Vermeer's Lost Self-Portrait ?

(part one)

Vermeer’s Missing Self-Portrait: In Search of Countenance

According to the catalogue from the 1696 Dissius estate sale in Amsterdam describing twenty-one Vermeer paintings to be auctioned, one of the works was a "portrait of Vermeer in a room with various accessories uncommonly beautifully painted by him." Unfortunately, this "uncommonly beautiful" self-portrait of Vermeer remains missing or has not survived. But over the years there have been several ultimately unsuccessful candidates nominated for consideration, beginning with Vermeer’s signature surviving work, the Art of Painting, now in Vienna. The artist depicted in this masterpiece may well be Vermeer himself, but since his back is turned to the viewer, his identity remains uncertain.

While features of the Art of Painting fit the auction catalog description, scholars today universally reject a connection to it and the Dissius sale because of the low price paid for the Dissius painting: the "portrait of Vermeer in a room" sold for only 45 guilders while much smaller works at that auction, such as the The Milkmaid and Woman Holding a Balance, fetched 175 guilders and 155 guilders respectively. It is highly unlikely that a richly complex work like the Art of Painting would not have been appreciated by the same public that discerned The Milkmaid from lesser works of approximately the same size. Its ingenious perspective accuracy alone, never achieved with such naturalness by other painters of the time, would have surely attracted much more money.

For the art and practice of perspective was widely studied and valued throughout Europe at the time. And Vermeer's art especially was thought exemplary by a contemporary connoisseur precisely because of its perspectival excellence. This appreciation of the perspective skill required to produce such a pictorially powerful work would have motivated buyers to pay substantially more for the Art of Painting than 45 guilders, especially given the price paid in another Amsterdam estate auction a few years later (1699) for Vermeer’s Allegory of Faith, now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum. The Allegory of Faith, comparable in size and complexity to the Art of Painting, fetched 400 guilders. One would expect a similar price if not more for one of Vermeer’s large masterpieces.

Where is the lost self-portrait by Vermeer?

Johannes Meyssens
engraving
after Portrait of a Young Man
Michiel van Musscher

There have been several other minor works evaluated as serious candidates for the Vermeer self-portrait. In the first half of the twentieth-century, a few scholars suspected that a seventeenth-century engraving by Joannes Meyssens (Flemish, 1612-1670) might have been based upon the original Vermeer painting, most notably because it bore the inscription "Ver Meer pinxit." However, this inscription seems to have been added by a much later hand. In addition the initials "VM" were on on the box within the painting but they are are no longer visible today. But the original portrait upon which that engraving seemed to have been based is now in the private collection of John and Johannes Bass in Miami Beach, Florida. At one time that work was attributed by the Bass Museum to Vermeer. Today, however, it is credited to the Dutch seventeenth-century painter Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705) and is known as the Portrait of a Young Artist.