The Essential Vermeer Glossary: A-C

In the mid 1660s, the Guild of Saint Luke, which had been in charge of regulating the local commerce of artists and artisans and to a certain point the education of their members, had already had began to lose their hold on painters. Instead, brotherhoods which were restricted to master-painters, began to spring up in various parts of the Netherlands: Dortrecht in 1642, Hoorn in 1651, The Hague in 1656. In 1653 in Amsterdam painters had founded a brotherhood separated from the Guild of Saint Luke.

Vermeer received his artistic training most likely from the late 1640s. Since he was accepted in the Delft guild in 1653 he must have begun his four or six year apprenticeship as required beginning in about 1647. It is not know, however, either with whom he studied or in which city. In this period there are no records of any kind which testify his whereabouts. Various names and cities have been conjectured. Since his earliest works show remarkable affinities to paintings of two established painters, Van Loo and Quellinus, both working in Amsterdam, it may be that he was sent there to study. Fabritius, considered Rembrandt's finest student, resided in Delft but at the time Vermeer would have began to study but Fabritius had not been registered in the guild the required two year period before accepting apprentices. Leonaert Bramer, a family friend of Vermeer, has been cited as a possible candidate but the strongly Italianate style work of the elder artist share very little with Vermeer's early work.

One thing seems be certain, with whomever Vermeer studied, his master must have possessed a classical background since Vermeer's own early paintings clearly indicated the budding artist's awareness of classical art theory and practice.

Vermeer did not make use of aerial perspective in his interiors. This optical phenomena usually occurs in particular atmospheric conditions and at a significant distance. Instead, he employed linear perspective to suggest depth. The only painting in which one might logically expect the phenomena to be observable, is the View of Delft. However, it does not seem to be present, either because the conditions did not occur or the artist chose to ignore them

17th.c Dutch painters, including Vermeer, seldom made use of the alla prima method. Instead, the artist's work-load was divided into four relatively distinct steps: "inventing" or drawing, "dead-coloring" or underpainting, "working-up" or finishing and lastly, retouching. See Vermeer's Technique for in-depth information

It is generally thought that Vermeer painted three allegorical works: The Art of Painting (where the standing model, who is presumed to be "Clio" represents Fame), the Allegory of Faith and the Woman Holding a Balance, whose precise allegorical meaning has proven difficult to explain.

According to Daniel Arasse ("Vermeer's Private Allegories" in Vermeer Studies, 1998) the Allegory of Faith "is an allegory explicitly declared as such, and the woman's gesture, the furniture and especially the serpent of heresy crushed in the foreground indicate; it is a 'public allegory' in response to a specific commission Vermeer had been given."

We know that The Art of Painting is an allegory since Vermeer himself called it De Schilderconst (The Art of Painting). Both Vermeer and his wife, Catharina, must have been particularly attached to this painting since it is known that he had kept it in his studio till his death and that his wife afterwards went to great lengths to save to painting from being taken from her by her creditors.

Since Vermeer's "rediscovery" in the mid 1860s by Thoré Burger, his art has inspired a truly impressive number of interpretations. Although Burger himself had dubbed Vermeer "the Sphinx of Delft" (for the number of different styles the artist seemed to have worked in) it was Lawrence Gowing the first critic to clearly underline the pervading sense of ambivalence < much so art Vermeer?s in present reticence to become the focal point of his penetrating examination of the artist's oeuvre. Almost every interpretation of the artist's work which followed, in one way or another, has had to taken into account Gowing's penetrating observations even though they are in themselves ultimately subjective and cannot be proved.

In Gowing's words: "However definite and recognizable the weave of paint in the style of Vermeer, inside it is something is hidden and compressed. There is a curious note in many of his pictures. It is to be seen in the vocabulary of representation that he applies to the simplest form, the fold of a bodice or a finger. It is a note of ambiguity, a personal uncertainty that one cannot help feel about the painter. His detachment is so complete, his observation of tone so impersonal, yet so efficient. The description is always exactly adequate, always completely and effortlessly in terms of light. Vermeer seems almost not to care, or even to know, what it is he is painting. What do men call this wedge of light? A nose? A Finger? What do we know of its shape? All should be well. Such might be the constitution of the simplest painters. Yet something keeps us wondering. What kind of man was Vermeer? Here is the ambiguity. We may examine the pictures from coroner to corner and still be uncertain."

