Discovering the Artist

Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer Dutch: 1632 – 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime but evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. "Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women."

He was recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, but his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. He was omitted from surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him, although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Like some major Dutch Golden Age artists such as Frans Hals and Rembrandt, Vermeer never went abroad. And like Rembrandt, he was an avid art collector and dealer.

Vermeer's works are largely genre pieces and portraits, with the exception of two cityscapes and two allegories. His subjects offer a cross-section of seventeenth-century Dutch society, ranging from the portrayal of a simple milkmaid at work, to the luxury and splendour of rich notables and merchantmen in their roomy houses. Besides these subjects, religious, poetical, musical, and scientific comments can also be found in his work.

Theories of mechanical aid

Vermeer's painting techniques have long been a source of debate, given their almost photorealistic attention to detail, despite Vermeer's having had no formal training, and despite only limited evidence that Vermeer had created any preparatory sketches or traces for his paintings.

In 2001, British artist David Hockney published the book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, in which he argued that Vermeer (among other Renaissance and Baroque artists including Hans Holbein and Diego Velázquez) used optics to achieve precise positioning in their compositions, and specifically some combination of curved mirrors, camera obscura, and camera lucida. This became known as the Hockney–Falco thesis, named after Hockney and Charles M. Falco, another proponent of the theory.

Professor Philip Steadman published the book Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces in 2001 which specifically claimed that Vermeer had used a camera obscura to create his paintings. Steadman noted that many of Vermeer's paintings had been painted in the same room, and he found six of his paintings that are precisely the right size if they had been painted from inside a camera obscura in the room's back wall.

Supporters of these theories have pointed to evidence in some of Vermeer's paintings, such as the often-discussed sparkling pearly highlights in Vermeer's paintings, which they argue are the result of the primitive lens of a camera obscura producing halation. It was also postulated that a camera obscura was the mechanical cause of the "exaggerated" perspective seen in The Music Lesson (London, Royal Collection).

In 2008, American entrepreneur and inventor Tim Jenison developed the theory that Vermeer had used a camera obscura along with a "comparator mirror", which is similar in concept to a camera lucida but much simpler and makes it easy to match color values. He later modified the theory to simply involve a concave mirror and a comparator mirror. He spent the next five years testing his theory by attempting to re-create The Music Lesson himself using these tools, a process captured in the 2013 documentary film Tim's Vermeer.

Several points were brought out by Jenison in support of this technique: First was Vermeer's hyper-accurate rendition of light falloff along the wall. Neurobiologist Colin Blakemore, in an interview with Jenison, notes that human vision cannot process information about the absolute brightness of a scene. Another was the addition of several highlights and outlines consistent with matching the effects of chromatic aberration, particularly noticeable in primitive optics. Last, and perhaps most telling, is a noticeable curvature in the original painting's rendition of the scrollwork on the harpsichord. This effect matched Jenison's technique precisely, caused by exactly duplicating the view as seen from a curved mirror.

This theory remains disputed. There is no historical evidence regarding Vermeer's interest in optics, aside from the accurately observed mirror reflection above the lady at the virginals in The Music Lesson. The detailed inventory of the artist's belongings drawn up after his death does not include a camera obscura or any similar device.[42] However, Vermeer was in close connection with pioneer lens maker Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and Leeuwenhoek was his executor after death.

Characteristics of the School of Delft

The School of Delft is known for genre scenes of domestic life, church interiors, courtyards and its city streets. The principal artists of the School of Delft are Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Carel Fabritius, Gerard Houckgeest, Paulus Potter and Emmanuel de Witte. Today, Vermeer is universally considered the greatest painter of the school although each of painters listed above have carved out a prestigious place among the most significant painters of the Golden Age of Dutch painting. Some art historians have also designated a School of Pieter de Hooch.

Other painters who, to a greater or lesser degree, have been associated with the School are Hendrick van der Burch, Cornelis de Man, Anthonie Palamedesz, Egbert van der Poel, Adam Pynacker, Jan Steen, Jacob van Velsen, Johannes Verkolje, Hendrick Cornelisz van Vliet, Daniel Vosmaer and Jacob Woutersz Vosmaer.

The principle qualities which distinguish the painting of the School of Delft from the painting of other Dutch schools is a pervading calm, careful observation of the activity of light, perspective coherency, measured composition and a relative disinterest for detail for the sake of detail. The last is the quality which brought the fijnschilders (fine painters) of the Leiden School to the international stage.

The School of Delft coalesced in the early 1650s and continued to produce paintings of elevated quality and originality through the 1660s. However, as quickly as the Delft style arose, it disappeared. Many artists departed for more promising markets, usually Amsterdam. By the time Vermeer died in 1675, the city had reverted to its status as an artistic backwater.

The character or even the existence itself of the School of Delft—no such appellation existed at the time—is not, however, set in stone. The art historian Christopher Brown has questioned if the School of Delft ever existed in a meaningful art historical sense. J. Breunesse holds that "with the use of the term 'Delft School,' a problem [is] created rather than solved."

On the other hand, in line with previous art historians, John M. Montias, the economist turned Vermeer biographer, suggests that once Potter, De Witte, Fabritius, De Hooch and Vermeer joined the Delft Guild of Saint Luke shortly before or shortly after 1650s, "a genuine school—in the sense of a community with intersecting interests in subject matter and techniques, with some similarity in aesthetic approaches, and with significant cross influences—had at last come into existence."

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