Delft Vermeer – How to Appreciate Real Paintings in Museums Around the World
Vermeer painted slowly and carefully, producing around two paintings in a full year. In the whole world there are only about 36 paintings by Johannes Vermeer from Delft.
Some people have fallen in love with the magic and radiance of Vermeer’s paintings and have decided to travel around the world, from Boston to Dresden and from Dublin to Washington DC, traversing the earth. Arguably the best are on display in Vienna, Amsterdam and The Hague. This kind of pilgrimage and mesmerized tour of admirers is quite doable as virtually all of the paintings are now in public collections and can be viewed during opening hours after purchasing an admission ticket.
Do you recognize a work of his youthful style, when Vermeer was around twenty in 1653? Or is it in fact a late work like the one in Dublin?
Standing in front of a real Vermeer painting… what do you really see and what do you fully appreciate? Do you see the technical wizardry in the way he used the paint, in layer after layer of glazes, with light bouncing between these layers? Did you use wet on wet, wet on dry on a certain part of the painting?
What can be recognized within the image, what is the history, psychology and what physical objects can be distinguished? What is the level of reality? How does this “photographic reality” relate to his list of private possessions, which he left after his death in 1675? Many viewers have the idea that what Vermeer is showing us are views of his own private home with marble floors and all. In fact, what he sometimes does is paint elegant rooms, improving the interior by filling it with luxury items that do not belong to him: musical instruments, architectural details…
And the meaning of the objects and scenes, according to what we think now and according to the knowledge available from the current books of his time… what would be the meaning of the scenes represented by Vermeer according to those contemporary sources?
Do you really recognize the fullness of artistic choices and visual tricks he put into elevating a painting into a great work of art?
If you do, seeing it can become the thrill of your life.
If you find yourself lacking a bit of all that, you can dive into serious art books and come up for air after two months of reading. You can also read the novel. the pearl girl and I don’t know how many misconceptions it actually contains. Alternatively, you can click widely on the internet and see what you get in terms of knowledge, information, fancy theories, and misinformation.
Finally, you can ask for a specialist to stand by your side and see what knowledge and passion they can produce. To really “get it” it may take a specialist learning to fully see and appreciate. I’m that kind of art historian.
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