And again: "There is in his thought, the paradoxical accompaniment of its clarity, a deep character of evasiveness, a perpetual withdrawal."

After the 1950s, perhaps in reaction to the Van Meegeren debacle of false Vermeer's, critics began to search for more objective ways of understanding the apparent complexities of Vermeer's art. His entire oeuvre was examined within the context of Dutch 17th c. painting and in particular in relation to genre painters such as Ter Borch, Maes, Metsu and De Hoogh (see Albert Blankert, Vermeer, 1976). A great number iconographical studies followed that have attempted to unlock a presumed hidden meaning of Vermeer's paintings. Allegoric, symbolic and emblematic readings abounded.

Allegory, symbolic and emblematic readings, in theory, should be an inherently a more objective tool for understanding Vermeer's (and Dutch painting of the period as well) since in order to be comprehensible, any iconographical language must by force be common to many people and based on an established usage. However, after years of research, no single key for unlocking hidden meaning in Vermeer's paintings was found, rather, a number of methods have been proposed and as a result interpretations of individual pictures have often been conflicting. It is also significant that no period text discusses the relation between iconography and painting.

In the last decades, some Vermeer experts have attempted to come to grips with the ambivalence in Vermeer's oeuvre in another way. In 1984, Jan Bialostocki was among the first to suggest that 17th c. artists may have been deliberately ambiguous in their use iconography and a number of Vermeer scholars have taken his lead. Arthur Wheelock states." The range of interpretation possible for Vermeer's paintings is part of their poetic qualities." Albert Blankert, speaking Vermeer's Music Lesson states: " Vermeer deliberately left the situation undefined to make it more involving." And Daniel Arasse states that "the uncertainly of meaning is deliberate in Vermeer."

Eddy de Jong, who was one of the most visible proponents of iconographical reading of Vermeer's paintings, has come to the conclusion that perhaps the iconographical vein of interpretation of Vermeer's painting has run its course even though, as is obvious, much has been learned from this approach.

In 1998, De Jong offered a finely balanced analysis ( "On Balance", in Vermeer Studies, 2000) of the progress and the problems that lay open in the field of iconographical interpretation of Vermeer's painting. He has noted that even though there is still great debate as exactly what meaning Vermeer may have invested in his work, there has been "a remarkable agreement about Vermeer's artistic stature. "Many authors have done their best to capture Vermeer's exceptional subtleties in words. 'Done their best,' because there is a high 'je ne sais quoi' mid 1860s and many critics have done their best to capture in words the exceptional subtlety of his works. The closer one gets to the artistic essence (if such a thing exists) the more one thinks one is fathoming that strange fusion of immobility of and movement, of poised animation and frozen action, the more one finds oneself stammering. Finally, the ineffable secret remains thus ineffable."

The ambiguity in Vermeer's work lay not only in symbolic and allegorical reading of the painting, but in the duality of image and paint. Looking at Vermeer's The Art of Painting we have "one of the best examples of the miraculous duality of painting: at the very same instant we perceive an illusion of reality and the material evidence that we are in front of a painted illusion." 4

In the important 1740 edition of De Lairesse’s treatise mntioned above, Vermeer was cited among other "modern" Dutch masters whose art was destined to perish: ”the old Mieris, Metzu, van der Meer.”

It is generally believed that from the onset of his career, unlike many Dutch contemporary painters who considered themselves little more as artisans, Vermeer seemed to have comprehended the role of the artist intended in its highest sense. His first pictures were large scale history paintings of religious or mythological subjects. These subjects were considered the most worthy of expressing the loftiest goal of art: the elevation of the human spirit. For some reason which has not been explained, soon after his first large scale history paintings, Vermeer abruptly began to depict contemporary interiors which, according to art theorists of the time, belonged to the "modern" mode considered inferior since it expressed transitory values. This kind of art was therefore destined to perish. However, among the "modern" genre interior painters only Vermeer was able to imbue his works with a sense of timelessness and express the moral seriousness associated with history painting.

