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Glazing

Glazing is a technique that has been employed by painters since the invention of oil painting. Although in theory it is very simple, in practice glazing can be a very complex undertaking. In the simplest terms, glazing consists of applying a transparent layer of paint over another thoroughly dried layer of opaque paint, usually with a wide, soft-bristled brush. The underpainting, which is the dried layer below, is generally done in a single color but may also contain some color. The upper and lower layers of paint mix optically, not physically. Glazing is akin to placing a sheet of colored acetate over a monochrome photograph. To achieve the correct fluidity for brushing, the paint used for glazing must be modified with an oil medium. Glazing creates a unique "shine-through" or stained-glass effect that cannot be obtained through direct mixing of paint.

Glazing is a painting technique that demands a high level of skill, understanding, and patience. One of the first challenges an artist faces is understanding the inherent transparency of pigments, which varies wildly. Each layer of glaze has to be completely dry before you apply the next, which can turn the project into a long, drawn-out affair—especially when you're using oil paints that can take days to weeks to dry,. although in Vermeer's time, driers were used.

Skill and precision come next. The application of glaze requires a steady hand; apply too much, and you could suffocate the details of the layers beneath; apply too little, and the effect can be underwhelming. Even if you get the application just right, the painter still have to consider how the layers will interact. It takes a solid grasp of color theory to predict how one transparent layer will affect another.

Consistency is another hurdle. The glaze must be uniformly transparent and consistently applied across the painting for a coherent final piece.

Lastly, there's the matter of cost. The high-quality pigments and mediums required for glazing were often among the most expensive and difficult to obtain, such as natural ultramarine, which could be as costly as gold.

Looking Over Vermeer's Shoulder

Enhanced by the author's dual expertise as both a seasoned painter and a renowned authority on Vermeer, Looking Over Vermeer's Shoulder offers an in-depth exploration of the artistic techniques and practices that elevated Vermeer to legendary status in the art world. The book meticulously delves into every aspect of 17th-century painting, from the initial canvas preparation to the details of underdrawing, underpainting, finishing touches, and glazing, as well as nuances in palette, brushwork, pigments, and compositional strategy. All of these facets are articulated in an accessible and lucid manner.

Furthermore, the book examines Vermeer's unique approach to various artistic elements and studio practices. These include his innovative use of the camera obscura, the intricacies of his studio setup, and his representation of his favorite motifs subjects, such as wall maps, floor tiles, and "pictures within pictures."

By observing closely the studio practices of Vermeer and his preeminent contemporaries, the reader will acquire a concrete understanding of 17th-century painting methods and materials and gain a fresh view of Vermeer's 35 masterworks, which reveal a seamless unity of craft and poetry.

While the book is not structured as a step-by-step instructional guide, it serves as an invaluable resource for realist painters seeking to enhance their own craft. The technical insights offered are highly adaptable, offering a wealth of knowledge that can be applied to a broad range of figurative painting styles.

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LOOKING OVER VERMEER'S SHOULDER
author: Jonathan Janson
date: 2020 (second edition)
pages: 294
illustrations: 200-plus illustrations and diagrams
formats: PDF
$29.95



CONTENTS

  1. Vermeer's Training, Technical Background & Ambitions
  2. An Overview of Vermeer’s Technical & Stylistic Evolution
  3. Fame, Originality & Subject Matte
  4. Reality or Illusion: Did Vermeer’s Interiors ever Exist?
  5. Color
  6. Composition
  7. Mimesi & Illusionism
  8. Perspective
  9. Camera Obscura Vision
  10. Light & Modeling
  11. Studio
  12. Four Essential Motifs in Vermeer’s Oeuvre
  1. Drapery
  2. Painting Flesh
  3. Canvas
  4. Grounding
  5. “Inventing,” or Underdrawing
  6. “Dead-Coloring,” or Underpainting
  7. “Working-up,” or Finishing
  8. Glazing
  9. Mediums, Binders & Varnishes
  10. Paint Application & Consistency
  11. Pigments, Paints & Palettes
  12. Brushes & Brushwork

Why Glaze?

