Late last year I booked a trip to Amsterdam to see the Rijksmuseum’s summoning of as many of Johannes Vermeer’s surviving paintings as bequest conditions and the stinginess of partner institutions would permit, only to see the exhibition sell out after the (London) Times called it the “exhibition of the century” without being out of step with the press consensus. After a second round of tickets was announced and I hit refresh a few thousand times, last week we made it to the exhibition, where twenty-seven claimed Vermeer paintings (including two or three dodgy attributions) were gathered.
By then the Girl with a Pearl Earring had already wandered back to its regular spot at the Mauritshuis, so we made a day trip to the Hague as well. If you missed out on the final final ticket lottery, the good news is that all the paintings are on regular public display; you can see most of the great ones on a trip to the Netherlands with a layover in DC. Or you may be able to wait for the next mega-exhibition; there’s every incentive to try to have a couple more exhibitions of the century again this century.
What follows are the opinions whose eyes’ perceptiveness lags far behind his ears’. I’m kind of face blind, to the extent that when I wrote my Consumer Guide to Auden last year (the last time I went strayed way out of my cultural competency zone) I wasn’t sure if the picture I put at the top was of Auden or of Louis MacNeice. (It was MacNeice.) And I wouldn’t able to entirely avoid the (hetero) male gaze if I tried, though I hope I employ it in an uh courtly way. For more educated and more diverse perspectives, plus more pictures, go to Jonathan Janson’s Essential Vermeer site (and probably keep the tab open while you read this), which lives up to its name—I certainly couldn’t avoid using it when putting this together, while Walter Liedtke’s Vermeer: The Complete Paintings was also invaluable, even if it devoted a high proportion of its word count to esoteric art history beefs (whether Vermeer used a camera obscura is of some interest to the lay person, but for like a paragraph.) For subjectivity, adverbs, and somehow the word “waifu”, read on.
Diana and Her Companions (home location: The Hague)
His eye for color and shading was there from the start, though it’s heavily reliant on Italian models here. But he draws women like he’s never seen one before. The dog, however, is a good dog. C PLUS
Saint Praxedis (Tokyo)
The most contested attribution, though it’s of academic interest. It’s a copy (or more likely a copy of a copy) that was well within Vermeer’s ability to execute, so if he did that doesn’t really prove much other than he felt he had to get good at religious painting. Rockism! C
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (Edinburgh)
One of the few times a man (that’d be Jesus) dominates the women in a Vermeer painting. The modeling is improved, and the composition is sturdy; it’s a bit drab, though, and still highly derivative. B MINUS
The Procuress (Dresden)
Alone among his oeuvre, this is kinda gross. And yet he’s so much more at home with genre than with religious painting. At this point he shows a lot more interest in the coat and carpet than in the people, including himself on the left. B
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (Dresden)
Yesssss one girl, one letter, and one window; for a long time, his best work will have at least two of these. The recent cleaning is infamous for uncovering the Cupid, but the clear improvement is to the window—his mastery of light is already complete, he just needs to get the figures right. A MINUS
Officer and Laughing Girl (New York: Frick)
Well this isn’t getting the figures right, with the one clear face getting dwarfed by a hat. First appearance of the Holland and West Friesland map that’ll become a familiar friend, especially once you work out the blue part is land (the perils of fading paint.) B
The Milkmaid (Amsterdam)
This is probably his most evident masterpiece to 21st century eyes, who might find most remarkable that he wouldn’t paint a remotely similar subject again, except kind of The Lacemaker. The milkmaid has the solidity of a laborer, but Vermeer brings out the lead-tin yellow and ultramarine he lavishes on richer women to enhance her beauty. And the food! Vermeer spams his pointillé technique more than before or after to make the shiniest bread in art history. He’d paint more sophisticated works, but sometimes you want the lactose. A PLUS
Girl Interrupted in Her Music (New York: Frick)
Not in perfect condition, so a bit hard to judge. It seems the composition is too theatrical, though the lighting effects might’ve been great. B
The Glass of Wine (Berlin)
A little stagy, more than made up for by perhaps his greatest window, not to mention his greatest chair reinforcing the lighting scheme. Once again, the man is superfluous; good thing we won’t see one of those again for a while. A
The Little Street (Amsterdam)
Small and very lovely. He not only gets most of the way to inventing Impressionism with the damp cobblestones in front (c.f. Caillebotte), he works out how to integrate them with the rigorous structure of the house and doorways. The maid in the doorway is a great mini-miniature in itself. A
View of Delft (The Hague)
Yeah I’m not going to try to outwrite Proust, lest I die on the gallery floor. I’ll only add that one of the major achievements of this exhibition was letting you see this and The Little Street in the same room, to emphasize how much further this one goes. Even with Vermeer, bigger is sometimes bigger. A PLUS
Woman with a Lute (New York: The Met)
An in-between picture, transitioning into his mid-period, with some strange compositional choices: she’s tuning the lute rather than playing it (the joke may be that lutes go out of tune almost immediately.) Fortunately, the last hint of stiffness we’ll see for quite some time. B
Woman in Blue Holding a Letter (Amsterdam)
