De Hooch, Steen, Ochtervelt, Maes and others, introduced depictions of real maps into their works and decorated their interiors with maps for symbolic or allegorical reasons.
There is a strong Dutch and European custom of using maps as wall hangings even in simple homes. In addition, globes and cartographic artifacts have often been displayed simply because of their own intrinsic beauty. Many maps represent a visual summa of contemporary knowledge, power, and prestige, some of it religious but most of it secular. The map in Vermeer's Art of Painting illustrates an extraordinary example of a map displayed for its great beauty and symbolic statement.
A cover of the Lives of the Most Excellent
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Vasari
first published in 1550
Although Netherlandish painting is universally admired today, in the past, it had many detractors. Michelangelo once disparaged Northern painters because although they painted with great ability "trees and grass" they were unable to create great compositions. For example, he found Durer's work uninteresting. Flemish painting was equally distasteful, since their work is "expressly to deceive the outer vision ... and all this, although it may appear good to some eyes, is done truly without reason or art, without symmetry or proportion, and without attention to selection or rejection."
Leonardo da Vinci, when speaking about mechanical means of imitating natural effects method (which Dutch painters excelled in), exhorted the artist not to rely on such shortcuts lest he "always remain poor in inventing and composing narratives which is the aim of that art." Later Sir Joshua Reynolds in his Discourses acknowledged the "mechanical excellencies" of the Dutch school but regretted the "vulgar" use frequently made of such skills.
This attitude reflects the theoretical underpinnings of the great art of Europe which originated in Italy. Even though mimesis, or the most faithful imitation of nature, was a cardinal point in Renaissance painting theory, it was not considered an end in itself. Vasari, whose Lives of the Italian painters exerted a lasting influence on the theory of European art, saw the representational skills as a means which always served a main social function — the evocation of a sacred or edifying story, in other words: dramatic narrative. A painting could only be as good as the idea it represented.
In her groundbreaking book The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century, Svetlana Alpers argues that we are still the heirs of this tradition, which did indeed dominate the teaching of art in the academies of Europe. She criticizes in particular the tendency to apply methods originally developed by Erwin Panofsky (and later elaborated on by Eddy de Jongh specifically in regards to Dutch art) for the interpretation of images conceived in the classical tradition searching for hidden meanings with reference to emblem books. According to Alpers, this bias has obscured the principle trait of Dutch 17th-century art, the capacity to explore and understand the world through the eye which was a central means of self-representation and visual experience, a central mode of self-consciousness in which meaning is not "read"' but "seen."
Soldiers Playing Cards
Pieter de Hooch
1657-58
51 x 46 cm
Private collection
Comparisons with Pieter de Hooch and Vermeer are inevitable. Clearly they knew each other's work, but the precise nature of their relationship remains conjectural. It was originally assumed that De Hooch, who was three years Vermeer's senior, was indebted to his more renowned colleague. But it was almost certainly De Hooch who was the true innovator among the two, creating a new type of genre painting with unprecedented spatial order and naturalism. De Hooch's illusionistic integration of figures within a fully rationalized space flooded with natural light was a lesson Vermeer would seize upon and improve after a brief period of "incubation."
In the years in which De Hooch was active in Delft, there is little doubt that in such a small city they would not have known each other. Both were members of the Guild of St Luke, the trade association which protected the rights of artists and artisans of Delft.
As Peter Sutton pointed out, virtually none of the luminous small-scale works of Vermeer can be shown to predate the 1650s, the years in which De Hooch reached his artistic maturity. Moreover, Vermeer's only dated painting of the 1650s was the Procuress of 1656, a large, animated bordello scene in the tradition of the Utrecht Caravaggisti. The work's dark and shallow space has nothing in common with later works and is stylistically incompatible with De Hooch's interiors of the same years.
De Hooch may have very well provided specific models for some of the best works by Vermeer such as the Woman Holding a Balance and the Love Letter.
Perhaps no single clear-cut iconographical interpretation has been given to this work even though its intense contrasts make it one of Vermeer's most vibrant works. What is the nature of the young couple's encounter? Much depends on how each of us respond to the gestures of the two figures. The reassuring frankness of the charming young woman opposes the somewhat disquieting presence of the young soldier. Was this picture a veiled boordeltje (little brothel scene) or a representation of an intimate tête-à-tête between a polite officer and a virtuous mistress?
