Woman with a Lute
(De luitspeler)
c. 1662-1664
oil on canvas
20 1/4 x 18 in. (51.4 x 45.7 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Bequest of Collis P. Huntington
An engraving of Jodocus Hondius
1619
This map of Europe can probably be identified with one that first appeared around 1613 under the name of the Dutch cartographer Joducus Hondius. Only a single example from this edition survives in the collection of the University Library, Amsterdam. A second state was printed in 1659 by another map maker, Joan Blaeu. Blaeu's name replaces the name of Hondius in the title and dedication cartouches. It is impossible to know if Vermeer painted the first or second edition. Both maps are framed with a text written in Latin, Dutch and French and contain brief descriptions of various European nations.
Map specialists note that even the minutest features of Vermeer's map have been reproduced with extraordinary fidelity. London architect and Vermeer/camera obscura expert Philip Steadman calculated that the estimated size drawn from a geometrical reconstruction of Vermeer's room and painted map would differ only 4 centimeters from the map's real size.
A Bordello Scene (detail)
Jacob Duck Utrecht
c. 1600-1667
41.3 x 54 cm.
Private collection
Although large wall maps are depicted in an extraordinary number of Dutch interior paintings, only Vermeer lavished such attention on them. One has the impression that for the great part of Dutch painters maps were little more than cultural signals and more banally, decorative fillers (see detail left). Only in Vermeer's maps can we feel the light as it rakes across each and every crevice and delicate undulation. And only in Vermeer's maps do we find the detail of their designs are so faithfully reproduced that when they can be compared by surviving maps they match perfectly and differ but a scant few centimeters. In short, for Vermeer maps are material entities worthy of being painted as much as any other object or figure represented.
However, Vermeer's maps have given many interpretive problems to art historians. Although most believe that they represent something other than themselves, only in a few cases are historian in relative agreement. No substantial explanation has been advanced as to the meaning of the map of Europe in the present painting.
Although none of Vermeer's sitters has been objectively identified, critics have often suggested that his wife Catharina and perhaps his eldest daughters, Maria (born c. 1654) or Elisabeth (born 1657), posed for some of his paintings. In any case, the prognathous girl with the widely spaced eyes of the lute player resembles the young sitter in Vermeer's Study of a Young Girl in the Metropolitan (face below left).
Although neither could be considered a beauty in a conventional sense, the empathy and warmth with which they are rendered suggest that the sitter had more than a purely artistic tie with the artist who painted her. However, neither painting is to be considered a portrait in the 17th-century sense of the term.
A Man Tuning a Lute
Willem Cornelisz. Duyster
Despite the poor condition of the painting, lute expert Lynda Sayce notes that the projecting peg for the treble string (in its little rider) most likely indicates an instrument with 10 or 11 courses (pairs of strings). An 11 course lute would be the expected type for the date, but if the lute was a studio prop owned by the painter, it might be rather out of date.
It should be noted that the young lady is not actually playing the lute, she is tuning it. There are numerous paintings of musicians tuning their instruments (see left). Since it was a well-known fact that the lute goes out of tune often, it may be that it had subtle bearing on the meaning of the painting which was evident to contemporary observers. A running joke among lutenists was that one spent more time tuning than playing the instrument. The lute was also used as a solo instrument since musicians found that it could be played with fingertips as well as with a quill.
With the introduction of the guitar, harpsichord and the larger orchestra, the lute, with its soft voice, quickly fell out of favor and it disappeared from the musical stage for two hundred years. The lute was extremely rich in iconographical associations. While it could be an erotic symbol, a metaphor for female genitals, or an attribute of lust, it functioned most often as a more or less neutral amorous symbol, which seems to be the case in this painting.
The characteristic lion-head finial chairs, which appear in various versions in Vermeer's compositions, are found in a great number of genre interior paintings of the time. This one displays the narrow heads similar to those seen in the Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (detail left).
Very few of these so-called Spanish chairs have survived till today. Some are still housed in the Prinsenhof Museum in Delft. The painting is in such a poor state of conservation that one wonders if Vermeer had originally rendered the chair's upholstery in a more intense shade of blue instead of the rather drab dark blue that can now be observed.
