The Essential Vermeer Glossary: J - P

KORTEGAARD

Very little has been written on the"kortegaard" or guardhouse (the Dutch word stems from the French "corps de garde"), a theme which is frequently encountered in seventeenth century paintings. These often depict highly entertaining scenes. Officers and men amuse themselves between duties, smoking, gambling and womanizing, with contemporary humor playing an important part. The type of genre painting also includes scenes of soldiers in barrack-rooms, sharing their booty, fighting or hearing the pleas of citizens. Most 'guardrooms', as the works are called, were painted between 1628 and 1664 in Amsterdam. The painters Pieter Codde, Jacob Duck, Willem Duyster, Simon Kick and Anthonie Palamedesz devoted much of their works to this subject.

LAKE

A lake is a pigment which has been made by precipitating or fixing a dye upon an semi-transparent inert pigment or lake base in order to give bulk to paint necessary for brushing. This process may be compared to that of dying cloth and a high degree of skill is required to achieve good results. Lakes are made in a great range of hues and strengths. Alumina hydrate, chalk and ground egg shells were used base for lakes.

Vermeer used lakes which are commonly found in artist's palettes of the time: red madder - A natural dyestuff from the root of the madder plant (rubia tinctorium), formerly cultivated extensively in Europe and Asia Minor. The coloring matter is extracted from the ground root by fermentation.

weld - A natural yellow dyestuff, obtained as a liquid or as a dry extract of the herbaceous plant, Dyer's Rocket (Reseda luteola) formerly cultivated in central Europe a widely used to dye cloth.

indigo - Is present in various plants, not only in the East Indian indigo plant, but also in woad. It is the most important plant dye.

cochineal - Natural organic dyestuff made from the dried bodies of the female insect Coccus cacti, which lives on various cactus plants in Mexico and in Central and South America. First brought to Europe shortly after the discovery of those countries. Thsi pigment has only been identified in the late Love Letter.

LANDSCAPE

Land transformation occurred in the North Netherlands, during the 17th century. The physical geography of northern Holland was dramatically altered by the reclamation of about two hundred thousand acres of land from inland sea, by means of a complex system of dikes and drainage.

The creation of land was a commercial investment made by private citizens. By 1612 over one hundred citizens had invested in the scheme. Projects such as these dramatically altered the appearance of the region. These speculators constructed a system of canals and forty-two windmill pumps across the land. The resulting landscape was an extremely flat land, as recorded in Van Goyen's View of Leiden (1647). The land was highly regular polder, punctuated by a grid like system of canals and waterways across the drained areas.

Although landscape had always existed as a descriptive element of history painting, it only became independent in the early 16th c. 17th century Dutch landscape paintings have been described as empirical, naturalistic images of the real Dutch landscape, yet they also reflect the social issues and aspirations of the time. Perhaps because the pressures of art theory in the Netherlands had weakened, landscape began to occupy a major place in art production. Landscape was avidly collected by the growing middle class who did not speak French or Latin and were not educated with humanist reverence for classical antiquity but who loved valued land as a national identity.

"That Dutch countryside is oddly striking - it almost demands to be painted, although it has little of the drama of the tropics or of mountainous terrain. In fact, the land has almost no verticals at all but is conspicuously flat; the horizon is ever-present -- so much that the Dutch language has four words for horizon. The wind sweeps over the low land. The changeable sky, with its towering clouds reflected in rivers and canals, is more dramatic that the earth. : nature i9tself seems as moody as man himself.
In their efforts to catch the essence of this ever-changing setting, the new landscapist painted pictures that were different that anything seen before. Nature was portrayed for its own sake rather than as a background ton divine or human enterprises, or an artificial arrangement to convey literary allusion."¹

Johan Huizinga in 1968 ably described the Hollanders' "intense enjoyment of shapes and objects, the(ir) unshakable faith in the reality and importance of all earthly things, a faith that... was the direct consequence of a deep love of life and interest in one's environment."

In the noted 1696 Dissius Amsterdam auction of 21 paintings by Vermeer, three landscapes are mentioned although only two have survived. Items 31, 32 and 33, with relative description and sales price in guilders are listed below. The price of an average house was about 600 guilders.

31. The Town of Delft in perspective, to be seen from the south, by J. van der Meer of Delft 200-0
32 . A view of a house standing in Delft, by the same 72-0
33. A view of some house, by ditto 48-0

Item 31. certainly corresponds to the View of Delft. Although it fetched the highest price (200 guilders) it is curious to note that the Milkmaid, a fraction of the View of Delft's dimension, was paid almost the same price, 175 guilders. The View of Delft is somewhat an anomaly in as much it had always highly considered throughout history while many other of Vermeer's painting slipped into complete neglect and even received signatures by other artists to augment their commercial value.. It is also considered to be perhaps the first true " urban landscape" in European painting. Unfortunately, one of the two "view of house(s)" mentioned in the Dissius auction are missing.

LINE

Line is essentially a convention because it is generally believed that lines do not exist in reality. Lines must be depicted as the boundaries between different tone values, the edges of adjoining areas of light and dark tones.

The following writing by Lawrence Gowing (Vermeer, 1950), author of one of the most penetrating interpretations of Vermeer's art and a painter himself, elegantly sums up the atypical relation between line and tone in Vermeer's art.

"His is an almost solitary indifference to the whole linear convention and its historic function of describing, enclosing , embracing the forms it limits, a seemingly involuntary rejection o the way which the intelligence of painters had operated from the earliest times to our own day. Even now, when the photographers has taught us how to recognize visual as against imagined continuity, and in doing so no doubt blunted our appreciation of Vermeer's strangeness, the feat remains as exceptional as it is apparently perverse, and to a degree which may not be easy for those unconcerned with the technical side of a painter's business to measure. However firm the contour in these pictures, line as a vessel of understanding, has been abandoned and with it the traditional apparatus of draughtsmanship. In its place, apparently effortlessly, automatically, tone bears the whole weight of formal explanation."

