What type of artist was vermeer

The two blue leather Spanish chairs have appeared in other works by Vermeer, suggesting that these were chairs that existed in his house. Maps are also frequently depicted in Vermeer's oeuvre, providing visual symbolism for the trading and mercantile businesses on which many well-to-do Dutch citizens built their wealth.

The hues of the image create a melancholic atmosphere and ultimately, the viewer is left with a sense of voyeuristic expectation, tinged with apprehension as we wait for the woman to tell us her news. Woman in Blue Reading a Letter represents one of Vermeer's most enigmatic and powerful depictions of a new theme in Dutch genre painting subjects from everyday life : well-to-do women in domestic settings, often so preoccupied that they are oblivious to the viewer's gaze.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is undoubtedly the most famous and identifiable portrait of Northern Europe and is as iconic to the Dutch as da Vinci's Mona Lisa is to the Italians. In it, a young woman's face floats against a dark background, left half in shadow. She gazes out at the audience with bright eyes and lips slightly parted as if she is about to speak. It is unclear whether she is turning towards or away from the viewer.

The play of light on the Girl 's cheek, eyelids, and lips are instantly recognizable as Vermeer was posthumously titled the "Master of Light" and was known for his delicate attention to the way light played on skin, fabrics, and precious stones.

Scholars have admiringly noted the lack of linear distinction between the nose and cheek, as Vermeer has counted on his use of light tones to implying the different facets of her face. Similarly, pale pink and white highlights along the lips make them appear moist and fleshy, adding to the air of mysticism that surrounds the image.

The audience is left to wonder whether she stopped speaking when she made eye contact with the viewer or had simply paused to take a breath.

Rather than a true-to-life portrait of someone, Vermeer's contemporaries would have recognized this genre painting as a tronie - a stock character in costume, with idealized, exaggerated facial expressions, representing characteristics of exotic or foreign lands, that were coming to light in Dutch society, through the thriving business of trade.

The girl's fantastical turban is indicative of this, as it was certainly not part of everyday Dutch, or even European garb. The pearlescent globe, hanging from her left ear, is also suggestive of far off lands as pearls were imported from the Persian Gulf. As with many of Vermeer's works, mystery revolves around why he painted what he did. Certainly he had more freedom than many of his contemporaries, like Rembrandt, who took commissions, and trained pupils to earn a living.

Thus it seems that Vermeer painted the Girl to amuse himself and to challenge himself artistically. Some scholars have argued as to the identity of the sitter, with some suggesting that it was either his oldest daughter, Maria, or the daughter of his patron, Magdalena van Ruijven, both of whom would have been twelve or thirteen years old at the time of painting.

If this is the case, it suggests a desire to document his child's or his friend's child's beauty for posterity and admiration. Painted in around , it wasn't until the turn of the twentieth century, after long-overdue restoration work, and with the publication of Tracy Chevalier's novel Girl with a Pearl Earring that the Girl was catapulted to international stardom. The painting continues to influence contemporary artists. The British graffiti artist Banksy repainted the portrait on an exterior wall in Bristol, UK, in his characteristic street-art style with tonally applied deep blue paint.

The iconic pearl, which historians are unsure as to whether it is an unusually large pearl or simply polished tin, has been replaced with an unassuming burglar alarm. Regardless of the identity of the mysterious girl, or the authenticity of her pearl, her face remains an iconic image of youthful beauty in Baroque art. Vermeer ended his artistic career the way he started it, by painting an intrinsically, even inescapably Catholic image.

Many scholars believe that this image was commissioned for yet another private hidden church, or schuilkerk , by Dutch Catholics.

In it we see a drawn tapestry that reveals the scene, in all a reflection of the curtains that hid many churches in Netherlandish homes. On a raised, altar-like platform, a woman in the white and blue of purity is thought to be the penitent Mary Magdalene.

She is shown looking up from the Bible to gaze at the crucifix, transfixed by divine love. Her foot rests on a terrestrial globe, while above her head hangs a celestial globe; an indication that she is suspended between the earthly world and the heavens. On the floor in front of her, a snake symbolizing Satan lies crushed and bleeding under the weight of a stone slab. The slab denotes the rock of the Catholic Church.

The large painting in the background is a simplified version of Christ on the Cross by Jacob Jordaens c. The older painting even appears in the inventory of Vermeer's belongings after his death in Experimentation and improvisation play vital roles. Because craft is no longer retained indispensable to the artistic endeavor, technique is dispensed with in art schools. Instead, seventeenth-century painters proceeded according to a fixed multi-step method that they had assimilated in a master's studio.

The workload was divided into distinct phases in order to deal with the principal pictorial components one at a time. The rationale behind this division of labor was based on both technical and economical motives.

It must be remembered that paintings of the seventeenth century were generally far more complex in composition , and great attention was given to perspective accuracy, naturalistic illumination and detail. Once the drawing and lighting scheme had been worked out in the drawing and underpainting stage, artists worked up their compositions in a piecemeal fashion, completing one restricted area at a time.