The disproportionate size of the lion-head finial has lead some scholars to believe that Vermeer used a camera obscura (a kind of precursor to the modern photographic camera) as an aid to his painting. While it is true that the painting's atmosphere recalls much of camera obscura vision, it is possible that this particularity is due to another factor. The almost monumental size of the finial, which in reality could easily fit in the hand of the young lute player, is perfectly in keeping with the laws of perspective and is not necessarily a distortion of the camera obscura. It appears significantly larger because Vermeer sat extremely close to the table, perhaps only a yard or two away. The low view point and particular angle of vision also plays up its size because it comes into close contact with the girl on the surface of the canvas.
Sample of numeric vihuela tablature from
the book Orphenica Lyra by Miguel
de Fuenllana (1554)
The large folios on the table are no doubt song books mostly likely with lute tablature. Over its long history a truly enormous repertoire was created for the lute. American scholar Arthur Ness has estimated that 25,000 pieces survive for the Renaissance lute, and probably as many for the Baroque instruments-and that is only the music specially notated in lute tablature, not counting music from the Medieval and Baroque eras which is written in normal staff notation. Even though Dutch music was at the time considered undistinguished, an enormous number of music books, mostly French and Italian, were enthusiastically collected by musicians.
Tablature works by telling you what string and what fret to play, rather than telling you what pitch to play. Lute music was written in tablature before 1500 and tablature is still used for guitar music today. Many people find it easier to learn to read tablature for the lute than to read "regular" music.
The viola da gamba which lies on the marble floor makes four minor, but iconographically significant appearances in Vermeer's musical theme paintings: The Music Lesson, the Woman with a Lute, The Concert and A Lady Seated at a Virginal (detail left). 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, miniature etc. The viol frequently appears in companionship with the lute. These two instruments - the viol with its soft but clear tone, imitating the human voice, and the lute as its ideal accompaniment - complement one another perfectly. Both stand for harmony and concord enhancing this meaning further if they both appear in the same painting.
A similar fur-trimmed yellow morning jacket appears in five other paintings by Vermeer. This type casual, but elegant jacket was worn by middle and upper class women. It protected them against the cold during the long Dutch winters as they performed household chores. Most writers aof the past believed fur trim was ermine but Dutch costume expert Marieke de Winkel revealed that even in the inventories of the wealthiest women this particular fur is never mentioned. It was more likely to have been white squirrel or cat. In Vermeer's death inventory of 1676 a " yellow satin mantle with white fur trimmings" was found in the "groote zaelv (great hall) of the artist's home, which likely belonged to his wife.
The deep, slate-blue tablecloth massed on the extendable table is similar in fold, color and position to the one seen in Vermeer's Woman with a Pearl Necklace and the Woman Holding a Balance, both works of the same period. It serves as a kind of barrier which isolates the young girl from the viewer and simplifies the composition by elimnating the complex structure of the massive oak table, the floor tiles and the girl's skirt.
Unfortunately, the painted surface Woman with a Lute has suffered severely during the years even though a few passages and the robust yet exquisitely proportioned layout leave no doubt of its authorship.
The carpet in particular has a tired, worn appearance and its decorative motifperhaps indicated by some remains of dark blue paint, can only be guessed at.
Vermeer experts have noted that the diagonally placed floor tiles are truncated arbitrarily when they meet the wall, contrary to Vermeer's usual rendering. This may be a result of retouching or a very unusual oversight by the artist himself. In any case, the perspective is accurate enough as it coincides properly with the orthogonals of the window casing.
- critical excerpt
- signature
- date
- provenance
- framed image
- related works 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Vermeer's ladies who hold a lute or guitar are not occupied with music making. They turn away; there is some momentary distraction in the air to draw their attention. They are near discovered playing and they never confront us. The fact is of interest for it illustrates not only Vermeer's temperamental preference, his distaste for anything obtrusively purposeful or demonstrative in his subject, but also the way in which it governed his use of the resources of his school.
Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer, 1952
c. 1664
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Vermeer: The Complete Works , New York, 1997)
c. 1662-1663
Walter Liedtke (Vermeer: The Complete Paintings
literature
- Philippus van der Schley and Daniel du Pré sale, Amsterdam (Roos, De Vries and Brondgeest), 22 December 1817, no. 62, to Coclers;
- [Paris, before 1900; sold to Huntington];
- Collis P. Huntington, New York (until d.1900);
- his widow, Arabella D. Huntington; (from 1913) Mrs: Henry E. Huntington (1900-d.1924);
- their son, Archer Milton Huntington (1924-terminated in 1925);
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900 (acc. no. 25.110.24).
exhibitions
Because Dutch music was mostly uninventive and undistinguished, Dutch song books contained as many French as native airs. Song books were collected passionately by amateurs of the well-to-do burgers typified be the young lute player in this picture. Dutch songbooks features gezelschapslied (a social lyric set to musical accompaniment) containing French and to a lesser degree English and Italian pieces.
The principle explanation for the lack of inspiration in Dutch music during the Golden Age of painting has been attributed to diverse circumstances, among them, the dampening role of the dominant Calvinist religion which frowned on all music during church services except for unaccompanied ongregational singing. Thus, without significant church and aristocratic patronage, there was little incentive for major artistic innovations. Dutch music expert Pieter van Grijp wrote, "As we see it today, strength of Dutch art lies not so much in its history pieces as in still-lives, landscapes marines, portraits, and genre painting and suchlike. Similarly the strength of Dutch music lies not in the intricate, polyphonic or Baroque compositions, but in that simplest of all genres - the song that enjoyed an incomparable bloom here. This musical strength lay in the sheer delight in singing found among people of all classes, in an appetite for music that was fed and stilled not so much by composers as by poets."
Portrait of Joan Blaeu
J. van Rossum
Netherlands Maritime Museum, Amsterdam
In her seminal study of Dutch realism The Art of Describing, art historian Svetlana Alpers remarked on the mapping impulse as a peculiar characteristic of Dutch scientific and visual culture. According to Alpers, in no other time and place did mapping and picturing have such a strong coincidence as in 17th-century Holland. Map makers and map publishers were referred to as "world describers." The Dutch painter and map maker had in common the will to capture a great range of knowledge and information about the world on a flat surface.
Maps were produced in great numbers for both practical and decorative use and could be found on the walls of even common Dutch homes. And while they appeared frequently in the paintings of the time, no other artist rendered them with such accuracy and seemed to have invested them with such pictorial meaning as did Vermeer.
Joan Blaeu, who belonged to a prosperous Amstedam family of map makers, turned out and extraordinary flow of decorative maps some of which are represented by Vermeer. In 1635, Joan had joined his father's business, published the Atlas Novus (full title: Theatrum orbis terrarum, sive, Atlas novus) in two volumes. Joan and his brother Cornelius took over the studio after their father died in 1638. Joan then became the official cartographer of the Dutch East India Company.
Around 1649 Joan Blaeu published a collection of Dutch city maps named Tooneel der Steeden (Views of Cities). In 1651 he was voted into the Amsterdam council.
A cosmology was planned as the Blaeu's next project, but a fire destroyed the studio completely in February 1672 at the main printing press at Gravenstraat. There are conflicting accounts of the episode, but it is clear that the damage was enormous, destroying not only thousands of paper sheets and printed maps, but also copper plates and metal for type, both of which melted in the heat. Although his other press at Bloemgracht continued, the loss for Joan Blaeu must have been considerable. Joan Blaeu died in Amsterdam the following year.
In 17th-century culture, music and love were closely related and a subject for an endless number of works of art. In particular, music was used metaphorically to suggest the harmony of two souls in love. In a familiar emblem, the immensely popular Dutch writer Jacob Cats shows a lute player in an interior before an open window with the caption "Qvid Non Sentit Amor" (see left). Beside the man lies another lute, unused. The motto explains that in tuning one lute the strings of the other instrument begins to resonate just as two hearts resonate with love even at a distance. In this painting, the woman's music will resonate on the unattended viola da gamba, a common masculine symbol.
Cats' first book, Sinne- en minnebeelden (1618; "Portaits 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.
Dutch interior paintings of the time predominantly represent the left side of the room. The origin of this compositional formula may be linked to the fact that artists usually painted with the light source coming from their left, so that the shadow projected by their own hand did not disturb their work (unless they were left-handed). The fact that western spectators read visually from left to right also contributes to the success of the formula: when a group of figures is located on the left of the image, we read that element as the beginning of the composition, allowing our imagination to extend into the space in a rightwards direction.