LOCAL COLOR

The color which belongs to an object, and is not caused by accidental influences, as of reflection, shadow, etc.

Perhaps the most striking example of the use of strong local color in Vermeer's painting is The Milkmaid. Other paintings, such as the Woman Holding a Balance, present such limited indications of local color that one wonders why the paintings seems so natural.

MASTERPIECE

A term now loosely applied to the finest work by a particular artist or to any work of art of acknowledged greatness or of preeminence in its field. Originally it meant the piece of work by which a craftsman, having finished his training, gained the rank of 'master' in his guild.

MEDIUM and BINDER

Oil paint is made from a drying oil bound with a pigment, the actual coloring substance. Binders are usually vegetable oil which dry to a tough hard film by oxidation through absorption of oxygen from the air. Numerous different oils are used in paints, however the most common is linseed oil made from the pressed seeds of the flax plant. Walnut and poppy seed oils are also commonly found used as paint binders.

Drying oils were known to painters of the 14th century and earlier but was not widely adopted for use until about 1400. By the middle of the 16th century it was fully in use as the main form of paint medium. This medium leaves paintings with a well saturated rich tonality to the colors.

Ideal mediums are colorless, permanent, flexible, and do not influence the co lour of a pigment. Learning the particular properties of a drying oil is part of the essential technical knowledge an oil painter should have.When an oil paint feels dry to the touch, it will still be drying under the surface for some time, which is why the principle of painting 'fat over lean' is so important in oil painting.

Linseed oil is made from the seeds of the flax plant. It adds gloss and transparency to paints and is available in several forms. It dries very thoroughly, making it ideal for underpainting and initial layers in a painting. Refined linseed oil is a popular, all-purpose, pale to light yellow oil which dries within three to five days. Cold-pressed linseed oil dries slightly faster than refined linseed oil and is considered to be the best quality linseed oil.

Stand oil is a thicker processed form of linseed oil, with a slower drying time (about a week to be dry to the touch, though it'll remain tacky for some time). It's ideal for glazing (when mixed with a diluents or solvent such as turpentine) and produces a smooth, enamel-like finish without any visible brushmarks. Sun-thickened linseed oil is a mixture of linseed oil and water which has been exposed to the sun for weeks to create a thick, syrupy, somewhat bleached oil, with similar brushing qualities to stand oil.

As linseed oil has a tendency to yellow as it dries, avoid using it in whites, pale colors, and light blues (except in underpaintings or lower layers in an oil painting when painting wet on dry). Stand oil and sun-thickened oil yellows very little.

Poppyseed oil is a very pale oil, more transparent and less likely to yellow than linseed oil, so it is often used for whites, pale colors, and blues. It gives oil paint a consistency similar to soft butter. Poppyseed oil takes longer to dry than linseed oil, from five to seven days, making it ideal for working wet on wet. Because it dries slowly and less thoroughly, avoid using poppyseed oil in lower layers of a painting when working wet on dry and when applying paint thickly, as the paint will be liable to crack when it finally dries completely. Poppy seeds naturally contain about 50 per cent oil.

Walnut oil is a pale yellow-brown oil (when newly made it's a pale oil with a greenish tinge) that has a distinctive smell. As it's a thin oil, it's used to make oil paint more fluid. As it yellows less than linseed oil (but more than safflower oil) it's good for pale colors. Walnut oil dries in four or five days. It's an expensive oil and must be stored correctly otherwise it goes rancid (off). Walnuts naturally contain about 65 per cent oil.

Turpentine is the traditional solvent used in oil painting. It's based on tree resin and has a fast evaporation rate, releasing harmful vapors. Turpentine is principally used to clean brushes.

Vermeer most likely used simple oil/pigment paint since no other element has been detected in his paint other than inert pigments and a protein based material. These elements, however, were commonly mixed with particular pigments such as lakes, azurite and smalt to mitigate their inherent defects and render them more adapted for painting.

For centuries it has been assumed that the great masters, and especially Rembrandt, used complex mixtures of drying oils, resins and other materials to obtains the extraordinary technical effects which later painters were at a loss to explain. However, recent research into the exact composition of Rembrandt's painting medium has shown that he used primarily linseed oil and that resins and wax, which were believed to have been present in his paint, were not detected.

However, it is quite probable that he added amounts of egg (egg yolk, egg white or both) and perhaps water to his mixtures of white impasto (heavy opaque paint). The oil and egg contents of this kind of paint create an emulsion. The emulsion has more body than simple oil paint and brushes easier. The textural effect of emulsion is greater than that of oil/ pigment. However, the presence of emulsion in Rembrandt's work should not be considered a "secret" since emulsion in various forms was widely employed in European easel painting.

MIMESIS

Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. Generally speaking, mimesis is the imitation of life or nature in the techniques and subject matter of art and literature. Mimesis is a species of imitation, although the word has specialized uses ensuring that it is not a straightforward synonym. Mimesis is the enactment of the elements of a text as opposed to the imagination of them -- in other words, the showing of things as opposed to the telling of things (diegesis). One of the major concerns of painting in the Western world has always been representing the appearance of things.

Moshe Barasch in Theories of Art (New York: New York University Press, 1985) states that "there is . . . one belief that was regarded as dogma and that was reverently observed by everybody who thought, or wrote, on painting and sculpture: the belief that the visual arts imitate nature". Barasch continues: "Not a single Renaissance treatise fails to make the point that the imitation of nature is the very aim of painting and sculpture and that the more closely a work approaches this aim the better that it is" . This tradition, wherein the painter's task is to rival the truth of nature which had became a fundamental , has survived to the present day, and the more accurately a painting represents the real world, the greater the aesthetic value attached to it.

In Leonardo da Vinci’s world, the assessment of art is largely a mimetic one, where the beauty of an artwork is judged in part by its visual approximation of Nature. Giorgio Vasari, the 16th century da Vinci biographer, describes Leonardo d Vinci's Mona Lisa as thus:

“If one wanted to see how faithfully art can imitate nature, one could readily perceive it from this head; for here Leonardo subtly reproduced every living detail. The eyes had their natural luster and moistness….The mouth, joined to the flesh tints of the face by the red of the lips, appeared to be living flesh rather than paint. On looking closely at the pit of her throat, one could swear that the pulses were beating. …in this painting of Leonardo’s there was a smile so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human; and those who saw it were amazed to find that it was as alive as the original.”