Glazes cannot be used indiscriminately; they were always restricted to specific passages of the composition. To begin with, there is nothing to be gained by glazing with neutral grays or dull colors. Grays are more effective when created with opaque or semi-opaque earth colors, or when black is admixed with white. The light gray background walls in Vermeer's works were never achieved by glazing. Nor were the light base tones of flesh produced by glazing transparent layers of pink over a white underpainting, as if it were a watercolor, although thin red glazes may have been used to achieve warmer variations in the cheeks and lips. There is no distinct line that separates a glaze from a semi-transparent layer of color, but in general only inherently transparent pigments are adapted for glazing. Modern art historians are apt to abuse the term and describe any layer of paint that is not completely opaque as a glaze. Brightly colored drapery were often glazed. An unfinished painting (fig. 1) by the Italian painter Andrea de Sarto shows the beginning of the working-up stage. The red drapery, which has been modeled with flat tones of vermilion and black, would have been successively glazed with madder lake. The sleeves have been modeled with light yellow and dull green and would most probably have been glazed with verdigris, a deep and lustrous green pigment.

Glazing was utilized for two reasons. One, artists of the past had very few of the brilliant colors that are available today. For instance, strong purples, greens, and oranges were either rare and unstable or could be mixed with available pigments. For example, purple was approximated by glazing blue over a reddish underpainting, or vice versa. Two, glazing creates, as we have said, an extraordinary luminosity that is impossible to achieve otherwise. Only inherently transparent pigments, called lakes, are suited for glazing. The principal pigments used for glazing were madder lake, carmine, natural ultramarine, verdigris, various organic yellow lakes and indigo. For further information on these pigments see "Vermeer's Palette."

Andrea del Sartofig. 1 The Sacrifice of Isaac
Andrea del Sarto
c. 1527
Oil on canvas, 208 x 171 cm.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

Glazing, however, has more than one drawback. It is difficult to anticipate the final chromatic effect of the glazed area with respect to the overall harmony of the finished work. Due to its transparency a glaze produces an optical depth that attracts the viewer's eye more than the surrounding layers of opaque paint that usually cover the great part of painted surface of the canvas. Furthermore, it is insufficient to know how a glaze is to be applied. One has to determine with the utmost precision how thick or thin the glaze-paint should be: an application that is a little too scanty or a trifle too lavish can significantly alter a paint layer's color or tonal value. The same holds true for the underpainting, which is usually finalized in detail because, once glazed, it is difficult to correct. For these reasons glazing was not used for other than specific areas of the painting.

Today, various informative studies refer to glazing in Vermeer's paintings. However, art historians tend to overstate Vermeer's use of glazing and do not distinguish between glazing used as a corrective measure—very light glazes meant to alter only slightly the underlying paint layer that, for one reason or another, did not meet the painter's original expectations. Instead, true glazing aims to deliberately create a specific and otherwise unachievable pictorial effect. This difference might not seem fundamental but the idea that Vermeer built up his paintings in a series of successive glazes is incorrect and creates a distorted perception of Vermeer's painting methods. An oil painting cannot be created solely through a series of successive glazes as though they were watercolor washes. In the seventeenth century, the bulk of painting was executed with opaque and semi-opaque paint layers. Glazes also attract dust due to their high oil content. Dutch painters, like Vermeer, used glazing very selectively, following well-known formulas.

A fine example of a genuine ultramarine glaze can be seen in the satin gown of Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, although it is now less brilliant today due to aging of the varnish. The gem-like depth of the wrap in The Milkmaid (fig. 2) is another. In this case, the excellent state of conservation of the painting allows us to appreciate in full the chromatic brilliance of pure lapis lazuli glazed over a black and white underpainting.

The Milkmaid (detail, Johannes Vermeerfig. 2 The Milkmaid (detail)
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1658–1661
Oil on canvas, 45.5 x 41 cm.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Girl with a Red Hat, reconstruction
Reconstruction of Vermeer's Girl with a Red Hat by Jonathan Janson, author of Essential Vermeer.

A superbly conserved example of glazing can be found in Vermeer's Girl with a Red Hat. In the reconstruction to the left, various stages of the seventeenth-century multi-stage painting process can be observed. The red hat, according to common practice for painting bright red objects, is first modeled with shades of pure vermilion and black. Subsequently, the lighter areas are glazed with a thin layer of pure madder lake, while the shadowed areas are deepened with a thicker glaze that may include madder lake, black, or natural ultramarine.