The complete book about seventeenth-century painting techniques and materials with particular focus on the painting of Johannes Vermeer. Looking Over Vermeer's Shoulder is a comprehensive study of the materials and painting techniques that made Vermeer one of the greatest masters of European art.

But to gain the clearest picture of Vermeer's day-to-day methods we must not only look at what went on his inside studio but inside the studios of his most accomplished colleagues as well.

Looking Over Vermeer's Shoulder , then, lays out in clear, comprehensible language every facet of 17th-century and Vermeer's painting practices including training, canvas preparation, underdrawing, underpainting, glazing, palette, brushes, pigments and composition.

Also investigated are a number of key issues as they relate specifically to Vermeer such as the camera obscura, studio organization as well as how he depicted wall-maps, floor tiles, pictures-within-pictures, carpets and other of his most characteristic motifs. Bolstered by his qualifications as a practicing painter and a Vermeer connoisseur, the three-volume PDF format permits the author to address each of the book's 24 topics with requisite attention.

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

While not written as a "how-to" manual, aspiring realist painters will find a true treasure trove of technical information that can be apapted to almost any style of figurative painting. Looking Over Vermeer's Shoulder beta version author : Jonathan Janson date : second edition pages : format : PDF 3 volumes illustrations : plus illustrations and diagrams.

As soon as the final copy edit becomes available the purchaser will be notified and, on request, receive it without delay or charge. Almost all representations of artists at work showed them at work seated holding small palettes. Pigments , the actual coloring agents of paint, were very few when compared to those available to any modern painter, and usually had to be hand ground each day before setting out to work.

Moreover, some pigments were not mutually compatible and had to be used separately. To overcome the scarcity of pigments and the inherent limitations of available materials, artists had learned to compensate via complex techniques such as underpainting, glazing and by varying the consistencies of paint and mode of application.

Inventing corresponds to the modern idea of an initial drawing on the untouched canvas, dead-coloring to underpainting and working-up to the application of color and detail. Each stage, along the preparation of the painting's support, is discussed in depth on separate pages, which can be accessed below.

Glazing, a separate but indispensable technique, is analyzed by itself. His coloring too was relatively bold, but lighting conventionally conceived. The evident build-up of paint creates a dense and uneven surface accentuating the material presence of the subjects although repeated overpainting provide evidence of technical uncertainty. These earlier history paintings are much larger than the most part of the later interiors. The fluency and technical proficiency of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary strikes an odd note among these early paintings.

The Procuress might be considered an intermediate work between the historical subjects and those genre interiors for which Vermeer is celebrated. Even though the painting's " modern " subject differs from the first history works, its scale, uncertain spatial organization, and broadness of execution are clearly reminiscent of his first works.

Vermeer's first interiors break distinctly from the history paintings not only in subject, but also in technique and dimension. Genre subject matter had already been pioneered by other painters such as Pieter de Hooch , Gerrit ter Borch and Nicolas Metsu. As Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. In this period the complicated admixtures of pigments found in the history paintings are less frequent and impasto thickly applied opaque paint is used more selectively.

The brilliant tones needed to suggest the intensity of incoming daylight , which had quickly become one of Vermeer's principal artistic preoccupations, were generally composed of two or three pigments. In order to create illusionistic three-dimensional spaces Vermeer made use of the laws of perspective , which any ambitious painter was familiar with. These and other visual peculiarities found in these works indicate that Vermeer had begun to employ the camera obscura, a precursor to the modern photographic camera.

It is probable that Leonard Bramer brought back Italian pictures or engravings that would deeply move such a sensitive and searching spirit as was Vermeer's. In any case, good reproductive engravings of earlier and recent Italian paintings abounded, and one need not necessarily look beyond such material to explain Vermeer's Italianate beginnings.

Nor was this effort wasted, even if it was not followed up. The study which Vermeer devoted to the making of Mary and Martha , Diana and her Nymphs and the Supper at Emmaus amounted to a liberal education in composition, and in taste generally, and this education he was soon to put to use along sound Dutch lines.

It was probably chiefly because there was no livelihood at Delft in such work that he tried a new experiment, in the Procuress , dated This brilliantly coloured character study in half-lengths and in a curiously divided square suggests compositionally Caravaggio and his school, and even more strikingly, though the mood is wholly different, the comicalities of the Italianate Hollander, Van Laer, nicknamed "Il Bamboccio.

Except for the young courtesan, whose face is as pure as that of Mary of Bethany, the characterization is definite and masterly. The sensual young sport and the scheming old bawd are fully alive. But there is little sense of relation between the figures, and the social joys of the bordel are not even suggested. Think of it as a magnificent potboiler which happily failed to attract patronage.

Probably while he was engaged in these experiments he painted the first picture which the average art lover of today would recognize as his, the Milkmaid. It shows the cool splendour of his blue-gray luminosity, the ample figure is large and noble in its construction, the ordinary act of pouring out milk thoughtfully is invested with an almost sacramental solemnity. The woman's attitude seems immediately seen, even surprised, but worked out with severest reflection.