"Vermeer's use of perspective and camera obscura vision to outdo life was one response to the Renaissance idea that art is the rival and lover of nature, and that art's highest challenge is mimesis, the most persuasive representation of the visible world. In Dutch painting the goal of painting naer het leven (after life) was pursued with a whole range of new tactics. Seventeenth-century viewers relished the miniaturized reproduction of their world that painting offered. A contemporary praised Dou, for example, for bringing 'such perfection to his living subjects, on such a neat and small scale, that his creations can hardly be distinguished from life itself.' "²

MISE-EN-SCENE

Mise-en-scene is the way a director places people and objects on a stage to create verisimilitude in the in the theatre. In theatre and film, the stage setting, including all props, lighting effects, costumes, etc., but excluding the narrative proper. Mise-en-scene is especially critical in film studies, where it implies the orchestration of all the seen elements, with special reference to composition, visual weights, the function of the frame, and staged movements within the scene.

Mise-en-scene is the way a director places people and objects on a stage to create verisimilitude in the in the theatre. In theatre and film, the stage setting, including all props, lighting effects, costumes, etc., but excluding the narrative proper. Mise-en-scene is especially critical in film studies, where it implies the orchestration of all the seen elements, with special reference to composition, visual weights, the function of the frame, and staged movements within the scene.

MODERN

In his Groot Schilderboek, Dutch painter Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711), who later turned art theoretician after he became blind , first distinguished between the two modes of painting which he called “the Antique” and “ the Modern.” According to De Lairesse, “ ' the Antique' persists through all periods while 'the Modern' constantly changes with fashion.” Therefore, the most adapted subjects of great painting were Biblical, historical and mythological themes, in appropriate the dress and settings and not representations of modern scenes such as those of Vermeer in contemporary dress since in this manner the viewers would become estranged by their paintings due to the continual changes. The idea of “the Antique” corresponds to our concept of “classicist.”

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

MONOCHROME

A monochrome is a work painted in a single color, but the term is often used more loosely to describe works in which a single color predominates. In such pictures it is the subtle variation of tone which creates the desired effects.

There was a school of landscape painting in Haarlem in the early 17th century which painted "monochrome" landscapes. The school included Salomon van Ruisdael, Jan van Goyen and Pieter de Molijn.

MOTIFS

The main theme or idea present in a work of art or elaborated and developed through separate works of art. The term also refers to a repeated form or pattern in work of art.

Many motifs that Vermeer painted are those that he encountered in daily life: a young woman absorbed in reading a letter in a corner of a sunlight room; a girl adorning herself in the morning with a pearl necklace, a girl making lace, a view the harbor filled with boats in front of the skyline of his native Delft and two young children quietly playing in front of their house under the watchful eye an elderly woman.

NARRATIVE - NARRATION - NARRATIVE ART

Term used to describe art that provides a visual representation of some kind of story, sometimes based on literary work. Narration, the relating of an event as it unfolds over time, is in principle a difficult task for the visual arts, since a work of art usually lacks an obvious beginning, middle and end, essential features of any story. Nevertheless, since ancient times many works of art have had as their subjects figures or tales from mythology, legend or history. The artists overcame the inherent limitations of visual narrative by representing stories that the viewer might be expected to know and would therefore retell in his or her mind while taking in the representation.

The function of narration is to deliver a narrative, although it may also include descriptive or other elements that are not narrative proper. In a simplistic distinction, the narrative is comprised of the events of a story, whereas the narration consists of the way(s) in which the story is presented, ranging from the implied author's tone to such things as the actual order of events.

Genre and history painting are each types of narrative art. While genre paintings depict events of an everyday sort, history paintings depict famous events.

Dutch genre painting of the period, in its apparent preoccupation with the description of interiors and domestic scenes, was fundamentally different in character from contemporary Italian painting, with its narrative portrayals of events, typically from classical mythology or the Bible. Svetlana Alpers argued that the descriptive Dutch painting should not be subjected to analytic and critical methods, such as Panofskian iconography, which had been developed for use in the interpretation of the narrative imagery of Italian painting. She particularly castigated a favorite method of some of the recent scholars of Dutch painting, which was to use the imagery they found in emblems to interpret, by extension, the subject matter of the genre paintings. To her, subjecting the immediacy and simplicity of Dutch painting to minute, iconographical analysis was an aberration.

Modernists largely rejected narrative art.

Although Vermeer worked within an accepted iconographic framework, the specific narrative content of many of his paintings remains unclear. Perhaps Vermeer deliberately left the narrative of his works open so as to not exclude the viewers' eventual participation or perhaps he wished to investigate more fundamental and universal human values.

NATURALISM

A method of depiction in the fine arts and literature in which reality as the result of sensory experience rather than theory is represented as realistically and scientifically precise as possible.

The uncertainties provoked by the iconographical methods of interpreting Vermeer's painting have led to different reactions. "Painting is different from emblem books and other literary genre and its principal aim, unlike these and other forms of cultural production, was not didactic. While today it seems obvious that paintings of domestic interiors are not a mere mirror of reality, as occurred in then19th c., it is helpful to call attention, as Alpers has done, to the fact that one of the main motivations of this kind of painting is a curiosity of the world, which is expressed in visual terms and is accessible through sight. This interpretation establishes parallels between painting and the interest which existed at the time in acquiring information about the natural world through scientific instruments such as the microscope (a Dutch invention), different types of lenses, the camera obscura and cartography. It also relates the realism of Dutch genre paintings to other spheres of contemporary thought such as the theories of sight proposed by Johannes Kepler (1571- 1630) or writing on the visibility of knowledge by Francis Bacon (1561-1626."³

