Details: Vermeer's Painting Methods & Techniques
A LADY SEATED AT A VIRGINAL
c. 1673-1675
oil on canvas
20 3/4 x 17 7/8 in. (51.5 x 45.5 cm.)
The National Gallery
London
brushwork
Even thought Vermeer's late works have been judged somewhat negatively in respects to his earlier paintings, some of the most beautiful and pictorially significant details that he painted can be found in them. His extraordinary power of pictorial invention can be clearly seen in the rendering of the illuminated side of the marbled spinet. The flat slab of marble appears so convincing that it is surprising to note with what absolute economy of means it has been achieved.
Vermeer first laid down a rectangle of a warm brown and a gray one below of smooth and virtually unmodulated paint. Once dry, he mixed two rather fluid gray colors for the veins. The wet-over-dry brushwork used to represent the veins is so daringly suggestive that it recalls the almost anarchic spontaneity Jakuchu's ink drawings of birds and vegetables, but at the same time it miraculously evokes the objective visual impression of veined marble. One author has compared his technique to Jackson Pollock's drip paintings. It is impossible to understand if it was Vermeer's primary wish to represent his optical perceptions of rather to give free reign his gestural impulse.
In order to represent the pale diagonal shadow cast by the bow of the viola he prepared a medium gray transparent tone and thinly applied it over the marble taking care to let the paint below transpire. The wonderfully vibrant shadow that results brings into relation the viola's bow and the surface of marbled surface which have a so physically different nature.