The most direct and significant testimony of Vermeer's elevated concept of art may be clearly seen in his mature work, The Art of Painting. Whether the allegorical message of the painting refers to the nobility of art or its capacity to bestow fame on its creator is uncertain, it is clear that the work displays a knowledge of classical ideals which dominated European art theory, but which in the Netherlands had lost their hold on the great part of painters. The importance of this painting to Vermeer is underlined by the fact that he kept it in his studio till the day he died. Moreover after Vermeer's death, Catharina, the artist's wife went to great lengths to keep this painting from the hands of her creditors.

Thoré Burger, who is generally credited for having in the mid 1800s recovered Vermeer painting, deeply influenced the perception of Vermeer's art for a number of years. Strongly influenced by his political views, Thoré believed that the primary function and value of Dutch art was to reflect the daily experience of life of common people.

By the early 1900s with the rise of the modernist school of painting, Vermeer's paintings began to be appreciated for their notable abstract qualities which seemed to reflect the revolutionary concerns of avante guard contemporary painting. Wilhelm Valentiner, expert of Dutch painting, maintained that Vermeer focused primarily on the "purely aesthetic."

Philip Hale, Boston painter and art teacher, was the first American to write a monograph on Vermeer in 1913. Hale was deeply struck by what he perceived as "Vermeer's modernity." According to Hale, "if ever a man believed in art for art's sake it was he. He anticipated the modern idea of impersonality in art...he makes no comment on the picture. One does not see by his composition what he thought of it all."

Some years later, P. T. A. Swillens a Dutch art historian , whose monograph on Vermeer was published in 1950 was to have an important impact on the study of Vermeer, shared Hales' opinions and wrote that the artist had no interest in the "inner life" of his sitters and that he "reveals only what is of value to him as a painter", and was not interested "in what intrigued him as a human being and a thinker."

However, Swillen's overriding emphasis on the aesthetic content of a picture, which typify the idea of art-for-art's-sake, perhaps miss one of the most compelling aspects of Vermeer's work: the emotional intensity of his figures. Lawrence Gowing only two years after the publication of Swillens' book had already began to expose a new point of view. While recognizing (it should be remembered that Gowing was a painter himself) Vermeer's extraordinary capacities of pictorial organization, he wrote that when the artist's perfect style is understood, his painting's "yield their strangely emotional content" and that it "becomes clear that his position.

Vermeer was very conscious of the stabilizing impact of vertical axis’ in his compositions. In the Woman with a Water Pitcher, the woman’s leaning position is steadied by an axis which follows the vertical left-hand border of the map and runs directly through the center of the water pitcher. This "anchoring” gives the woman's momentary gesture an air of permanence and balance but avoids staticity.

In Vermeer's interiors, the background wall, which encloses the composition, is always parallel to the picture plane. In Lawrence Gowing's words these walls "retain a certain flavour of subtle deception." The fact that the background is parallel to the picture plane aids the artist in achieving a more accurate illusionist effect of depth since the painting's implied three dimensional spaces are more easily calculated. Too, the many so-called pictures-within-a picture and maps which hang on these walls permit Vermeer to "frame" his figures within a geometric structure of perpendicular lines creating a sense of rational order.

Other interiors painters, such as Pieter de Hoogh, who was active in Delft and most likely preceded Vermeer in his depictions of upper middle-class interiors, did not always place the background wall parallel to the picture plane as Vermeer did. Some Delft painters of church interiors of the 1650s placed the picture plane at an oblique angle to the walls of the church. Their compositions achieve a less formal, but more dynamic effect.

It is probable that Vermeer did not use the badger brush as much as many of his contemporariess who painted in the fijnschilder stylee. By contrast, his earlier paintings in the are built up with relatively thick layers of paint with visible brush strokes throughout. Perhaps Vermeer used the badger brush for the modeling of the sitters' faces, especially in the mid-1660s, and in particular, the Girl with a Pearl Earring.