NEGATIVE SHAPE

A background or ground shape seen in relation to foreground or figure shapes. The figure is the space occupied by forms (e.g., a person in a portrait) (also known as the 'positive' space); the ground is the "empty" or unoccupied space around the person in the portrait (also known as the 'negative' space)

Vermeer was highly conscious of the importance of negative shape in his finely gauged compositions. In many of his paintings, especially of those of the mid-1660s, the viewer becomes aware that the pieces of background wall are not simply "leftovers" shaped by foreground objects, but rather positive forms in their own right capable of evoking an expressive response. Lawrence Gowing (Vermeer, 1950) certainly had the play of negative and positive shapes in mind when he stated: "Nothing else evokes the impression, certainly no printed reproduction, nothing but the canvas itself: we see, large and plain, a mosaic of shapes which bear equally on one another. They are clasped together by their nature, holding each other to every other in its natural embrace. We see a surface which has the absolute embedded flatness of inlay, of tarsia. And in an instant we recognize its shapes as emblems which carry in their stillness the force of the real world."

NEO-CLASSICAL

Neo-classicism literally means "new classicism" or a revival of classical values. The word is used as a style label and is applied to aspects of the arts of the later 18th and early 19th centuries. At that period there was a conscious revival and appropriation of classical models of art and architecture. The word classical is used in this context to imply both ancient works of art, especially architecture and sculpture, and those by painters of the 16th and 17th centuries such as Raphael and Poussin who were inspired by antique precedents, and in turn established ideals in their work which came to be regarded as "classic".

A renewed emphasis - both inside and outside the academies - on the public and didactic function of art was an important factor in the rise of Neo-classicism, as were the excavations of ancient sites in Italy and elsewhere painters for instance were a part of the Arte dei Medici e Speziali, the doctors' and spice merchants' guild. Elsewhere they were associated with sculptors. In the Netherlands, painters on cloth sometimes belonged to different guilds from painters on wood.

NEUTRAL COLOR

A color which in color theory is neither warm nor cool. Neutral colors are said to result from the combination of two complementary colors (e.g., red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and purple). Neutral colors can also be mixed by other means. (See also complementary colors, and warm and cool colors.)

Vermeer used neutral color with great expertise. Although a great many areas of his compositions are predominantly painted with neutral grays and low keyed ochers, one never has the sense that his compositions are lacking of color.

OEUVRE

A substantial body of work constituting the lifework of a writer, an artist, or a composer.

Vermeer's paintings form a far from homogenous group. They were presumably made aver a period of little more than twenty years, between his entry as a master into the Delft Guild of Saint Luke in December 1653 and his death in December 1675. They include the historically imaginative (such as Christ in the House of Martha and Mary in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), the overtly personification and allegorical (such as the Allegory of Faith in the Metropolitan Museum, New York and The Art of Painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), the plausibly realistic, such as his two cityscapes (the Little Street in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the View of Delft in the Royal Cabinet of Pictures Mauritshuis, The Hague) and the majority of his scenes of domestic interiors with between one and three figures. Among them are works that appear to be hybrid: that is, paintings that seem to combine the characteristics of the plausibly realistic with the allegorical or emblematic. These include the Woman Holding a Balance (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) ,and the Woman Standing at a Virginal.

Through more than one hundred and fifty years of rather painstaking study beginning in 1850, scholars have identified thirty-four, perhaps thirty-five, paintings they now safely attribute to Johannes Vermeer. Their task was made difficult for a variety of reasons: Vermeer’s varied and changeable painting style; the range of his choices of subject matter; the fact that he signed less than half of those works which yet survive and dated only one; and that, for several hundred years after his death in 1675, no one knew the true extent of his oeuvre. In addition, his contemporary reputation probably did not extend much beyond Holland, in all likelihood because only a small number of local connoisseurs collected his relatively few paintings. In a professional career that spanned twenty-two years, Vermeer completed perhaps no more than forty works, and he left no drawings or preliminary paintings behind.

When so little is known about an artist, the science of artistic attribution becomes a weaving of a few threads of hard historical data with the fabric of informed but subjective interpretive analysis based upon a shared sense of the artist’s style, technique, composition, and subject matter. An attribution’s authenticity is greatly strengthened if it can establish direct links over time to the artist himself or to an ownership during the artist’s lifetime or fairly soon after his death. And this is precisely what Vermeer scholars have attempted to do. In examining relevant records of art and estate auctions of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, they have rather confidently connected those documents with about two dozen extant Vermeer paintings. There also appears to be another nine (or maybe eleven) paintings which have survived for which no contemporary corroboration in Vermeer’s time has yet been found. Conversely, there seems to be at least six, and perhaps eight or ten, Vermeer paintings identified by historical records which today either remain hidden or have not survived. This latter group is known as the "missing Vermeer’s.

There are presently thirty-four paintings which scholars overwhelmingly agree should be attributed to Johannes Vermeer. A probable thirty-fifth, Young Girl with a Flute at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, was likely begun by Vermeer but finished or restored by another; its lack of Vermeer's characteristic refinement has discouraged most scholars from making a firm attribution. For an informed discussion of this painting, see Arthur Wheelock's article, Young Girl with a Flute, in the catalogue of the 1995-1996 National Gallery of Art Johannes Vermeer Exhibition, pages 204-207. It is therefore cited by the National Gallery of Art itself as a work merely "attributed" to Vermeer.

Another painting, St. Praxedis, has generated much controversy over the last 20 years as a possible addition to Vermeer's oeuvre. However, an overwhelming consensus among scholars has emerged recently backed by persuasive analytical evidence which argues against the inclusion of this work as a genuine Vermeer.

