Study of a Young Woman

The Wrightsman (Study of a Young Woman) and the Mauritshuis (Girl with a Pearl Earring) paintings are almost identical in size and are close in composition: the figures are similarly posed against dark backgrounds, and each wears a pearl earring and an elegant scarf that falls behind her head. The models may or may have not been Vermeer's daughters, but neither picture was painted as a portrait. The paintings are studies of expression, physical types, and visual qualities such as behavior of light. Whether the two canvases were conceived as pendants, which would have been exceptional for tronies, is quite uncertain but cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Walter Liedtke, Vermeer and the School of Delft, 2001

c. 1667-1668
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Vermeer: The Complete Works , New York, 1997)

c. 1665-1667
Walter Liedtke (Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, New York, 2008)

literature

exhibitions

Married Couple in a Garden (detail)
c. 1622
140 x 166,5 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Even though the United Provinces boasted the most vigorous and well-distributed wealth in Europe, the differences between social classes was nonetheless frightening. At the bottom of the social ladder, women lived in a perpetual state of undernourishment. Life was a daily struggle with disease, tragic living and working conditions as well as the dangers of perpetual maternity. Living conditions were so strenuous that few were overweight and the average height was about 1.54 meters.

Rich women were much better off and hardly moderate in their consumption. Women rarely worked enough to offset their daily intake of calories. They avoided strenuous activities and rarely carried out heavy domestic chores which were delegated to their servants even though they habitually accompanied their servants to the markets. Their diet included large amounts of meat, fish, fruit sweets and abundant amount of imported wines and gastronomical delicacies. They had more money and more time to care for their own appearances even though a considerable number of the formal portraits clearly show that women of the upper classes were generally corpulent, but, at least in the second half of the seventeenth century, exquisitely dressed. Affluent women had an average height of about 1.59 meters.

An unequivocal point to be made is that Dutch women were notable better off than women in the rest of Europe. This is upheld by eye-witness reports including numerous foreign observers who were both delighted and abhorred by what they had experienced.

From a legal point of view Dutch women enjoyed conspicuous advantages over their European counterparts. Dutch women could inherit and bequeath property in their own right. If they were wronged during their marriage, they had legal recourse. Vermeer’s mother-in-law was able to obtain a conspicuous part of her husband’s money after years of physical and moral mistreatment. Adultery, unusual abuse or willful desertion could bring "separation of table and bed" effectively annulling the union.

Young Girl with a Guitar (detail)
Gerrit van Honthorst
82 x 58 cm
Louvre, Paris

While it is true that none of the women who posed for Vermeer are conventional beauties, they are not without their own special charm and the artist must have made some effort to improve their appearance. As Eddy de Jongh pointed out, "Just how drastically cosmetic interventions were applied is hard to say, but it is a fair assumption that not every painted face with regular features, and not every painted peach skin was an accurate depiction of the original. The mere fact that the vast majority of faces in 17th-century paintings are smooth and unblemished is enough to make us suspicious, given the prevalence of smallpox epidemics at the time. Smallpox was a dreaded disease against which all remedies were helpless, and those who survived it were generally left disfigured by pockmarks. Among women of the higher classes, in particular, pockmarks are known to have aroused feelings of shame."

In any case, the use of cosmetics in 17th century by wealthy middle and upper-class women (and men)—both for nurturing and decorative effects—is out of the question. Their popularity becomes evident in numerous surviving recipes by apothecaries or quacks as well as in the frequent depiction of powder brushes, small bottles or boxes for oils, cremes or perfumes in the popular "Lady at her toilet"-scenes. Even though the Dutch drew enormously from the fashionable French court of Louis XIV to enhance their life style, the Dutch women were/are nonetheless famous for their clear, soft complexion due to the moisty air.

Clothing the Naked
Michael Sweerts
c. 1660-1661
81.9 x 114.3 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although Michael Sweerts was disregarded by contemporary chroniclers of painting, and upon his death his name and works were quickly forgotten, modern art scholarship has linked his achievements with Vermeer.

Even though Sweerts had sojourned some years in Rome soaking up the lessons of Caravaggism, his works are never aggressive. His characters, caught in a moment of reflection, have a stillness and melancholy which evokes some of Vermeer’s finest works. He is also one of the few painters who depicted the lower classes individuals with a dignity paramount to that reserved for powerful upper-class portraiture. Like Vermeer, his protean style suggests different identities and has long confused art historians.

From a formal point of view, Sweerts was always able to think in the broadest of pictorial terms avoiding finicky, descriptive details so popular in genre painting of the time. The monumentality of his figures and pitch-black background of the Clothing the Naked (see left) bring to mind Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid while the Young Boy with a Nosegay has often been conjectured as a direct source for Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Sweerts ability to capture the sheen of fine exotic silks in two canvases with a minimum of fuss would seem to have appealed to the serious Vermeer.

Oddly, Sweerts’ own career is almost as obscure as Vermeer’s and little is known of his personal life. His name, too, quickly faded from memory only to be properly evaluated hundreds of years later. Sweerts began his career as a history painter but is most appreciated for his exquisite depictions of individual people.

Old Man in Oriental Garb
Jan Lievens
1628-30
135 x 101 cm
Schloss Sanssouci, Berlin

Although to the modern eye, this picture would seem a portrait, a Dutch 17th-century observer would have immediately understood it as a tronie, an obsolete term that refers to a type of picture made familiar by Rembrandt and his followers.

Desite the fact that tronies were often strongly individualized, they were most admired for the painter’s ability to capture one particular psychological state or pictorial qualities. Most were based upon living models, including the artists themselves, relatives or colleagues. However, they were not intended as formal portraits but were kept on spec in the artist’s studio ready to stimulate the potential buyer’s appetite. An old man (see left), a comely young woman, a "Turk," or a dashing soldier were all standard tronies subjects. Artists favored garments that looked particularly exotic which would offer an opportunity to show off painterly technique, one of the strongest calling cards of the professional artist. They also served as a storehouse of facial types and expressions for figures in history paintings.

Judging by the number of tronies mentioned in inventories, this was an extremely popular genre which accommodated the necessities of both the artist and his client.