Vermeer's Delft Today: The View of Delft

The proud citizens and Delft's municipality made enormous efforts to reconstruct the city after the devastating powder explosion (Delftse donderslag) in the shortest time possible. And with the city's reconstruction, opportunities to make much money abounded. Apart form the obviously work of reconstruction and repair, illustrated pamphlets dedicated to this tradegy were sold to the curious. Only about six years later, c. 1660/61, when Vermeer painted his beloved home town with evident pride, he represented it without a trace of any damages it had suffered only some years before.

Our  imaginary tour of Vermeer’s Delft starts at the Kolk, the triangular-shaped harbor at the south of the city and the place from which Vermeer had painted his splendid View of Delft (present Plein Delft, near Hooikade). From a topographical point of view, this tiny slice of Holland remains surprisingly intact as can clearly be seen in the comparison between Willem Blaeu's 1648 atlas (left) and a Google satellite image (left, below) of the same area.The Kolk preserves the same form and dimensions today and it is quite probable that one finds a boat anchored exactly at the same point where Vermeer painted a tow barge which put into service in 1655 when the line service to Rotterdam was started. Vermeer’s warm ochre yellow sand bank in the foreground has been replaced by concrete and asphalt and a busy road now runs along the banks of the further shore where Vermeer had depicted a "smalschip" and a "wijdtschip" (the later possibly used for long distance ferrying)  resting peacefully as a few early morning creatures stroll oblivious to their surroundings, most probably, waiting for the tow barge to leave its moorings. The clock was used by ferryboats leaving the harbor to go to Rotterdam, Schiedam or Delfshaven. "Given the orientation of the scene, the full green foliage and the active maintenance works on these two ships which are moored at the Delft shipyard - getting ready before June 1st - it follows that the intended scene and/or the actual conception of this painting must be dated at an early morning in the first half of May."¹

The area took its initial form from a bastion constructed in 1573, when the city fortifications were modernized. In 1614 it was dug up again, creating a triangular harbor called the Kolk. Both of the gates and the town wall were pulled down in the eighteen thirties and most of the stepped-gables in the painting have been replaced by modern facades. In Vermeer’s representation only the towers of the Nieuwe Kerk and the Oude Kerk have survived even though the present spire of the Nieuwe Kerk dates from 1875. The original wooden spire caught fire when it was struck by lightning three years earlier.²

The Kolk was the main point of departure to other cities and to other countires via the Schie and Maas. One could access Rotterdam, Schiedam and Delfshaven as well as the Flanders and Brabant, France England and to every corner of the world. Vermeer's View of Delft represents the city of Delft as seen from the south. Beyond the harbor lies the deep brown city walls that are broken only by the small Kethel Gate and the larger Schiedam Gate with its clock tower. The Rotterdam Gate is recopgnizable with its twin tower. None of these architectural features has survived. It must be said that Vermeer chose a rather uncharacteritic profile of Delft.³ Traditional cityscapes of Delft generally emphasized its most distinctive landmarks. The Oude Kerk, one of the most venerable monument of all, can barely be discerned in the distant left center of the composition. For a thorough examination of the relationship between the actual historical site and Vermeer's rendering, consult http://www.xs4all.nl/~kalden/verm/artibus-hist1982.htm.

The photograph at the top of this page is taken from a position very near to the point where Vermeer painted his picture more or less at the same height from the ground. Historians believe that the artist worked from the second story of an inn that has obviously been long since torn down. The scene’s perfect peacefulness does not remain unless one is determined to bring some of it there oneself. But we should remember that it was probably the painter's artifice rather than a fact: this section of Delft was one of the busiest. But with a little luck  and the right timing (the hour is shown on the clock of the Schiedam gate about 7:15 to 7:30  A. M.)  the clouds and general atmosphere cannot fail but suggest something of Vermeer’s sublime masterpiece. To be sure, the shoreline is still in the right place, the spire of the Nieuwe Kerk still can be seen and a tiny sliver of the bizarre tower of the Oude Kerk peers over the cleanliness of the modern skyline.

But even if the expanse of Dutch sky is there and the two key monuments tell us there’s no doubt that we are aligned correctly, and even if we are able to compensate for the differences in architectural design and construction materials, there is something entirely "wrong“ about the setting. The material pre sense of bricks and mortar and wood which evokes the sense of physical nearness in Vermeer’s painting seems impossible to reconcile with the distances that any one who has stood on the same actual premises. The background shore is surprisingly distant, much farther away than the impression evoked by Vermeer’s painting.

Precisely at this juncture, the only fixed point that can be objectively identified and compared with a Vermeer painting, one is assailed by the doubt that the painter took great liberties in his interpretation and that his poetry is hardly fruit of a literal transcription of a long lost world. "As usual, Vermeer created a reality whose bits and pieces can be disputed in terms of factual truth but whose artistic 'rightness' is overwhelming."⁴

Comparisons ⁵

For credible comparisons we must rely on 17th- and 18th-century drawings and topographical maps, none of which is perfectly accurate These comparisons reveal that in the course of execution Vermeer moved toward greater compositional simplicity, at the expense of literal realism. Vermeer seems to have played down the three-dimensionality of the sight, emphasizing, instead, its overall  frontality. A comparison of Vermeer's painting with topographic views taken from more or less the same angle, such as the one drawn by in the early eighteenth century, indicates that Vermeer made the houses inAbraham Rademaker the foreground of the city more uniform in size and less closely packed than they were in reality. He apparently introduced these changes to achieve a more isocephalous, frieze-like effect; in the manner of a classical theorem (except that he was portraying houses rather than people lined up in a row as in a Roman bas-relief). He also reduced the size of the figures on the shore in the foreground so as not to distract the viewer's eye from the structures beyond the river. Except to a viewer who was extremely familiar with the site, the alterations he introduced must have enhanced the illusion of reality. Hoogstraten, Wheelock points out, does not recommend that paintings copy nature but that they give the appearance of having copied nature. And if Vermeer used an optical device such as a camera obscura, it was not so that he could get the view of Delft (just right" but to create special effects, to enhance the sensation of reality by stressing contrasts of light and dark, and to help him render his colors more vivid.

compare Vermeer's rendering with other images of the same scene

The View of Delft (detail)
Johannes Vermeer
Mauritshuis
The Hague

A View of Delft (detail)
Abraham Rademaker
1700-1710
Stedelijk Museum, Het Prinsenhof
Delft

A View of Delft (detail)
Gerrit Toorenburg
c. 1750
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

A View of Delft
Gerrit Toorenburg
c. 1750
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

The Rotterdam Gate at Delft
Jan van Kessel
c. 1649-1669
17.9 x 24.4 cm.
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, De Grez Collection