Dear Subscriber,
I hope this email finds you well and that your summer has been agreeable—and maybe even productive. Mine has, too. I’ve taken no break from Essential Vermeer and have several projects underway that I’ll share below. In the meantime, I thought you might like various Vermeer-related items that recently caught my eye, plus an EV website update for chronology-minded readers.
The classic “Vermeer’s Paintings in Chronological Order” page now offers three viewing modes—default, in-scale, and in-frame. You can resize works and arrange them with drag-and-drop to build your own chronology. For reference, the default view uses the EV chronology as a starting point, a synthesis of reliable Vermeer scholarship. I’m also revisiting the broader chronology from a perspective closer to how painters actually work, taking into account technical development and Vermeer’s characteristic use of pigments such as natural ultramarine and green earth. To support my study, I have added a function to the EV chronology page that allows users save up to five custom chronologies to revisit later—or print them for offline use. I’d love to hear if these tools are helpful, and I welcome suggestions for further improvements.
All best,
Jonathan Janson
P.S. I still use ChatGPT—primarily for coding, editing, and formatting. Turning 500+ Vermeer references into Chicago Manual style and then a sortable HTML list now takes minutes, not days. It also helped build the new interactive features on the chronology page. I’m comfortable with CSS and HTML; JavaScript and Python are still outside my lane. As for image generation, I haven’t found a serious use here. Eye candy, no matter how spectacular, doesn’t advance our understanding of Vermeer.
IN BRIEF
- Double Vision: Vermeer at Kenwood: Two Guitar Players side by side
- Essential Vermeer "Vermeer's Paintings in Chronological Order" revised with exciting new save & print features
- Art Newspaper uncovers long-suppressed details of 1968 attack on Vermeer’s Young LadySeated at a Virginal
- New Vermeer publication: Johannes Vermeer. Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window: Restoration and Studies in Painting Technique
- Vermeer exhibition review by Wayne Franits
- Look what's coming down the Essential Vermeer pipeline
- Leiden Collection Young Woman Seated at a Virginal travels to Florida
1. Special exhibion of two Guitar Players
Double Vision: Vermeer at Kenwood
September 1, 2025–January 11, 2026
Kenwood House, Hampstead
Kenwood House has launched a remarkable display that brings together two versions of Vermeer’s much-loved Guitar Player: the Kenwood painting and the version at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Visitors will have the rare chance to see them side by side while scholars continue to debate whether the Philadelphia canvas is an autograph work by Vermeer or a close contemporary copy.
The PMA acquired The Guitar Player (Lady with a Guitar) from the John G. Johnson Collection in 1933, but it has only recently been placed on view for the first time. Long considered a possible Vermeer, the painting came under doubt after a better-preserved version surfaced in London, leading some experts to dismiss the damaged Philadelphia work as either a copy or a secondary version. The painting had suffered from harsh cleaning, a failed 1973 restoration, and a significant tear. In 2016, conservator Arie Wallert initially rejected it as a Vermeer after detecting traces of Prussian blue, a pigment developed after the artist’s death, but later studies in 2021 identified authentic seventeenth-century pigments, suggesting the supposed Prussian blue was likely indigo. These and other findings reignited debate about the painting’s attribution, prompting the museum to display the work unrestored while inviting scholars and the public to follow its ongoing technical investigations.
After intensive study, Arie Wallert published a 2023 article in Zeitschrift für Kunsttechnologie und Konservierung 36(2), summarizing his findings on the PMA painting(s) as follows. "In seventeenth-century workshops, reproducing pictures was an established—but still relatively unknown—practice. Replication of similar identical paintings was accomplished by repeatedly transferring the imagery from fully worked-out studio drawings onto multiple series of prepared canvases. Mechanical transfer of underdrawings naturally affects the following stages in the process of painting. In the present paper, it is argued that the specific art-technical features of this approach can be seen in two virtually identical paintings: one Guitar Player in the PMA and another Guitar Player in Kenwood House in London. On the basis of art-technological, stylistic, and documentary evidence, we conclude that the two, very similar, paintings are both autograph replicas made by Johannes Vermeer."
Kenwood now offers specialists and general visitors a rare chance to compare the two paintings side by side and weigh the evidence firsthand. To accompany the display, it has produced a luxurious scroll-triggered online study that examines the works’ techniques and materials in depth, guiding even non-specialists through the issues surrounding the PMA canvas and providing the context needed to reach an informed judgment. If you can’t get to the exhibition—or even if you can—don’t miss it.