It’s like he said fjuck, I’m painting the most beautiful (not pregnant, probably) woman you’ve ever seen with as few distractions as possible EXCEPT whatever’s necessary to give her a sense of interiority. Which, since this is Vermeer, means a map. His most audacious use of ultramarine: there’s even a little blue on the walls. A
Woman with a Pearl Necklace (Berlin)
Seeing this in context makes it hard to believe Vermeer had any satirical intent here—such interpretations might have arisen from the painting’s uncharacteristic imperfections (even the perspective is a bit off.) It might be his best treatment of that jacket though. B
Woman Holding a Balance (DC)
This one you’re better off looking at at home: the scale, the focal point, is very hard to see clearly from a respectful museum distance. Viewed holistically, it’s a hell of a composition, with some of his most subtle lighting effects. Balance! A
A Lady Writing (DC)
Meanwhile this one stands out with careful comparison to the other letter paintings. While Vermeer never completely avoided the male gaze (to use an anachronistic term), this time the subject isn’t idealized or exceptionally beautiful—instead, she stares at the viewer(/painter) as a person with agency. She’s happy to humor you for a moment, but she has shit to do. If this really was his wife, it’d make sense. A
Girl with a Pearl Earring (The Hague)
This one on the other hand might be the peak of the Dutch male gaze: it’s a tronie not a portrait, as every art history student insists on pointing out, which basically makes her the 17th century equivalent of an anime waifu. And yes, you do have to see it in person to appreciate the edge effects (sfumato, in Leonardo’s terms.) A PLUS
Girl with a Red Hat (DC)
The previous time I saw this it was in an empty room in the National Gallery instead at the Rijksmuseum zoo. The face, somewhat androgynous, is filled with character, and the material of the fuzzy-fluffy hat remains one of art’s great mysteries. A
Girl with a Flute (DC)
Thin line between a masterpiece and a whatever painting. Whether it’s because Vermeer didn’t finish it, or it was restored to death, or Vermeer didn’t paint most of it itself, it’s flat and boring as a whole (and what’s up with her hand?) Defenders of the attribution claim the best parts stand with Girl with a Flute, but, uh, which parts? C
Mistress and Maid (New York: Frick)
While this falls short of his very greatest works, it’s one of his more natural interactions between characters, and it’s highly informative because of its relatively large size, which lets you see how simply he creates his faces: an eye can be just a few strokes. The writing equipment gets much more detail. A MINUS
The Geographer (Frankfurt)
The only solo male figure in the show—maybe his neighbor Antonie van Leeuwenhoek but who knows—with a face rendered cartoonish thanks to the condition of the painting. For once Vermeer lets in a ton of light, maybe to symbolize Western knowledge spreading over the globe, maybe because it’s hard to read a map in the dark. A MINUS
The Lacemaker (Paris)
“Exquisite” is a word tossed around a lot with regard to Vermeer, but since I haven’t used it yet: exquisite, though again careful home viewing (so that you can see that for example her collar, which seems amazingly detailed, is actually almost an abstract work), this time in addition to seeing the thing in person, is useful. A
The Love Letter (Amsterdam)
A step backwards to an older era of voyeuristic pics, with the tiled floor showing that yes, he did know mathematical perspective, seeming particularly superfluous. Only the maid’s hint of the smirk at her mistress elevates the painting. B PLUS
Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid (Dublin)
Some last flashes of greatness. There’s the window and the white curtain in front of it, and above all the maid looking sensible after her mistress has already screwed up one letter attempt and thrown it on the floor, which partially excuses the static posing (she’s just bored.) B PLUS
A Lady Standing at a Virginal (London)
Maybe it was Louis XIV’s invasion crashing the Dutch art market, maybe he was just getting old, but suddenly his art turns cold. Even the window is stubbornly realistic. B
A Lady Seated at a Virginal (London)
Still, better than no window. B MINUS
A Young Woman Seated at the Virginal (New York: Leiden Collection)
The chef is out, and the portions are so small! C PLUS
Allegory of Faith (New York: The Met)
This gets a bad wrap in some quarters (“a swooning monstrosity”, says the Guardian), but if one reads it as dramatizing Mary Magdalene in particular, rather than the inevitable triumph of Catholicism, it becomes a lot more likable. Most of all, the squished snake is cool; get behind me, Satan. B PLUS
Subjects for further research
I think I’ve seen four other other Vermeers (though before the time I kept careful track of individual paintings; I used to be less obsessive and now regret it): A Maid Asleep, Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, Study of a Young Woman (all at the Met), and The Astronomer (at the Louvre, though now in Dubai apparently indefinitely.) Water Pitcher in particular is a major piece of his mid-career woman + window progression, so get to Fifth Avenue already. The Concert was famously stolen from the Gardner in Boston. That leaves four viewable paintings I haven’t seen: The Girl with a Wine Glass (Braunschweig), The Music Lesson (Royal Collection), The Art of Painting (Vienna), and The Guitar Player (Kenwood). Of these, only The Art of Painting seems major (darn the miserly Kunsthistorisches Museum for not lending it out), but I’m probably enough of a completist that I’ll have to look up where Braunschweig is one day (update: it’s five trains from my current hotel room, and I can’t say I wasn’t tempted.) Finally there are rumors of one more in a basement in Philly. All indications are it’s bad; I can’t wait to see it.