One of the most distinctive characteristics of Vermeer’s painting is balance. However, the artist usually did not employ symmetry as a means to balance his compositions as did Raphael and other painters of the Renaissance. The great part of his of his compositions are organized around perpendicular lines which divide the canvas into simple areas of light and dark which can be more easily assimilated and understood. This simplified and highly determined organization of the painting’s two dimensional composition creates a sense of repose and permanence.

It would seem likely that Vermeer did not begin with a predetermined compositional scheme but rather first determined the poses, positions and attitudes of his sitters, as well as the objects which surround them with in a chosen environment. Afterwards, he carefully manipulated each of these compositional elements as well as the lighting in order to achieve the balance he desired.

Although Vermeer does not fit the popular conception of a baroque painter such as Rubens or Rembrandt, his work nonetheless is rooted within the basic principles of the baroque. He gave great importance to describing the activity of light, and explored the emotional significance of gesture and movements, albeit subdued, of his sitters. His works are pervaded by a naturalistic sense quite which however never fail to suggest the inner moving of his sitters' psyche. Rather than pursuing the underlying principles characteristic of Renaissance thought which were perceived as per se eternal, Vermeer suspended seemingly insignificant moments of everyday existence in time.

"Vermeer's paintings of the1660s and early 1670s present the bourgeois domestic interior as a space for polite social ritual and introspective quiet. These paintings have come to define the image of the Dutch middle class: prosperous, private, morally upstanding, and self-aware. This picture of bourgeois accomplishment accords well with the aims and ambitions of the Dutch citizen elite, however difficult they were to attain in practice in the bustle of urban life, Some of Vermeer's paintings hint at this tension; others paint it away. It animates his paintings of women writing, reading, and delivering letters, which never quite tell us just what is being written or read." 6

During the recent restoration of the View of Delft, fragments of coarse hog’s hair was found embedded in the paint of the sky area. The artist had evidently used as sturdy brush adapted to vigorously apply thick impasto paint.

Vermeer’s brushwork varied throughout his career. His earlier religious and genre paintings display a surprising broad and vigorous application of paint. In the mid 1660s, however, all traces of brush work seemed to have disappeared in favor of a enamel-like surface. In the later paintings, Vermeer's brushwork again becomes visible assuming a curious calligraphic aspect while the actual paint layer remains extremely thin.

Although Vermeer never sought the microscopic detail and mirror-like smoothness of the fijnschilders, even his most evident brushwork is extremely subdued in respects to the vigorous gestural brushwork of great baroque masters such as Rembrandt, Velasquez and Rubens. When Vermeer's brushwork is evident, rather than reflecting emotional states of the artist, it tends to be impersonal in nature aiming at a simplified description of visual and textural qualities of what is being represented. Perhaps only in some details (see the marble veining of the spinet in A Lady Seated at a Virginal) his latest paintings can we detect spontaneous movement, which however was usually confined to the movement of the fingers.

Most of Vermeer's paintings were considered cabinet paintings. One of his pictures, Woman Holding a Balance, listed in the posthumous 1696 Dissius auction in Amsterdam (which included in all 21 paintings by Vermeer) is described as being" in a box." Most likely this box served as a protective device for the most precious works.

It has been long supposed that Vermeer used the camera obscura as an aid for his paintings although scholars are still in disaccord as exactly to what extent he relied on the device. However, in recent years there is a tendency to accept that he did so systematically. Click here for a four part study of Vermeer and the camera obscura and and click here for an enlightening interview with Philip Steadman, the author of the highly debated Vermeer's Camera: The Truth Behind the Masterpieces which discusses the history of the camera and above all, Vermeer's use of it.

Vermeer's association with Italian painting had been strongly suspected since the first half of the 20th c. to the point that some scholars believed that he had traveled to Italy in his early formative years. However, no proof has ever surfaced in regards. Just the same, he may have been aware the lessons of Caravaggio through the Utrecht Caravaggists: Honthorst, Terbrugghen and Van Bijlert.