The background tapestry is briskly executed using a wet-in-wet technique with various earth colors and natural ultramarine The blue satin garment, still in the underpainting stage, is modeled with raw umber and white in the highlights.


  • COSTARAS, Nicola. "A Study of the Materials and Techniques of Johannes Vermeer." In Vermeer Studies, edited by Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker, Studies in the History of Art 55, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Symposium Papers XXXIII. Washington: National Gallery of Art & New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, 145–167.
  • DELANEY, John K., Kathryn A. Dooley, Annelies van Loon, and Abbie Vandivere. “Mapping the Pigment Distribution of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Heritage Science 8, no. 4 (January 7, 2020). Accessed May 2, 2022.
  • EASTAUGH, Nicholas, Valentine Walsh, Tracey Chaplin and Ruth Siddall. The Pigment Compendium 2017. Rev. ed. (e-version). London: The Pigmentum Project, 2016.
  • FINK, Daniel A. "Vermeer's Use of the Camera Obscura: A Comparative Study." The Art Bulletin 53 (1971).
  • GIEBE, Marlies. “Johannes Vermeers ‘Kupplerin’: Restaurierung Und Maltechnische Befunde.” In Uta Neidhardt and Marlies Giebe, eds., Johannes Vermeer: Bei der Kupplerin, 39–64. Exh. cat. Dresden: Michel Sandstein in association with Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, 2004.
  • GIFFORD, E. Melanie, Anikó Bezur, Andrea Guidi di Bagno, and Lisha Deming Glinsman. “The Making of a Luxury Image: Van Aelst’s Painting Materials and Artistic Techniques.” In Tanya Paul, James Clifton, Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., and Julie Hochstrasser, Elegance and Refinement: The Still-Life Paintings of Willem van Aelst, 80–84. Exh. cat. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2012.
  • GIFFORD, M. "Painting Light: Recent Observations on Vermeer's Technique." In Vermeer Studies, edited by Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art & New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998, 185–199.
  • GIFFORD, E. Melanie, and Lisha Deming Glinsman. “Collective Style and Personal Manner: Materials and Techniques of High-Life Genre Painting.” In Waiboer, Wheelock, and Ducos, Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting, 65–84, 270–74.
  • GIFFORD, E. Melanie, Dina Anchin, Alexandra Libby, Marjorie E. Wieseman, Kathryn A. Dooley, Lisha Deming Glinsman, John K. Delaney. "First Steps in Vermeer’s Creative Process: New Findings from the National Gallery of Art," Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 14, no. 2 (Summer 2022).
  • GIFFORD, E. Melanie. “Fine Painting and Eloquent Imprecision: Gabriel Metsu’s Painting Technique.” In Adriaan E. Waiboe, Gabriel Metsu, 154–79. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the National Gallery of Art, 2010.
  • GIFFORD, E. Melanie. “Lievens’ Technique: ‘Wonders in Smeared Paint, Varnishes and Oils.’” In Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 41–53. Exh. cat. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the National Gallery of Art, 2008.
  • GIFFORD, E. Melanie. “Material as Metaphor: Non-Conscious Thinking in Seventeenth Century Painting Practice.” In Studying Old Master Paintings: Technology and Practice, edited by Marika Spring, 165–72. London: Archetype in association with The National Gallery, 2011.
  • GIFFORD, E. Melanie. “Painting Light: Recent Observations on Vermeer’s Technique.” In Vermeer Studies, edited by Gaskell and Jonker, 185–99.
  • GROEN, Karin M., Inez D. van der Werf, Klaas Jan van den Berg, and Jaap J. Boon. "Scientific Examination of Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'." In Vermeer Studies, edited by Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art & New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998, 169–183.
  • HOWARD, Helen, David Peggie and Rachel Billinge. "Vermeer and Technique." National Gallery website. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/about-research/the-meaning-of-making/vermeer-and-technique

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Looking Over Vermeer’s Shoulder

The complete study of Vermeer’s materials, artistry and painting techniques


Jonathan Janson

(painter & founder of Essential Vermeer.com)