She opens her hand and invites communion while the young soldier seems to withdraw from her. What significance does the map of the Netherlands have? Does it betray the soldier's desire for territorial "conquest" as some critics have hypothesized or is it merely a symbol of the goodness associated with the Dutch homeland? The cultural distance which separates us from the 17th century prevents us from understanding these few clues in one of Vermeer's most uncomplicated compositions. It has been recently argued that the ambiguity of mid-17th century Dutch genre interiors was intentionally calculated so that the eventual purchaser could read the painting according to his own tastes or interests.

As long ago as 1891, when eyes had not grown accustomed to the camera's way of seeing, photographer J. Pennell was struck by the disproportionate size of the man in relation to the girl. As a photographer, Pennell knew this kind of distortion was imposed by a camera on objects closest to it's lens. Pennell suggested that Vermeer had used some sort of optical device as an aid to his painting. This aid, called the camera obscura, was widely known in Vermeer's time and was used by various Dutch 17th-century artists. The "objective" picture that it creates must have appealed to artists of the age of observation. Other than offering a unique way to study the behavior of light, its image could be traced thereby offering a shortcut to perspective construction.
The Procuress
Gerrit van Honthorst
1625
71 x 104 cm
Centraal Museum, Utrecht
One of the two Dutch paintings most often associated with Vermeer's Officer with a Laughing Girl is Gerrit van Honthorst's Procuress. Van Honthost was an immensely successful artist from Utrechtand inhis own time his reputation rivaled and perhaps superceded both those of Rembrandt and Frans Hals. This composition, which represents a popular bordello scene, is very similar to Vermeer's. A young soldier dressed in red with his back to the viewer, sits on the left-hand side of the picture emerged in shadow. A young woman looks at him directly with an unblushing smile across a table covered with a green clothe.
It is hard to believe that Vermeer was not inspired by Van Honthorst's canvas. However, while Van Honthorst explores the sensual potential of artificial candlelight, Vermeer registers with almost scientific objectivity the cool morning light as it plays upon the scene. Gone is the lute, which in the context of Van Honthorst's scene, would have certainly had an erotic undertone. And gone is the elderly procuress who calls attention to the purse gripped in soldier's hand. Vermeer's ability to invest new and more universal meaning in commonly exploited themes was one of the characteristics of his genius.
The Goldfinch
Carel Fabritius
1654
33,5 x 22,8
Mauritshuis, The Hague
Perhaps the single most overlooked feature of Vermeer's compositions is the superb rendering of the simple white-washed walls set parallel to the picture plane seen in many of his interiors. It is impossible for the non-painter to grasp the technical ability necessary to evoke both their flatness and reflective luminosity with nothing more than shades of drab gray paint. The painter must not only describe the slight irregularities which give each wall its own character and naturalness, he must also be able to account for the gradual weakening of light's intensity as it flows from left to right. Moreover, he must give the proper color to shadows cast by the larger props and architectural features in his compositions.
Even the walls of the best Dutch interior painters seem drab and lifeless compared to the nuanced liveliness of Vermeer's walls. Many experts have been quick to connect The Goldfinch (see right) as a possible starting point for the light gray walls of Vermeer's interiors but only Pieter de Hooch and the obscure Jacobus Vrel seemed so enthralled by the optical presence of a mundane white wall as to make them a continued subject for their invesitagion.
In the present painting, the observer can almost feel the sting of the chilly morning air as it enters through the wide-open window. Many who for the first time see Vermeer's paintings from life are surprised that they are much cooler in tone that those of his colleagues, a fact which is rarely apparent in reproductions. The introduction of ultramarine blue pigment into the wall's deep shadows of the Officer and Laughing Girl produces a sense of sparkling morning light that has no precedent in European painting.
Painters, including Vermeer, used the Dutch lead-white as the principle component of the various gray mixtures for the walls. Various combinations of black and dull brown earth colors, principally raw umber, were used to darken the white and create shadows of different depth and hue. It seems that only Vermeer introduced traces of blue into his grays in order to heighten the intensity of his grays.
A Bordello Scene (detail)
Jacob Duck
c. 1600-1667
41.3 x 54 cm.
Private collection
Whatever the precise reading of this work may be, there can be no doubt that the looming male figure with his sash and swagger represents a military officer, perhaps of the Delft Civic Guard.