John Montias has hypothesized that the young Vermeer may have passed his period of apprenticeship with the elderly Abraham Bloemaert, a not so distant relative of his future mother-in-law, Maria Thins. Thins had in her private art collection a number of paintings from the Utrecht school, some of which Vermeer portrayed on the back walls of his own compositions. Although Bloemaert had never himself been to Italy, some of his former students had gone to Rome, where they were strongly influenced by the Caravaggist school of painting, and when they came back to Utrecht they familiarized him with the new school. Afterwards, Bloemaert painted some pictures that clearly display characteristics of Caravaggio's style.

There exists another fact which is often cited in reference to Vermeer's supposed familiarity with Italian painting. In May 1672, he took part of a committee of artists which was called to The Hague (at the time he was the head of the Delft Guild of Saint Luke) which had been selected to judge the authenticity of a dubious art collection of Italian master paintings offered to the Grand Elector of Brandenburg. According to Vermeer and his colleagues, the paintings were not Italian at all, on the contrary, "great pieces of rubbish not worth much."

It is now believed that many, if not most, seventeenth-century painters did not prepare their own canvases but bought them ready-made from specialized colormen. Their sizes may sometimes be associated with local units of measure. The width of a roll of cloth was governed by the width of the 100m: most looms in Twente and Brabant, the main sources for canvas in the Northern Netherlands were two ells (ca. 138 cm) wide, whereas 100m widths of Italian canvases tend to range between 106 and 110 cm.

Vermeer used fine woven linen canvas for his paintings. For example, The Woman Holding a Balance is painted on a plane woven linen with a thread count of 20 x 16 per square cm. Since many of Vermeer’s paintings are similar in dimension and proportion, it has been conjectured that he too may have prefer use pre-prepared canvases rather than face the laborious task of preparing them by himself.

Vermeer's use of chiaroscuro was closely linked to the objective description of light's activity although it also played an important part in the organization of his compositions.

Since the "recovery" of Vermeer's art in the mid 1860s, determining both the exact number of works and the chronological order in which they were painted, has been particularly vexing. Only one (or perhaps two if the date on The Geographer is authentic) of his paintings bears a date; the early Procuress (1656).

The present chronology of Vermeer's paintings has been principally fruit of stylistic analysis and comparisons to works of other Dutch genre artists whose paintings show stylistic similarities and whose dates are more reasonably established. Some indications of the dates have been proposed by analyzing the dress and hair styles of his sitters.

Since Vermeer experimented with different styles of painting, the problem of dating his works is even more complicated. Arthur Wheelock, one of the most accredited Vermeer scholars, believes that due to stylistic and technical inconsistencies, a chronological order cannot be definitively determined by relying on technical considerations alone. Vermeer's paintings are generally grouped in three or four relatively distinct periods.

Even though exact date of each painting must be considered hypothetical, their sequential order has remained much the same as it has been since the 1960s and 1970s when Vermeer's oeuvre had been begun to be systematically studied with greater attention towards historical and scientific evidence. This task was considerably facilitated by the fact that Vermeer's oeuvre had been definitively purged in the early 1950s of a number of fakes and false attributions

Vermeer's finely balanced paintings have been perceived as possessing characteristics of the classical style (see Arthur Wheelock, Johannes Vermeer, with contributions by Albert Blankert, Ben Broos and Jørgen Wadum , 1995, p. 27). Walter Liedtke, curator of Northern Painting of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and of the Vermeer and the Delft School exhibition, instead sees that there is no evidence at all that Vermeer pursued classicist ideals. He believes that the underlying sense of order and repose in Vermeer's work derives from local artistic traditions of Delft.

In regards, Lawrence Gowing wrote in 1950: "Vermeer's design is usually considered to be classical in kind, a deliberate ordering of space and pattern, and in general the classical designer makes his deliberation visible, as do Piero and Poussin, in the smallest forms he represents. Vermeer's representation is of the opposite kind, the kind which abhors preconception and design and relies entirely on the retina as its guide..."

As Vincent Van Gogh noted, blue and lemon yellow, accompanied by gray, are characteristic of Vermeer's palette much as as gray and pink were of Velasquez's. Vermeer's typical blue pigment, (natural ultramarine) has a very strong red undertone, while his characteristic yellow (lead-tin yellow) tends to be slightly green, making them almost complimentary.