The present day account of Vermeer's oeuvre is very close to that established in 1948 by Ary Bob de Vreis V (A. B. de Vreis, Jan Vermeer van Delft, London / New York (2nd.ed.), 1948) In his penetrating study of the artist (Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer, London, 1952 and 1970), Lawrence Gowing set an example followed by nearly all scholars afterwards by not listing rejected works. Ben Broos has been argued that any significant dispute was been laid to rest (until the case of the Saint Praxedis) with the publication of Albert Blanket’s book on the artist, Vermeer, Oxford, 1978)

OIL PAINT

A painting medium in which pigments are mixed with drying oils, such as linseed, walnut, or poppy. Though oils had been used in the Middle Ages, it was not until the Van Eyck brothers in the early 15th century that the medium became fully developed. It reached Italy during the 1460s and by the end of the century had largely replaced tempera. Oil paint was preferred for its brilliance of detail, its richness of color, and its greater tonal range. Oil painting also has the great advantage that colors may be blended with great accuracy since the do not dry so quickly as water based paints.

Only 34-36 works by Vermeer have survived. Scholars hypothesize that he may have painted perhaps 50 but no more than 60. All of his extant works are oil on canvas and there exists no historical evidence that he worked on other mediums such as drawing, etching, fresco or watercolor.

Ontbijtje

A breakfast piece—an ontbijtje—is a still life painting that depicts simple foodstuffs, such as herring, ham or cheese with a bread roll and a glass of beer or wine. Though ontbijtje translates literally from the Dutch as “little breakfast,” paintings categorized as such do not necessarily depict elements of a typical Dutch breakfast. Breakfast pieces were especially popular in the Netherlands during the 1620s and 1630s, and Pieter Claesz., Willem Claesz. Heda, and Osias Beert, among others, are remembered for their production.

PAINT

It is a conventional belief that artists' paint was begun to be commercially produced during the Industrial Revolution. Until then, painters had to make their own paints by grinding pigment into oil. The paint would harden and would have to be made fresh each day. Paint consists of small grains of pigment suspended in oil. Although it appears smooth to the naked eye, on a microscopic level, particles of pigment are suspended in oil. Oil paints do not "dry" by evaporation (as do watercolor paints); rather they harden through chemical reaction Contact with the air causes oils to oxidize and to crosslink. The paint sets and hardens over time. Paints of different pigments dry at different rates. Charcoal black retards the drying (creating a slow-drying paint); ochre accelerates the drying (producing a quick-drying paint).

Recently discovered historical evidence demonstrates that paint was already being commercially produced in the mid seventeenth-century in major artistic centers in Holland. However, it is not to know exactly to what extent painters employed such paint since production methods are unknown and thus cannot be determined by laboratory analysis. However, if we consider Vermeer's highly perfectionist approach to the thematic, compositional and technical components of his art, it might be safely assumed that he was more apt to have made his own paint in order to assure the exact quality he desired. This attitude is confirmed by his use of the finest grade of the costly ultramarine (crushed natural lapis lazuli) instead of the cheaper and more common azurite.

PAINTING

Paintings are made of organic and inorganic materials which are put together by an artist to create a specific image. They form a simple construction consisting of one or more paint layers and a support for those layers. However, the structure of a painting can be very complex within these two general layers. Supports can themselves be supported. For example, a piece of paper could be attached to a canvas or panel. There can be additions or changes made by the artist or by another hand. With careful observation a trained eye should be able to detect many of these elements. The materials found in and on paintings are best considered layer by layer. Easel paintings are defined as paintings not attached to an immovable object and therefore portable (albeit often with difficulty). There exist many other kinds of paintings such as fresco.

Paintings age at different rates depending on the way they are created and with what materials have been used. Paint layers may dry and become brittle, eventually cracking, the varnish may yellow as well as the oil contained in the paint itself. Pigments can alter in co lour; oil paint becomes more transparent and underneath drawings may show through; the canvas may become brittle or weak, or slack; and the painting may become coated with a layer of dirt, nicotine, finger marks etc. Not all the effects of ageing necessarily impair our aesthetic enjoyment of the work of art although restoration may bring back some of the painting’s initial appearance.

PALETTE

The surface on which a painter will mix his colors. Also the range of colors used by an artist. Palettes that appear in paintings of Vermeer's time are surprisingly small in dimension and the relatively few pigments placed on them in an orderly fashion. Wood was preferred because it was lightweight, rigid and could be easily shaped. Another advantage of wood was its warm brown tone. Many painters started their work on a canvas primed with a warm brownish tone that was not dissimilar to the color of the palette. Since the perception colors are strongly influenced by the dominating tone that surrounds them, the paint that was mixed on the palette did not change perceptibly when applied to the canvas.

Earliest palettes were small and remained so until the end of the 19th c. when they were about 10 to 12 inches long. Only in the 19th c. did they assume a half table-top size which permitted artists to have available during every phase of the working process every pigments as well as areas for mixing a variety of specific tones. This larger palette allowed the artist to work on any area of the composition. Before the 19th c., painters used smaller palettes primarily because they worked on only one area of the painting at each painting session and thus their palettes contained only those pigments necessary for the day's work.

Representations of palettes often display pigments necessary for painting flesh tones. The flesh palette had a particular significance. Willem Beur, wrote: "Just as we humans consider ourselves the foremost amongst animals; so too, are we the foremost subject of the art of paintings, and it is in painting human flesh that its highest achievement are to be seen, whenever a painter succeeds in rendering the diversity of colors and string hues found in human flesh and particularly in the faces, adequately depicting the intricacy of the diversity of people or their different emotions." The layout of the pigments, from light to dark, was common.

Vermeer most likely used a wood palette like every painter of his time. In the 1676 death inventory of Vermeer's house in the front room of the first floor of the Oude Langendijk, there were listed "twee schilders eesels, drye paletten", two painters easels, three palettes". In Vermeer's time the familiar painter's palette with a hole for the thumb had replaced the older rectangular kind with a handle. The artist held the palette with his thumb inserted into the hole leaving the rest of his fingers free to comfortably hold a number of brushes and the mahlstick on which he steadied his hand.

It is curious to note that in the representation of the artist at work in the Art of Painting, Vermeer has hidden the palette behind the artist’s body as well as a great part of the easel’s left-hand leg.

The following pigments have been detected in Vermeer's paintings. For a detailed study of Vermeer's palette and pigments, click here.