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/guitar_player_vermeer
Admission is free and unticketed. The paintings will be on view together in the dining room lobby of Kenwood House.
2. Essential Vermeer "Vermeer's Paintings in Chronological Order" revised with exciting new features
"Vermeer's Paintings in Chronological Order, " Essential Vermeer
Over the years, the EV "Vermeer's Paintings in Chronological Order" page has been significantly updated, offering three modes of viewing: default, in-scale, and in-frame. Paintings can be resized and rearranged with simple drag-and-drop, allowing users to create a personalized chronology starting from the default EV sequence, which synthesizes the most reliable Vermeer scholarship.
Moreover, visitors can now save and retrieve up to five custom chronologies. A print function has also been added, making it easy to keep a record for study or discussion. I hope to add a share function shortly and eventually the possibility to set expert chronologies next to one another and measure them against one's own custom sequences.
3. Art Newspaper uncovers long-suppressed details of 1968 attack on Vermeer’s Young Lady Seated at a Virginal
"Vermeer’s vandal: the untold story of a vicious attack at London's National Gallery in 1968"
Art Newspaper
September 2, 2025
Martin Bailey
In March 1968, Vermeer’s Young Lady Seated at a Virginal suffered a nearly disastrous attack at London’s National Gallery. A vandal, never identified, used a sharp blade to cut around the head of the sitter, apparently intending to remove it entirely. Had the attempt succeeded, the damage would likely have forced the painting into permanent retirement, reducing Vermeer’s already small surviving oeuvre. The head was only saved because the blade failed to penetrate the canvas fully, perhaps due to a recent relining. Although a visitor noticed the vandalism soon after it occurred, it went unreported for nearly two hours before staff were alerted.
The trustees decided against releasing photographs of the damage, fearing that they might encourage the attacker or draw unwanted publicity. The gallery issued only a minimal statement, assuring the press that the work could be restored without “grave problem.” In fact, the cuts had reached between the sitter’s eyes and left deep scratches elsewhere. Conservators quickly relined and retouched the painting, and it returned to view just three weeks later, now shielded with protective glazing. For decades the severity of the incident remained virtually unknown, receiving scant mention in Vermeer scholarship until these photographs were recently revealed.
4. Brand new Vermeer publication
Johannes Vermeer. Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window: Restoration and Studies in Painting Technique
Uta Neidhardt and Christoph Schölzel
August 8, 2025
144 pages, 222 illustrations
ISBN 978-3-95498-814-3
from the publishers website:
Johannes Vermeer’s painting Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window is familiar to a worldwide audience and is admired and revered. However, the restoration carried out between 2017 and 2021 has significantly changed its appearance. The spectacular removal of a later overpainting in the background of the painting brought to light the depiction of a god of love, which must now be linked to the figure of the letter-reading girl again as a picture within a picture. This suggests a new interpretation of the painting that had been concealed for centuries: the god of love functions as a meaningful commentary on the scene, which the viewer now clearly perceives as an amorous situation. In the painting, the composition, light and color mood and aura have changed fundamentally.
This publication contains the results of research and investigations that examine the restored painting from the perspective of the team of European and American institutions from the fields of restoration, natural sciences, art history, mathematics and IT that worked together on a four-year project. It is intended to contribute to an even more comprehensive description of Vermeer’s painting, to clarify the process of its creation and to make the Dresden decision to accept the later overpainting transparent and comprehensible to experts and the public.
https://verlag.sandstein.de/detailview?no=98-814
5. Exhibition review
In the last issue of the Vermeer Newsletter, I reported two Vermeer-related reviews in the latest issue of Simiolus (45-3/4): Gregor Weber’s Vermeer: Faith, Light and Reflection and Frances Suzman Jowell’s essay on the Rijksmuseum’s exhibition catalogue of the Vermeer exhibition. However, I missed noting an interesting review by Wayne Franits of the Vermeer catalogue in Renaissance Studies Vol. 37 No. 4 (August 2023)
Wayne Franits reviews the Rijksmuseum’s 2023 Vermeer show as both spectacle and scholarship. He notes the intense marketing, sold-out crowds, and gallery design that elevated the works but hampered close looking. The real achievement, in his view, is the catalogue’s 16 essays and documentary apparatus, which synthesize recent research while offering fresh contributions. He welcomes Gregor Weber’s nuanced discussion of optics and the camera obscura (without assuming Vermeer painted from a projected image), but he challenges parts of the religious framing where specific pictures offer little visual corroboration. He also corrects the record on patronage claims, pointing out that his earlier publications already argued for the joint role of Pieter van Ruijven (1624–1674) and Maria de Knuijt as primary buyers.