Vermeer's palette, as well as those of many Northern painters, was generally cool in tone, especially when compared with the warm palettes of Italian masters which was further enhanced by the use of reddish grounds of their canvases. However, significant passages of vibrant unadulterated red are present in Vermeer's earlier compositions while large masses of subdued red are present in the depictions of the oriental carpets found in many of his works. Various shades of blue and cool grays, often composed of lead white and black are dominant, complimented by patches of his characteristic lemon yellow, which has been revealed to be a widely used pigment called lead-tin yellow.

The relative coolness of Vermeer's palette is not always apparent in reproductions, particularly in older ones. Cool colors are more negatively effected than warm ones by layers of aged yellow varnish. Luckily, recent restorations of many of Vermeer's paintings have restored the chromatic brilliance of many passages and the original overall cool effect of his pictures since layers old varnish have been removed. The recent restoration of Vermeer's early Procuress provides an excellent example.

Vermeer was perhaps one of the greatest painting composers of all times. His compositions are finely balanced yet never static. Although one tends to perceive more readily the perpendicular elements of Vermeer’s compositions, strong diagonal lines often enliven his compositions enhancing theme and expressive content.

Arthur Wheelock has in recent years drawn attention to the importance of composition as a prime vehicle of Vermeer's artistic aims. Wheelock, states that "the compositional refinements in Vermeer's paintings are so exquisite that it is difficult to understand how he achieved them. His mastery of perspective does not account for the sensitive arrangement of the figures or for the subtle proportions he established between pictorial elements." His comment on Vermeer's use of composition in Music Lesson, perhaps Vermeer's most architecturally structured work, is revealing. "The expansive space of this elegantly appointed interior seems to reverberate with the same music being played at the virginal. Contrasting patterns of shapes and colors create major and minor accents that parallel the structure of the music.

As with music, the composition has a focus, in the instance the vanishing point of the perspective system that falls with great insistence on the woman's left sleeve."

Perhaps one of the greatest failures of modern connoisseurship is related to the Han van Meegeren case of false Vermeer's. In 1937, Abraham Bredius (one of the most authoritative art historians and connoisseurs of the time who had dedicated a great part of his life to the study of Vermeer) was approached by a lawyer who claimed to be the trustee of a Dutch family estate in order to have him look at a rather large painting of a Christ with his Disciples. Shortly after having viewed the painting, the 83 year old art historian wrote the Burlington Magazine, the "art bible" of the times: "It is a wonderful moment in the life of a lover of art when he finds himself suddenly confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master, untouched, on the original canvas, and without any restoration, just as it left the painter's studio! And what a picture! Neither the beautiful signature "I. V. M. in monogram) nor the pointillè on the bread of the Christ is blessing, is necessary to that we have a - I am inclined to say the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft...." No doubts were advanced since Bredius' opinion was taken as gospel in the art world so much that he had been nick-named "the Pope."

The work was by the hand of Hans van Meegeren, a mediocre Dutch artist who had lived and worked in almost complete obscurity. In the years preceding World War II, Van Meegeren had falsified a number of Dutch masters including some Vermeer. Van Meegeren clumsy fakes passed unobserved (perhaps with a certain justification, they had escaped serious scrutiny since they emerged during World War II) but were nonetheless sold for dizzying prices. After the end of the war, in a state of general incredulity, Van Meegeren claimed that he was the author of the Christ with his Disciples in order to clear himself of Nazi collaboration charges. One of the false Vermeer's which had been sold illegally to Hermann Göring had been traced to Van Meegeren. The entire world was shocked by the trial which received international coverage.

The deep doubts concerning the international art establishment raised by the Van Meegeren case resulted in years of a much needed self-examination. Art historians, connoisseurs, museum directors and unscrupulous dealers had all been involved. Contemporary methods of evaluating the work master painters required a profound reconsideration. The idea that an elite group of connoisseurs could determine the value of a work of art solely on aesthetic criterion alone was dealt a lasting blow.