1 AZURITE
2 CARMINE
3 CHARCOAL BLACK
4 GREEN EARTH
5 INDIGO
6 IVORY BLACK
7 LEAD-TIN YELLOW
8 MADDER LAKE
9 RED OCHER
10 SMALT
11 NATURAL
ULTRAMARINE
12 UMBER
13 WHITE LEAD
14 VERDIGRIS
15 VERMILION
16 WELD

PANEL PAINTING

Painting on wooden panels. Until the introduction of canvas in the 15th century, wooden panels were the standard support in painting. In the Netherlands, France and England, oak panels were most common. Lime, beech, chestnut and cherry as well as oak were used in Germany and Austria. A seasoned plank, which had been allowed to dry out for some time, was layered with several coats of size, a glue made from animal skins. In Italy, the planks used for panel paintings were most often made of native poplar, a widely available wood that was, however, soft and vulnerable to warping. A piece of linen soaked in size was often laid over the front of the panel to conceal any surface flaws. Over this, coats of gesso were applied. Gesso, a mixture of powdered calcium sulfate (commonly called gypsum) and animal glue, provided the ground for preliminary drawings. Although canvas had become more popular, Dutch painters continued to employ panels as well. The extremely smooth surfaces of panels makes them particularly adapted for fine detail since their surface is extremely smooth.

Only two of the surviving 34-36 paintings by Vermeer are painted on panel: The Girl with a Red Hat and The Girl with a Flute (whose authenticity is not accepted by many scholars). However, in Vermeer's death inventory there were listed ten canvases and six panels in the front room of his house, a fact that would lead us to believe that he may have used more panels that is generally believed.

PATRON

The concept of the patron which is still with us originated in the times of Rome and designated a Roman citizen who was a protector (the patronus) of a foreigner who had settled in Roman territory (the clients). The relationship between the patron and his client (clientala) was an especially close one and involved many of the terms found in feudal contracts between lords and vassals. This Roman concept of the patron was extended into the medieval and Renaissance times, during which artists were afforded protection and sponsorship by various nobles and merchant princes.

In contemporary society the word 'patron' has lost some of its original connotation. Today we usually reserve the term for one who is specifically a "patron of the arts". Certainly, the closeness of the original relationship between a patron and his client is no longer implied in the term.

The scholar John Michael Montias has shed the most light upon Vermeer’s social and economic situation. His seminal research has shown there were at least a small number of people who acquired Vermeer’s paintings during his lifetime or shortly thereafter and that at least one of these, a wealthy collector named Pieter Claez van Ruijven, may have been a significant patron, protecting Vermeer and his family during his lifetime from the vicissitudes of the national economy.

After reviewing the records which Montias and others have uncovered, two facts become apparent. First, Vermeer's paintings commanded relatively high prices when compared to many of his contemporaries. The price of six hundred livres that the baker thought reasonable for his painting compares favorably with the six hundred livres that Gerrit Dou (1613-1635) asked from de Monconys (5) for his Woman in a Window, "clearly also a painting with only one figure." Evidently, a painting by Vermeer had the same market value as a work by Dou, whom King Charles II of England had invited to become his court painter in 1660. Dou, one of Rembrandt’s prized students, commanded very high prices for his work throughout his career.

For an in-depth study of Vermeer's clients and patrons, click here.

PENDANT

Pendant is the name given to one of two paintings conceived as a pair. Pendants were often works intended for a particular domestic setting - perhaps to hang either side of a fireplace or window. By far the most popular subject of pendants display married couples. The word 'pendant' can also be used for sculptures, pieces of furniture and other objects that are made in pairs. Usually pendants are compositionally and thematically related; for example, the landscape pairs of Claude Lorrain share similarly structured compositions, but depict the light at different times of day and male and female portraits might respond to one another in pose. Dutch painters were capable of conceiving pendants in a highly original manner. Van de Velde, one of the most refined of Dutch marine painters, depicted two ships in a completely different weather and lighting conditions.

PENTIMIENTI

Changes undertaken by an artist in the course of painting a picture. They are usually visible under the final version only with the help of X-rays, though they are sometimes revealed when the top layers of paint are worn away or become translucent.

Although in Vermeer's oeuvre there are a number of clearly visible pentimenti, most of the significant changes that he made during the course of painting can only be revealed through laboratory analysis methods such as IR or X-ray photography. One of the most striking pentimenti can be seen in the lower left-hand corner of the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher. The profile of the upper part of the typical lion head chairs which can be seen in may of his interiors, can be fairly well discerned. It would seem that Vermeer had brought the chair to a rather advanced stage of finish before he eliminated it from the composition. Other changes are only visible through close scrutiny. In the same painting, the left-hand edge of the hanging map of Europe once was fell to the right-hand side of the woman's head. One can only perceive a very shift in tone which runs vertically from the top of the canvas to the edge of the woman's headdress. For a detailed study of on the changes he made in this painting , click here.

PERSPECTIVE

Perspective creates an illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional picture surface. Objects in the background appear smaller than those in the foreground.

The "single point" system (linear perspective) was invented by Brunelleschi in Florence in relation to his architecture. It is mathematically constructed so that all receding parallel lines appear to converge towards each other, eventually meeting at a single point, the vanishing point. This system was used by artists from the early 15th century in Florence, and codified by Alberti in 'De Pictura'. Netherlandish painters in the early 15th century seem to have created a convincing illusion of three-dimensional space empirically, employing linear perspective without the system devised in Italy.

In Vermeer's time the study and practice of perspective was held in high esteem throughout Europe. Correct representation of perspective went hand in hand with accurate draftsmanship, careful rendering of the play of light and the description of texture which were employed in order to achieve the most illusionistic portrayal of reality as possible. This was considered one of the highest goals of art. Vermeer 's own paintings were once praised by the young Dutch connoisseur Pieter Teding van Berkhout as "curious and exceptional perspectives." There existed at the time various guides to aid the artist in perspective drawing for artists such as those of Samuel van Marolois /c. 1572-c.1627), Hendrick Hondius (1573-1649), Francois Desgagues (1593-1662), and Hans Vredeman de Vreis (1526/1527-1606). It is likely that Vermeer was familiar with the principles of perspective drawing expounded in these manuals.