Like almost every one of his themes, in this picture Vermeer relied heavily on pictorial precedents although he always injected into them his own personality and profound artistic vision. The present picture draws from one of the most popular and established genre of Dutch painting, the bordeeltje, or little bordello scene. He was likewise familiar with another popular genre called kortegaard, or guardroom scene pioneered by Willem Duyster and Pieter Codde in the 1620s, some fifty years before Vermeer addressed the motif.
Military life was a topical theme in the Dutch Republic in the first half of the 17th century, especially after 1621 when the Twelve-Year Truce with Spain expired and hostilities were renewed. Although much of the actual fighting in these years was confined to the southern border and the eastern provinces, all of Holland's major cities housed garrisons of troops.
Although the Dutch had to face the specter of warfare for much of its existence, surprisingly scarce attention was paid to armed conflict in painting. Violence, bloodshed or pictorial remembrances of victory or military defeat were exceptionally rare. Curiously, in Dutch 17th-century painting we find thousands upon thousands of paintings of soldiers' activities. They depict soldiers in taverns, stables or tents, often attended by tavern hostesses, prostitutes or camp followers. Some show figures fighting over plunder, perusing their booty or taking hostages, while others portray the quieter side of military life, with men merely smoking, drinking or playing a game of cards or trictrac.
Initially, these less than heroic military men were portrayed in realistic settings such as barns or environments which recall the spaces in which soldiers were garrisoned. Decades later their bad manners were spruced up and they were introduced into well appointed interiors politely engaged in letter reading, letter writing or delicate social interaction with some well-to-do, highly attractive young women. The particularity of the initial low-life scenes is that both Duyster and Codde censored common foot soldiers and concentrated on fashionably dressed gentlemen who most likely were meant to represent officers (military uniforms did not exist yet). No doubt, other than the theme, one of the major calling cards of the guardroom scene was the amazing display of painterly technique applied to the soldiers' colorful garments and their armature and the wide variety of expressions and gestures that these pioneering artists had mastered.
In any case, soldiers were associated with an assortment of unwholesome activities such as gambling. Prostitutes were among the most frequent habitués of painted guardroom scenes just as they had been in real life when they trailed behind traveling armies in times of war.
When Vermeer arrived upon the scene, the guardroom genre had been largely domesticated. Gerard ter Borch, who transformed many facets of genre interior painting bringing it single-handedly to astounding heights of realism and poetry, brought to this theme his innate civility and no longer picturing the foibles of the military but the psychological realms of displacement and loneliness.
The analysis of Vermeer's motifs should be approached with caution since we cannot be certain to what extent his pictures were intended to have hidden symbolic or moralizing content if any.
Faced with a total lack of specific historical evidence, art historians have proposed a wide range of theories to explain the relationship between the map of Holland and the quite drama which unfolds in a sunlit room even though none can be called certain. Speculating that the young woman is a tidied-up courtesan, Leonard Slatkes once proposed that the map refers to her "worldly" nature. Another hypothesis, more or less opposite, is that the young girl, "visually bound to the map of Holland, guarded, as it were, by a lion peering over her back and protected by a strong military presence, might be seen as a distant reflection of the Dutch Maiden, the allegorical symbol of the Netherlands." Thus, the scene testifies "the unmistakable pride in the Dutch homeland and the communion between people who live there and enjoy the fruits of peace."
A third reading pivots on the assumption that scene represents a low-key, ritualized courtship. Consequentially, the connection between the map and the tête-à -tête would be that the progress of love requires no less a strategic battle planning than did wars waged between armies. This interpretation would also account for the looming presence of the officer and somewhat aggressive air he projects.
In fact, even if the elaborately illustrated map in this picture was made for interior decoration, one of the original functions of cartography maps was to more effectively plan battles. As with their dominance in the field of map making, the Dutch were justly proud of their military prowess having been able to wage the successful war of independence with Spain, one of the most powerful nations in Europe.
In any case, any Dutchman of the time would have associated the map of Holland map with the vast commercial reach of its growing maritime empire. According to historian Timothy Brook, the officer's felt hat is indirectly connected to Samuel Champlain and his efforts by alliance and conquest to control the beaver pelt trade in the New World. Since Delft was one of the Dutch East India Company headquarters, Vermeer must have been aware of the global expanse of his country through the constant influx of exotic products from all over the globe.
John Dowland
My Lord Chamberlain his Gaillard [836 KB]
from: Greensleeves. Tänze, Lieder und Fantasien der Renaissance
http://www.amazon.de/Greensleeves-T%C3%A4nze-Lieder-Fantasien-Renaissance/dp/B0000249OA