For many years after Vermeer's "recovery" in the mid 1850s, it was believed that the primary function of his art and that of 17th c. Dutch painters art as well, was to reflect the daily experience of life of common people. By the early decades of the 20th c. with the rise of the modernist school of painting, his work began to be appreciated principally for their abstract qualities which seemed to reflect the concerns of avante guard contemporary painting. In recent years, a great many studies have focused on Vermeer's use of iconography in an attempt to understand his art from the vantage point of his own contemporaries. However, no general agreement has been reached in regards and the question of the precise iconographical meaning of his paintings remains open.

According to many scholars, and in particular Lawrence Gowing, author of one of the most penetrating studies of his art, his works seems to be characterized by a underlying poetic ambivalence and a personal reticence which he elaborated in his excellent study Vermeer (1950). A number of other Vermeer experts have attempted to come to grips with the ambivalence in Vermeer's oeuvre. In 1984, Jan Bialostocki was among the first to suggest that 17th c. artists may have been deliberately ambiguous in their use iconography and a number of Vermeer scholars have taken his lead. They believe that Vermeer, as other Dutch painters, deliberately calculated the iconographical ambiguity of their pictures since they would be sold on an open market, without the artist knowing who would be the purchaser and where the work would hang allowing them to function in various ways according to the client's particular interests. Arthur Wheelock states." The range of interpretation possible for Vermeer's paintings is part of their poetic qualities." Albert Blankert, speaking Vermeer's Music Lesson states: " Vermeer deliberately left the situation undefined to make it more involving."

Although there exists no supporting documented evidence in regards, a number of scholars, including Robert Huerta and Mariët Westermann have begun to systematically relate Vermeer's art more specifically to the philosophical and scientific ferment of his times. Huerta points out that the conceptual and methodological links between the Delft painter Vermeer and his near neighbor and exact contemporary, the microscopist Antony van Leeuwenhoek. He argues that Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura parallels Van Leeuwenhoek’s pursuit of the "optical way," and embodies a profound philosophical connection between these investigators. Vermeer’s informed observations enabled him to confront the same issues as other natural philosophers regarding the interpretation of unfamiliar images presented by instrumental systems (viz, the telescope, microscope, camera obscura). Obviously Philip Steadman's close examination of Vermeer's use of the camera obscura has done much to support Huerta's ideas.

Westermann points the parallels between the most systematic philosopher of human-awareness, René Descartes, the unparallel rate of literacy in the Dutch republic, the proliferation of first person statements - private diaries, journals, soul searching poems and letters - and the underlying vein of self-awareness of Vermeer's sitters. In Westermann's words: "What all of his writing and reading women have in common ...is the capacity for absorption in a text, and thus for independent thought. This mental ability is not merely figured by the theme of writing and reading or by averted gazes" but through Vermeer's "thoughtful compositions" which "stand of the mental activity of his actors."

Vermeer employed contraposto in the the pose of Girl with a Pearl Earring although in a very subdue manner. The young girl's head turns towards the viewer while her body is directed in another. Vermeer's aim was not to express the universal struggle between the flesh (the body) and the spirit (the head), a theme with deep religious moral overtones, but a more private one of the uncertain relation between the painter and his model. Through the tension created by the opposing positions of the head and bust alone, Vermeer has made us aware of the tension of the young girl's psyche.

During the course of Vermeer's pictorial evolution, he became more concerned with the qualities of contour and edge. In his first interiors, most of the edges are uniformly sharp, even to the point of brittleness. This trait is one that commonly accompanies an enthusiasm for artificial perspective. However, in his successive works, edges are widely varied, no doubt, consequence of intense observation either with or without the aid of the camera obscura. In the mid 1660s, contours become very suffused especially in the deeply shadowed areas. In the very late years, the artist returns to sharp contours and highly contrasted lighting effects.

Perhaps the most startling use of edge to convey material quality is found in the string of pearls (upper right) which lie on the table of the Woman Holding a Balance. In this painting, Vermeer demonstrates his ability in varying the quality of contours according to the nature of the objects portrayed. If carefully observed, the outer edges of the pearls have barely been delimited. Only the globular forms of the highlights of light pigment tell us where each pearl is located. The lack of contour suggests the pearl's transparency while the rounded highlights inform us of their reflective quality and their spherical form.