It is usually assumed that for practical purposes, complicated perspectives were first worked out in preparatory drawings on paper. The drawing could then be transferred efficiently to the painter's canvas with the pin-prick and dust method.

Recent scholarship has called attention to the importance of perspective in Vermeer's painting. In fact, one of the three contemporary testimonies of Vermeer's art describes one of his pictures, perhaps The Art of Painting, as a "perspective." Jørgen Wadum of the Mauritshuis has noted that 13 paintings by Vermeer, including Woman Holding a Balance, "contains evidence of Vermeer's system, by which he inserted a pin, with a string attached to it, into the grounded canvas at the vanishing point. With this string he could reach any area of his canvas to correct orthagonals, the straight lines that meet in the central vanishing point." This system was widely used among painters of the time. In Wadum's opinion, Vermeer had most likely had fully assimilated the laws of perspective perhaps using various extant guides.

Perhaps the modern eye has become somewhat jaded to the magic of perspective due to the literal flood of photographic images in which the camera resolves automatically correct perspective.

Perspective Box (or peep box)

The perspective box or peepshow is an optical device which enables an artist to create a convincing illusion of interior (or, more rarely, exterior) space. Using a complex perspectival construction, the four inside walls of a wooden box are painted to simulate the space and the scene is then viewed through a carefully positioned eyehole. The eye is deceived into believing that this is really the inside of a room.

The peepshow was popular among Dutch 17th-century artists, reflecting a fascination with perspectival and optical devices. Of the six peepshows which survive from the 17th century the best is that by Samuel van Hoogstraten in the National Gallery. The inside of the box is painted in such a way that when viewed through either of the peep holes, located at each end, it gives the illusion of a three-dimensional interior of a modest Dutch room, sparsely furnished and with views through into other rooms.

PICTORIAL SPACE

In a painting or other two-dimensional art, illusionary space which appears to recede backward into depth from the picture plane. The principle task of the realist painter is to find an artistically meaningful way to collapse the three dimensional world onto the flat pictorial plane.

PICTURE PLANE

The plane occupied by the physical surface of the picture. In most representational painting, all the elements in the picture appear to recede from this plane, while trompe l'oeil effects are achieved by painting objects in such a way that they seem to project in front of the picture plane. One of the representational painter's principle tasks is to "collapse" the real three dimensional world he wishes to represent onto the bi dimensional picture plane. This transposition must take into account that what may appear to be an agreeable and significant arrangement of objects in the real world may not seem equally significant once it is flattened onto the canvas, a fact which many amateur photographers are painfully aware of. In order to express the mass or volume of a figure in the real life, the artists must express with tone and contour the mass of an object which on his. Illusion of depth are usually obtained by the use of geometrical or aerial perspective.

PIGMENT

The pigment is the element in paint which provides its color. Pigments can be made of a wide range of materials, including minerals, natural and synthetic dyestuffs, and other man-made compounds. Paint consists of pigment bound in a medium. The ratio of pigment to medium affects the malleability, color and drying time of the paint. Different pigments deteriorate over time in different ways and at different rates. Many pigments in used in the past were very expensive and difficult to acquire. Their history is fascinating and can be very romantic. True ultramarine blue for instance, is made from ground lapis lazuli and indian yellow was made from the urine of cows fed on mangos in India, a practice which has been banned as it harms the cow. Red lakes come from the a secretion of the females and eggs of the cochineal beetle and dragons blood was long thought to be a mixture of dragon and elephant blood. It is, in fact a dark resin from an eastern Asian tree, (Calamua draco).

Vermeer used the same pigments as his contemporaries. The only significant difference was his preference of costly natural ultramarine (lapis lazuli) instead of the common azurite. About 20 pigments have been detected in Vermeer's works although he probably employed not more than 10 or 12 systematically. For an in-depth study of Vermeer's pigments, click here

PHYSIOGNOMY

The external appearance of a person, in particular the face.

It has often been noted that Vermeer, in respects to his contemporaries, generally did not pursue his sitters' individual physiognomy or psychology at length. None of them, even the Girl with a Pearl Earring or A Study of a Young Woman are considered to be true portraits, at least in the 17th c. meaning of the term. One modern critic went so far as to state that Vermeer seems to have lost his patience while painting faces and treated them as if they were still-lives. In any case, Vermeer preferred to generalize (differently than idealize) his sitters' features in order to convey a more universal meaning to his compositions. Credible comparisons of the faces found in Vermeer's oeuvre are very difficult to make because the woman are portrayed in different lighting conditions, poses and presumably, ages.

PLEIN AIR

En plein air simply means that the artist painted outside, literally "in empty (or open) air," instead of in the studio. Occasionally one also sees the derivative term pleinairisme, which is nothing more than a grammatical inflection of the same idea. For example, Monet (or whomever) painted en plein air during the period in which pleinairisme was in fashion. Even though Dutch landscape painters achieved a truly amazing sense of naturalism, their paintings were largely created inside their studios and not en plain air. Artists employed monochrome sketches done from nature, the knowledge of many pictorial conventions, memory and imagination. Portrait painters often worked from mannequins clothed in the sitter's elaborate dress in order to avoid long and tiring hours of posing for the sitter.

Many scholars believe that Vermeer employed a camera obscura as an aid to paint his View of Delft and that he had most likely had situated himself on the upper story of a building slightly outside the Delft city walls. Judging by the perspective construction of the Little Street, the artist seems to have painted from a window of the second story of a building presumably across a canal. Had Vermeer actually looked out of the windows while painting in both or either of the two landscapes, he would in essence have painted them en plein air. Even though there is no historical evidence that he did so, the perspective accuracy and refined renderings of the play of light of his works may have well been the fruit of direct observation. Many Dutch painters were know to have worked largely from drawings.