Such a feeling was hardly to recur in the art of painting until two centuries later Jean Francois Millet painted at Barbizon, and he never sought or captured Vermeer's "white magic," which first asserts its spell in this admirable picture. Perhaps because a kitchen does not offer, in furniture, pictures, etc. I feel the picture is rather the better for a simplicity which is of the essence, and it does not seem to me that Vermeer ever really surpassed the Milkmaid.

The pictures which we shall next consider were probably all painted between and , Vermeer's twenty-fourth to thirty-fourth year. In them he capitalized the heavy but benign burden of an expensive home and a rapidly growing family. These little pictures are generally built around the figure of a woman working or at leisure in a room of a fastidiously appointed and beautifully kept house.

The light usually falls gently in from a casement at the left, stealing over cool, gray walls, caressing pewter or latten jugs, drawing out the deep hues from an oriental rug which serves as a tablecloth, glinting on the carving of massive chairs or picture frames, hinting at the geographical pattern in a hanging map, finally, and most important, bringing out the rounded forms of the woman with an authority as convincing as it is gentle.

This handling of the light, without strong contrasts, as a factor in construction is the distinguishing technical merit of Vermeer's painting, and it allies him with the greatest figure painters of all times. Of these pictures with one woman as focus, the Pearl Necklace , is the most exquisitely painted - in the perfection of its enamel and its iridescences of pale yellow and blue. The posture, the hands raising the bight of the necklace, is, while apparently casual, really very studied, as expressing a modest pride in possession.

Everything seems to emanate from the pearls and the pearl-like delicacy of the face of their wearer. All the painting is of the most exquisite sort. More meditatively conceived, and possibly more rich in variety of surface, if less precious as colour, are two pictures at Amsterdam and Dresden , on the theme of a woman standing quietly as she reads a letter.

Possibly a shade the finer is the picture at Amsterdam, for the largeness of the construction of the figure and the close, fretlike pattern of the map and the rectangles made by it and the chair backs. It also has an attractive homeliness which the more aristocratic version at Dresden lacks. Another gem among these interiors with a housewife is the superb little Vermeer which is variously called a Woman at a Casement , or with a Jug.

The woman is merely letting in the morning air as she tidies up, but she tidies up with a gesture as grand as that of a sibyl by Michelangelo. The grandeur is of the essence, and not stylistically imputed. Vermeer had seen and remembered precisely such an attitude as the daily ritual which made his home a delight was being accomplished. He records it with gratitude and affection, enhances it by every compositional device which might express its dignity and convey the character of the place.

All his perfections in balance and manipulation of light-creating and form-giving colour are so quietly present in this picture that it is easy to overlook them. For concentrated elegance in feeling and tone, the little Girl making Lace , has no rival. And again it is not any elegance arbitrarily imposed upon the efficient girl at her feminine task - the elegance is in the act itself, in the busy, skillful hands going carefully about a routine act. Vermeer does not in the ordinary sense idealize, and never sentimentalizes these household offices, rather he discovers and reveals them in a beauty which is generally obscured by use and wont.

In his few formal portraits, Vermeer follows discreetly the example of Rembrandt in his first objective manner, and sensibly waives the studied, decorative effect of his genre pictures. Such work did not deeply engage his imagination, and in this phase he is merely one of a dozen superior Dutch portraitists of the moment. Exception must be made for the Head of a Girl.

With its extraordinary reality, it is rather a character study than a portrait in the formal sense. Simply as construction of form in tints which have the value of light it is perhaps one of a dozen finest pictures in the world.

And here it may be noted that the forms of a fine painter are never bulges, are never thrust out towards the eye, have no relation to the forms of sculpture. They merely exist in a pictorial world which the eye is invited to enter and explore. It explores and ascertains the presence of the forms and their validity.

Such is the way of Rembrandt, Hals, Velazquez , and technically Vermeer is of their great company. Aside from the technical perfection of this Head of a Girl , is its richness of characterization - its suggestion of physical and moral vitality, of human worth and amiability.

The study of this little picture, which holds Vermeer's genius in epitome, should show that human imponderables of admiration and sympathy are quite as important in it as its accuracy of observation and its perfection in technical resourcefulness.

A few very fine compositions with two figures probably fall within this marvellous decade. The Music Master and his Pupil , is the most remarkable. The two figures, the girl at the spinet seen from behind, are placed deep in the picture and subordinated, as repeats of such round forms as the cello on the floor and the stoneware vase on the table. While the figures are very necessary, and the relation of master to pupil well realized, the picture has really become portraiture of a room.

The general, severe pattern of varied quadrilaterals is varied by the heavy oriental rug which falls heavily and irregularly from the table and spreads out over the floor. Absolutely indispensable is the little gray jug on the table which brings to a sort of focus the few round elements in a composition generally rectangular.

Think the jug away, or cover it with a finger in a reproduction, and the whole picture grows dull. Except for the Love Letter , where the compositional complications are perhaps too overt and sophisticated, this is the most complicated of all the Vermeers, and without loss of naturalness of effect.

His outdoor picture, the View of Delft relies on the contrast of the dull red of the tiled roofs with a prevailing gray which here and there flowers into deep blue. Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives.

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