While painting, Vermeer probably positioned himself near a second window distanced away from the subject which cast sufficient light on his canvas and working area. The structure and disposition of the windows in the Woman with a Lute are probably analogous to that of The Music Lesson which may be a fairly accurate portrayal of Vermeer's studio. However, the painting's dim lighting scheme would seem incompatible with an eventual second window opened wide enough to allow incoming light sufficient for the purpose of painting. Most likely Vermeer partially isolated the illuminated working area from the scene he was portraying by use of a hanging curtain similar to the one seen in The Art of Painting.
The Golden Age witnessed a profound evolution in the function of the home and its furnishing. Houses began to be filled with a great range of sophisticated goods: elaborately carved linen cupboards, tables of all sorts including extendable tables, tea tables an gaming tables to say nothing of imported Turkish carpets, Chinese porcelain, Venetian mirrors, Japanese lacquer-work and quilts from India. Local production, spurred by foreign competition, also soared in variety and quality far beyond anything seen before.
Late medieval furniture tended to be heavily constructed and limited in number. There were only three basic types of seatings: the simple bench (at times with storage capacities) a small three-legged stool (driestal) and in wealthier homes, a large- throne-like arm chair for the head of the family.
In the 17th century, the Spanish chair could be found in almost any home. It was elegant, lighter, more comfortable and that the previous seatings. Many modern notions of domestic life evolved in the Netherlands in this period: devotion to family life, a sense of privacy and pride which were reflected in a notable order and cleanliness typical of the new Dutch household. However, historian A.J. Schuurman argued that the concept of home comfort as we know it today, only was fulfilled later in the 19th c. with the introduction of the stove and gas light which significantly improved the quality of daily life. The depictions of thousands of comfortable Dutch interiors seems to be somewhat at odds with Schuurman's opinions.
Another popular furnishing which can be found in Vermeer's painting was the extendable oak table, which appears an infinite number if times in Dutch interior paintings. Its characteristic bulbous legs can be made out with some difficulty in this work. To the left is an exemplar in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem.
Throughout the centuries the lute has been one of the most frequently depicted instruments with the largest variety of iconographical interpretation.
The lute is rich not only in repertoire but in symbolism. Its refined sound has given it courtly associations in East and West. Conversely, it could be an emblem of lust or lasciviousness: in the hands of an older man it symbolized scandal and degeneracy.
Duet
Hendrick Terbrugghen
1628
101 x 81 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
If the lute's sensuous and delicate tones evoked the pleasures of love, the fleeting nature of its sound, and the physical fragility of the instrument made it a fitting emblem of transience and death: it is often included, sometimes alongside a skull, in Dutch still life paintings of the Vanitas variety, illustrating the vanity of worldly existence.
On the other hand, lute with its multiple courses (pairs of strings which have to be carefully tuned) could symbolize the concord and harmony in matrimony and family made evident by numerous family portraits with musical instruments.
In this painting, Vermeer chose not to give a precise explanation for the woman's meditative attitude as she pauses to tune the lute, preferring instead to suggest a mood that has universal resonances. However, he provided two indications that the woman's musing revolves around a distant lover: the map of Europe, which may well allude to foreign travels; and the bass viol dimly visible under the table. The presence of this second instrument (the viola under the table) relates to an emblem by Jacob Cats, which describes metaphorically how the resonance of the strings of one musical instrument are felt in another, just as the heartstrings of two lovers sound as one, even when they are separated.
Unfortunately, due to the poor state of conservation of this picture, none of its details, which were so lovingly portrayed by a host of Dutch painters, can be made out. All indications of the instrument's strings or frets have entirely disappeared and the delicately carved ornamental soundhole has been reduced to a few unintelligible smudges of paint.
Self-Portrait as a Lutenist
Jan Steen
1652-55
55 x 44 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Until the invention of the piano, the lute was the dominent solo instrument. Shakespeare was only one of many writers of his day who attributed to the lute the power to transport the listener into a kind of ecstasy; for throughout the Renaissance the lute's ravishing tone made it the most esteemed and admired of all musical instruments. The fame of the greatest players spread through all Europe, and the doors of royal courts and palaces were open to them (a number were consequently employed as spies) while instruments by the most famous makers could fetch astronomical sums.