POINTILLES

Pointillès, also called disks of confusion or halations, which are seen on the screen of a camera obscura occur in the place of natural highlights, bright reflections of various forms and intensities frequently seen with the naked eye on shiny surfaces such as glass or polished metal. If a small highlight of this type, whatever its shape, is not brought exactly into focus at the viewing plane, its image becomes spread out into a circle (or disk) of confusion.

Vermeer voluntarily imitated a distortion of the camera obscura which cannot be perceived in normal circumstances by the naked eye. The effects of imperfect focus in the camera obscura also produced the so-called pointillès found in many of Vermeer's paintings, most notably in the View of Delft, the Milkmaid and the Lacemaker. Vermeer's pointillès, globular touches of thick opaque paint, usually pure white or slightly yellowish in tone, upon close inspection, resemble nothing so much as the fuzzy, overlapping sequins of light that appear in an out-of-focus photograph and are referred to as "discs of confusion" by photographers.

PORTRAIT

The Roman portrait bust survived in the form of life-sized reliquaries of saints, but it was in 15th century Florence that the individual features and character of a contemporary sitter were accurately recorded by sculptors such as Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano, Mino da Fiesole and the Rossellino. A similar degree of realism occurs in 15th century tomb sculpture. Portraiture, visual representation of individual people, distinguished by references to the subject's character, social position, wealth, or profession.

Portraitists often strive for exact visual likenesses. However, although the viewer's correct identification of the sitter is of primary importance, exact replication is not always the goal. Artists may intentionally alter the appearance of their subjects by embellishing or refining their images to emphasize or minimize particular qualities (physical, psychological, or social) of the subject. Viewers sometimes praise most highly those images that seem to look very little like the sitter because these images are judged to capture some non visual quality of the subject. In non-Western societies portraiture is less likely to emphasize visual likeness than in Western cultures.

As R. H. Fuchs has pointed out, "...no category in pictorial art is so conservative as portraiture. A portrait is not just a likeness of an individual to be preserved for posterity; it was also an image of pride, a projection of social position. A man who wants his portrait painted cannot but attach a certain importance to himself, in whatever sense, and he is not likely to take chances; he is concerned about his appearance. Normally, and the history of portraiture testifies to this fact, he opts for the classic formula - the formula which has proved its efficiency." It is all too obvious that it was the commissioner had a fundamental role in determining the painting's final aspect. He choose the sitter, attire, dimension, technique and often the type background and surroundings props as well. The painter's role was essentially to give life to the clients' vision of himself through the technical and expressive means which had initially attracted the client's attention to the artist.

Dutch portrait painters produced an unprecedented number of paintings since the new affluent middle class provided a broad-based patronage.

In the light of above, even Vermeer's most deliberate renderings of female physiognomy, the Girl with a Pearl Earring and A Study of a Young Girl, are not usually taken to be portraits in the 17th c. sense of the term, but rather, are considered classical examples of the Northern tronie tradition.

In any case, it is known that Vermeer painted at least one true portrait, or rather a self-portrait, which however is missing. This self-portrait was listed as item number 3 of the 1696 Dissius auction of 21 paintings by Vermeer. and described thus:" The portrait of Vermeer in a room with various accessories, uncommonly beautiful painted by him "

POSE

Pose is the organization or positioning of a human model or subject in relation to the viewpoint of the painter or spectator. Poses are described by the way the face is turned: as in profile, three-quarter face, full-face and by the physical disposition: as in standing, sitting.

It has been noticed that the poses held by Vermeer's sitters are invariably static even when compared to those of genre painters who worked with fundamentally the same illusionist aims, similar themes and compositions. This fact enhances the illusionist quality of the painting since the viewer would not expect them to perform any other action than the one that is represented in the painting. Vermeer always avoided theatrical poses which were common currency of many Dutch genre painters

POSITIVE SHAPE

A figure or foreground shape, as opposed to a negative ground or background shape.

PRIMARY COLOURS

The basic hues of the spectrum from which all of the other hues can be mixed. The primary colors actually differ from context to context, but in the classic formal language of much artwriting, there are only the three: red, blue and yellow. Classic color theory asserts that admixtures of any two of these in the proper proportions will result in the creation of "secondary" colors which will be the "complementary" of the third primary color. For example, mixing the primary red and blue gives the secondary violet, which is the complementary of yellow; mixing red and yellow gives orange, the complementary of blue; and mixing yellow and blue gives green, the complementary of red. One of the curious optical phenomena attending this observation is that a hue will always seem its most vibrant when accompanied by its complementary. This is very easy to test with combinations of squares of the sort often reproduced in psychology survey texts: several small squares of an identical red will appear quite different when sent into larger squares of different hues, and the apparently most vibrant red will be the one surrounded by the hue closest to its complementary green. Painterly artists from Titian to Matisse have long known and exploited this effect, although it was not theorized coherently until the nineteenth century publication of the works of Eugène Chevreul and other color theorists. There are, of course, further admixtures of hue one could call tertiary and quaternary colors, and so on down the line, but there are diminishing returns in terms of usefulness. Correspondent Zachary Stadel offers an interesting corrective under the heading color theory.

PROPORTION

In painting, sculpture and architecture, the ratio between the respective parts and the whole work. The following are important: 1. the Canon of Proportion, a mathematical formula establishing ideal proportions of the various parts of the human body. The unit of measurement is usually the relationship of the head to the torso (1:7 or 1:10); 2. the golden section, a line C divided into a small section A and a larger section B, so that A:B are in the same relationship as B:C; ³. the quadrature, which uses the square as a unit of measurement; 4. triangulation, which uses an equilateral triangle in order to determine important points in the construction; and 5. harmonic proportions, an analogy with the way sounds are produced on stringed instruments, for example an octave = 1:2 (the difference in pitch between two strings, one half the length of the other), a fifth = 2:3, a fourth = 3:4.

PROVENANCE

The origins of an art work; the history of a work's ownership since its creation. The study of a work's provenance is important in establishing authenticity.