Franits disputes the notion that The Astronomer and The Geographer are formal pendants and instead supports a commission by Adriaen Paets the Elder (1631–1686)—possibly in two steps (1668, then 1669)—which better fits their dates, themes, and VOC resonances; he even links the globe’s orientation to Paets’s post. He closes by questioning the catalogue’s portrayal of Vermeer’s prosperity, citing contemporary honorifics (“Seigneur”), the status of his wife and mother-in-law, and early modern credit culture to suggest a higher social standing prior to the Rampjaar. Overall, the exhibition is praised, the catalogue deemed essential, and several debates—pendants, Jesuit readings, patrons, and social rank—are sharpened rather than settled.
6. Down the Essential Vermeer pipeline
Despite the Roman heat, this summer has been a productive one for EV. Two Vermeer-related databases have been completed and are now available in alphabetical dropdown form, with plans to expand their reach through a new linking system that will integrate them across the website. Current projects are equally ambitious: a reassessment of Vermeer’s chronology—structured to reflect more closely how painters actually worked—and an in-depth study of his use of color. The chronology will highlight his technical development and his reliance on pigments such as natural ultramarine and green earth, while the color essay, now nearing completion, tackles fundamental questions: What did Vermeer know of color theory? How did he employ it, and how did he achieve his harmonies?
For most of us, color seems self-evident: the sky is blue, a tomato is red, the Milkmaid’s jacket is yellow. We assume color resides in the objects themselves. Specialists, however, approach it differently. For art historians, color is a sensation produced by light interacting with the eye, defined by hue, saturation, and brightness. For scientists, it is not a substance at all but the effect of electromagnetic waves on the retina, a perceptual construct of the brain. Painters of Vermeer’s time saw it otherwise: color was bound to pigments—ultramarine, ochre, cochineal, verdigris—tangible materials with costs, origins, and handling properties. Artists thought as much in terms of pigments as of colors, and their palettes were shaped by what they could obtain, afford, and manipulate. To understand Vermeer’s achievement as a colorist, one must recognize this dual nature of color, at once perceptual and material, and how he balanced the two to become one of the most distinctive painters of the seventeenth century.
7.Young Woman Seated at a Virginal travels to West Palm Beach
Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection
Norton, West Palm Beach, Florida
October 25, 2025 – March 29, 2026
from the museum website:
Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time is a landmark exhibition at the Norton of more than 75 works from the Leiden Collection — one of the world’s foremost private collections of 17th-century Dutch art. Opening at the Norton Museum of Art this fall, it will be the largest exhibition of privately held Dutch 17th-century paintings ever organized in the United States. Among the highlights are over a dozen astounding paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn and the only painting by Johannes Vermeer in a private collection, Young Woman Seated at a Virginal.
Organized thematically, the exhibition offers a glimpse into 17th-century life in the Netherlands. People take center stage, as seen in portraits and character studies capturing the social aspirations and individuality of the era’s citizens. Also on view are engaging depictions of everyday activities: market vendors selling their wares, soldiers playing cards, youths engrossed in books, and women writing letters or playing music. Religious and mythological subjects, commonly shown in private homes, reveal the period’s spiritual and intellectual pursuits.
Rembrandt is the artist at the exhibition’s heart, with works representing all periods of his career. Complementing his paintings are those by artists intimately connected to him in Amsterdam, including his teacher Pieter Lastman and pupils Ferdinand Bol, Govaert Flinck, and Arent de Gelder, among others. The exhibition also features artists working in Rembrandt’s hometown of Leiden, including his friend and rival Jan Lievens and student Gerrit Dou, as well as Jan Steen, Frans van Mieris, and Gabriel Metsu. Painters who worked in other Dutch artistic centers are also represented, such as Hendrick ter Brugghen, Carel Fabritius, Frans Hals, Gerard ter Borch, and Johannes Vermeer.
Coinciding with the 400th anniversary of New Amsterdam's founding on the island of present-day Manhattan, Art and Life in Rembrandt's Time marks Florida’s first large-scale exhibition of Rembrandt’s paintings. This rare convergence of 17th-century Dutch masterpieces showcases the enduring power of Rembrandt and his contemporaries — artists whose influence has shaped artistic trajectories from Impressionism to the modern era and continues to resonate today.
Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated, 150-page catalogue exploring Dutch life in the 1600s and providing detailed entries on each work.