It is not hard to comprehend the appeal of the instrument. Light and portable, a harmonizing instrument cheaper and easier to maintain than keyboards, it was (and is) enormously versatile; it was used to play dance music, popular tunes, arrangements of vocal music and song accompaniments, and soon generated a solo repertoire of its own, in the form of preludes, passemezzi (a sort of Renaissance twelve-bar blues) and the most refined and expressive fantasias.
The lute had been painted an almost innumerable number of times in European painting. Other than being a continual source of iconographical inspiration, the lute was frequently used as a training ground for learning the intricacies of drawing objects in perspective. Examination of Dutch genre works in particular show that a number of painters clearly kept it as a studio prop and, naturally, a few (certainly Jan Steen—see left) must have actually played it. In some cases, an artist featured the same lute in several paintings. Lutes or even theorbos appear as part of studio furniture in self portraits as well. For example, in Michael Sweerts An Artist's Studio, a lovely Italian theorbo (cloesely realted to the lute) lies propped in one corner.
There exist many 16th-century engravings which show the lute being drawn, usually in the difficult three-quarter or end-on views (the full face view of the soundboard is relatively straightforward to draw), and at times with the aid of camera obscura or other optical devices utilized by artists of the time. The lute was also an important ingredient in Vanitas painting which represented the transient nature of life. At times the ephemeral nature of music was conveyed in an even more graphic manner via a broken string or two, or the instrument portrayed face down with obvious finger marks in heavy dust on its glossy back ribs.
Sarabande, Jean Mercure (c. 1600-1660)
performed by Thomas Berghan
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/tom/
from the M.L. Lutebook, 26r
performed by Thomas Berghan
The Lute
The name and form of the European lute derives from its early ancestor, the Arab "al 'Ud," literally meaning "wood," probably because the instrument is almost entirely made of various kinds of wood.
Early forms of the lute's ancestors - in various forms and sizes, often with long necks - were found in the former Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (c. 2nd millenium B.C.), later in Egypt. The short-necked lute appeared at first in East Asia (China, 5th century A.C.) and as the 'Ud in Arabia (7th-8th century). From there it was brought to Europe, probably by the Moors to the Iberian Peninsula (8-9th century), later (c. 1100) by the Saracens to Sicily. The form of the European lute with the turned back pegbox as a substantial characteristic (presumably to help hold the low-tension strings firmly against the nut) had been developed in Spain during the 13th century. By the 14th century it was widespread throughout Italy and had made significant inroads into the German-speaking areas.
From the 15th to the early 18th century the lute was the most favoured instrument, at first for the accompaniment of the singing voice or part of the continuo, but with the appearance of the great lutenists and composers (Vincenzo Capirola, John Dowland, Alessandro Piccinini or Nicolaes Vallet) and the publication of numerous lutebooks also used as a solo instrument.
The Western lute has a pear-shaped vaulted back (later rather longer and smaller, like an almond), made up of a number of separate ribs of wood, bent over a mould and glued together edge to edge to form the deep rounded body. At the back of the top end of the neck the housing for the pegbox is cut out, with the slender tapering hardwood tuning-pegs inserted from the sides.
From c. 1580 onwards almost all surviving lutes have separate ebony fingerboards, set flush with the soundboard. The soundboard or belly is a flat thin plate of softwood, often made from two halves joined along the centre line. An ornamental soundhole - the 'rose' - is carved into the soundboard (rare instruments may have several little roses). The bridge, holding the strings, was consistently made of a light hardwood and was glued directly to the surface of the soundboard.
The strings, made of gut, are arranged in pairs - the courses, being tuned either in unison or at the octave. The number of courses grew from four or five in the Middle Ages up to fourteen in the Baroque era, requiring some innovations in the lute's structure.
The medieval lute mainly served for the accompanying chords to the songs and was plucked with a quill as plectrum. During the Renaissance era the players begun to pluck the strings with the thumb and the following three fingers, thereby gradually turning from the earlier "thumb-in" position to the "thumb-out" position gaining a greater stretch to be able to reach the encreasing number of courses.
Hendrick Terbrugghen
1628
101 x 81 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Jan Steen 1652-55
55 x 44 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Hendrick Terbrugghen
1629
90 x 127 cm
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
Gerrit van Honthorst
1624
Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger
c. 1615
Judith Leyster
1629
46 x 35 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Cornelis Bega
1664-65
36 x 32 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence