My talk today asks how
artistic rivalry,
the moral imperative
it entailed, the intimacy is
engendered,
and the kind
of comparative thinking it
fostered help us to understand
Vermeer's Woman Standing
at a Virginal and Woman Seated
at a Virginal.
Both belong to the National
Gallery in London.
The painting on the right
is on view in the second room
of the exhibition.
In the mid-17th century Dutch
Republic, a network
of sophisticated artists,
collectors, and dealers
at the highest end of the art
market created a culture
of heightened competition.
Artists distinguished themselves
and fashioned their images
in competition with each other,
all the while forging
artistic community.
Connoisseurs, known
as liefhebbers or art lovers,
vied with each other
in filling their homes,
such as these,
with costly pictures that were
ultimately
and myriad ways about civility.
The paintings in the exhibition
were made to hang in houses, not
museums.
This sanctioned rivalry
with part of the cultivation
of virtu, or excellence,
in a culture that gave
moral weight to skill,
discernment, expertise,
and mutual trust.
Close engagement
over artistic matters
arguably heightened trust
and intimacy
among and between the painters
and the liefhebbers and even
the art dealers.
For all of these players,
comparative viewing heightened
intimacy with the work of art.
Now, for many years,
there has been a debate as to
whether or not Vermeer
conceived these two paintings
as a pair intended to hang
together.
This lecture argues that they
are pendants, that is a pair,
and it explores how they would
have been viewed as
such in a culture
of competitive thinking
and comparative viewing.
Before I address them,
I will consider more broadly why
so many Dutch painters were
in effect looking
over each other's shoulders
and trying to outdo one another.
Vermeer and the masters
of genre painting, inspiration
and rivalry, which started
at the Louver and then
moved to Dublin.
And here is a viewer
in the National Gallery
of Ireland.
You've got to love
her green hair.
The exhibition focuses
on high life genre paintings.
Meaning scenes of the daily life
of the manners and customs,
real and aspirational,
of the urban upper class,
rendered in fine styles
with costly pigments.
These are paintings
of the elite, for the elite,
and by the very best artists.
The exhibition allows us
to scrutinize pictures side
by side, or nearby
in the same gallery,
in ways that were
impossible for 17th century
viewers.
Yet the argument
of the exhibition
is that in Vermeer's time
artists and art lovers were
indeed comparing such works,
even if they couldn't see them
side by side.
On the left is the suitor's
visit of about 1658
by Gerard ter Borch,
one of the most
inventive and influential
of the high life genre painters.
On the right is Gabriel Metsu's
Man Visiting a Woman Washing
her Hands of the mid 1660s.
These bring out
a significant contribution
of the exhibition, which
is to demonstrate
that on occasion Dutch painters
were looking
at each other's works,
appropriating figures
and compositions,
and pointedly rivaling
each other.
Here we can see that Metsu has
made a display of creating
his own version of ter Borch's
subject matter, composition,
and elegant domestic setting
with its elaborate chimneypiece.
Most obviously, Metsu has lifted
ter Borch's protagonists.
The young woman who wears
a red jacket and ter Borch's
signature white satin skirt,
and the suitor at the door.
But he has reversed their roles.
Whereas ter Borch's suitor is
deferential in the face
of a confident woman,
Metsu has straightened up
the man while giving
the demure young woman an air
of extreme modesty.
The man in the background,
looking somewhat askance in ter
Borch's scene becomes the maid
with the knowing glance
in Metsu's.
The oddity of a woman washing
her hands as she receives
a visitor just might be
explained maybe
as a clever ripostes
to ter Borch.
You're going to find this
hard to believe, and scholars
disagree about this,
but as refined as ter Borch's
look, they appear to be
communicating
with suggestive hand signals.
The man makes a circle
with his fingers.
The woman sticks out a finger
between her--
I think it's her thumb
between her fingers.
Risque touches such as this
are typical of Dutch genre
painting of the period,
although not so common
in ter Borch.
But perhaps the hand-washing
is Metsu's response.
The exhibition is thematic
because these painters tended
to repeat the same subjects,
many of which
refer to feminine virtue.
In these seemingly naturalistic
scenes, the basin and pitcher
evoke purity.
And by the way, the Vermeer
on the right
is not in the exhibition.
You're just going to have to go
to New York to see it.
The popular theme
of the doctor's visit typically
entails a pis-kijker, that is,
a doctor or a quack
examining a flask of urine
as he tends to a sick woman.
Here, details that are Dou
invention on the left,
such as the weeping woman,
indicate that van Mieris,
his pupil, on the right,
was pointedly redoing
his master's picture.
These four pictures
of young women making lace,
a domestic handicraft that was
associated with feminine virtue,
show a progression of increased
elegance over a short span
of time.
They are by artists from four
different towns.
Nicolaes Maes painted
in Dordrecht in Amsterdam.
Caspar Netscher studdied
with ter Borch in Deventer
and worked in the Hague.
Dou worked in Leiden,
and Vermeer in Delft.
Vermeer's is the only one
of these paintings and only one
of this theme to feature
a special, presumably expensive,
lace making table.
And in looking at these closely,
we see the contrasting signature
styles of Dou and Vermeer.
Operating within such
a narrow range of subject matter
put a premium on distinction
and discernment.
As painters distinguished
themselves
through their individual styles
and their inventive variations
on traditional themes,
Leifhabbers, or connoisseurs,
developed their connoisseurial
skills and powers
of discernment.
As I said, these pictures were
for the elite, which
in the Dutch Republic
of the 17th century
meant largely
for the powerful urban merchant
and professional governing
class.
And to a lesser extent,
for the aristocracy
and the stadtholder, the nominal
ruler.
However, here you see two
of the period's most expensive
pictures, both of which
went to foreign collectors.
Dou's Young Mother, which sold
for an astounding 4,000
guilders,
was part of the Dutch gift
to Charles II of England.
Frans van Mieris sold The Cloth
Shop on the right for 2,000
guilders to Archduke Leopold
Wilhelm of Austria.
The Dutch Republic
and its painters had flourished
in the first half
of the 17th century.
But by around 1660, the country
was entering a period
of economic decline
and the market for paintings
was pretty saturated.
The mid-level painters who
worked for the open market
selling ready
made pictures at fairs,
by auction, or in lotteries
were increasingly in trouble.
To succeed,
it helped if a painter was
working at the highest end
of the market.
Dou, Van Mieris and Vermeer
each had a patron or more
than one patron who brought--
who bought a significant number
of their works.
For example,
for an annual stipend,
Van Mieris
gave the Leiden physician
and professor of medicine
Franciscus De La Boe Sylvius
the right of first refusal.
In other words, the clientele
for these pictures
was remarkably sophisticated.
For them, viewing was
a comparative process.
Frans Van Mieris' visitor
in a painters studio
captures elite practice in that
it shows an art lover closely
scrutinizing a painting
on the artist's easel.
This is a picture
about connoisseurship.
The knowledge
necessary for the artist
operating at this level
is conveyed by the globe,
sculpture,
and musical instruments.
In this context,
Van Mieris' enigmatic cloth
shop, a very unusual subject,
becomes a painting
about the discernment of beauty
of the young woman and quality
of the cloth.
To the knowledgeable viewer,
the profusion of fabrics
would evoke the notion
that because of its difficulty,
rendering drapery was a test
of the painters skill.
The artists studio also speaks
to a culture of visiting
studios.
From a handful of reports
and diaries and other documents,
we know that liefhebbers
traveled, often in pairs
or small groups,
from town to town to look
at paintings.
The Netherlands is a small place
and getting around
was pretty easy, even
in the 17th century.
On the right is a Harlem trek
shout, a public horse drawn
canal boat of the sort that
connected many
of the Dutch towns
by mid-century, and here it
is in the painting in full.
Initiated on November 1, 1657,
the barge service from Harlem
to Leiden left from Harlem ziel
port or Western gate and went
as far as [NON-ENGLISH], half
way, where passengers
transferred through the Leiden
barge.
The wealthy might have had
carriages or their own canal
boats.
So the extent to which painters
were looking at and drawing
inspiration
from each other's works
indicates that they were
traveling from town to town
to visit each other's studios
and the homes of collectors
and dealers.
In these two paintings,
we have an instance of travel
inspiring rivalry
and comparative thinking.
In the mid 1660s, Gerrit Dou
painted woman at the clavichord.
Vermeer must have seen Dou's
painting in Leiden about 15
miles away from Vermeer's home
of Delft, probably in 1665.
That year Dou's patron Johan De
Bye had rented rooms
on the main street in Leiden
in which to display
his collection of 27 paintings
by Dou.
This extraordinary event may
well have been the first ever
one man exhibition.
It was advertised
in the newspaper as open
to the public and with a request
to put money in the poor box.
About five years later, Vermeer
appropriated Dou's composition
of a young woman seated
at a keyboard instrument
in front of a window
in the corner of a room.
In each a viola de
gamba suggests that she waits
on an accompanist.
The inspiring power
of emulative imitation,
as Eric Jan Sluijter phrases it
in his essay
for the exhibition's
marvelous catalog,
is evident in Vermeer's response
to Dou.
In the past, we would have
discussed the relation
between these two paintings
in terms of influence,
implying a passive reception
on the part of Vermeer.
Now, we know that the concept
and practice of emulation,
meaning imitation with the aim
of transforming and improving
upon an admired model,
was deeply ingrained
in the minds
of ambitious artists
and discerning viewers.
Rivalry drove artistic invention
and innovation.
It was a recurring topic
in the periods writing
about art.
Some painter-writers--
and painters did some writing--
cautioned against borrowing,
but the more sophisticated
theorists championed rivalry,
at least for the best painters.
In the hands
of a mediocre painter, borrowing
could lead just too
weak imitations.
In the words of Franciscus
Junius, in the painting
of the ancients of 1638,
the artists who surpass
all others
are those who diligently pursue
the old art with a new argument,
thus, adroitly bestowing
their paintings
with the pleasurable enjoyment
of dissimilar similarity.
In the words
of the Dutch painter Samuel van
Hoogstraten, in the Introduction
to the Academy of Painting
of 1678, it has always been
a passion
for rivalrous competition
which has brought forth so many
wonderful masters in art.
Until recently, paintings
such as these were regarded
as conventional, as based
in pictorial types
and artistic traditions.
And indeed, a young woman
playing a keyboard instrument
was a popular convention that
had roots in the 16th century,
and for the viewer of the time,
carried associations of love.
Yet, the term conventional
implies conservative, which
is hard to square with an art
that was so fundamentally new,
that engaged with a novel kind
of subject matter, daily life,
in strikingly original ways
and that, in its own time,
was regarded as modern.
What the painter-theorist Gerard
de Lairesse termed
the city-like or elegant-modern
manner was displacing
the antique by which he meant
biblical and mythological
themes.
Yet, it nonetheless carried
the moral weight
of historical paintings,
because it dealt with matters
of virtue, decorum,
and in Lairesse's words,
everything that
is beautiful and perfect.
In the 17th century,
as in the Renaissance,
productive exchange
and competition were deemed
essential for the advancement
of art
and of the elevated artist.
Such rivalry had
a moral imperative.
As for athletes,
a competitive drive was thought
to inspire individual artists
to do their best to achieve
virtue or excellence
in their works
and in their lives.
Sammy van Hoogstraten advised,
do not hesitate, oh pupils,
to look at one another's art
with, dare I say, envious eyes,
yet without offending
against the proprieties
of an irreproachable life.
Van Hoogstraten invoked the peak
of the mountain of virtue
that was the painter's goal when
he wrote that, noble envy will
impel good minds to the top.
But van Hoogstraten reminds us
that rivalry is/was
a double-edged sword.
Its dark side is envy,
the great metaphorical enemy
of the art of painting.
In Hendrick Goltzius' Mercury,
envy is personified by a hag
sticking out her tongue
and holding aloft a magpie,
the thieving bird attracted
to shiny objects.
Mercury is part
of a large, nearly life-size,
allegorical triptych showing
paintings' protectors, which
the theoretically-minded
Goltzius painted for a Harlem
lawyer and city administrator.
The artist, in the guise
of Mercury, god of commerce
and eloquence, conquers envy
through his persuasive,
competitive spirit.
Hercules, in the center
as virtue, has defeated Cacus,
the cattle thief.
Minerva, at right, is wisdom who
overcomes ignorance represented
by King Midas.
Whereas sanctioned virtuous
rivalry inspires invention
and innovation,
unchecked rivalry, or envy,
leads to bad studio behavior--
to cut throat jealousy,
thievery, slander, ignorance,
and fisticuffs,
to Michelangelo's broken nose.
Envy was regarded as detrimental
to artistic creation,
because it distorts judgment
and prevents one
from appreciating the art
of others.
In blinds the artist to virtue.
Hoogstraten captured the power
of virtuous rivalry
when he advised, let ambition
prevent you from sleeping,
for virtue also has a way
of rousing the passions
to zealousness in overtaking
the front runner.
It is no heresy
to outlimb Apelles.
Hoogstraten refers to Apelles,
the most famous of the painters
from ancient Greece,
because artistic rivalry had
an illustrious heritage.
Dutch painters would have known
of the rivalries
of the Renaissance masters
via the biographies
by Giorgio Vasari and Karel van
Mander,
and
if the ancient Greek painters,
as recounted by Pliny the Elder,
they prized above all the story
of how Parrhasius got the better
of Zeuxis.
As the painter Philips Angel
told it in his praise of the art
of painting of 1642,
Zeuxis lured the birds out
of the sky with his painted
fruit.
His imitation of grapes being so
natural that the birds flying
down to them were deceived.
And here are the birds flying
down to Zeuxis' grapes.
But, Philips Angel continues,
Parrhasius who excelled him
as the sun outdoes the moon
in radiance and brightness,
deceived him with a painted
curtain.
Which Zeuxis tried to remove
in order to see Parrhasius' art,
not known
that he was already seeing it,
and he a painter himself.
In Pliny's telling,
Zeuxis conceded, I have deceived
the birds, but Parrhasius has
deceived Zeuxis.
Curtains in Dutch paintings
often allude to the tale
of the competing illusionisms
of Zeuxis and Parrhasius.
Here, we see
a friendly collaborative rivalry
at work in a single painting
about contrasting realisms
by Adriaer van der Spelt
and Frans van Mieris.
Van der Spelt makes a painting,
paints the flowers
to look as if they are
a painting.
Whereas, van Mieris paints
a trompe-l'oeil curtain and rod
that is meant to practically
fool you.
In this self-portrait,
Gerrit Dou, who was called
in his time
the Dutch Parrhasius,
evoked the tale of Zeuxis
and Parrhasius
by juxtaposing a bird cage
and grapes with a curtain.
Too, Dou demonstrates his talent
for illusionism and alludes
to the long-standing rivalry
between painting and sculpture
with his near
trompe-l'oeil painted niche
and relief sculpture below his
almost illusionistic-- the way
his arm comes out at you.
Likewise, in the young woman
at the clavichord, the bird cage
above her head, the curtain,
and the grape vine in the lower
right corner make explicit
the naturalism
of the young woman's appeal
to the viewer.
And highlight the signature fine
style, miniaturized facture,
and curious looseness that cast
Dou as nature's rival.
However illustrious it's roots,
rivalry could play out
in the most mundane of ways.
In his sleeping dog, Gerrit Dou
pointedly re-did Rembrandt's
rough sketch-like etching
in his inimitable, fine manner,
and he embellishes Rembrandt's
print by adding the basket, jug,
bundle of twigs,
and wooden shoes.
Even here, Dou distinguishes
his copiousness from Rembrandt's
plainer style.
Dou, who was so
important to the painters
featured in this exhibition,
was Rembrandt's first pupil.
I bring in Rembrandt because he
was trained in and imparted
to his students
an ethos of virtuous rivalry
and a climate of heightened
competition.
In which artists were encouraged
to measure themselves
against past masters,
outperform their teachers,
and productively vie
with their contemporaries.
These paintings
of an Old Testament theme,
by Rembrandt's teacher,
Pieter Lastman, on the left
and Rembrandt on the right,
exemplify the notion
that the excellent artist
surpasses his master
through imitation and emulation.
Specifically, Rembrandt has
pointedly borrowed Lastman
donkey, mule, while rethinking
the composition to improve it,
to focus the narrative.
Encouraging a student to outdo
his master was a way to foster
stylistic independence at a time
when artists needed
to distinguish themselves
in order to succeed.
Lastman appears to have
encouraged Rembrandt to develop
his own style, just as Rembrandt
appears to have done
with his students, most of whom
departed
from their Rembrandt-esque
manners
almost immediately upon setting
out on their own.
And in turn, Rembrandt's pupil,
Samuel van Hoogstraten,
recommended that students
develop their own styles.
The competitive spirit
of Lastman studio
was intensified
in the young Rembrandt's
extraordinary working
relationship
with the slightly younger,
but more precocious,
Jan Lievens, who had also
studied with Lastman.
For about six years,
Rembrandt and Lievens worked
unusually closely, repeatedly
painting or drawing
the same subjects.
The five senses, at the top,
shows that Lievens was initially
the more accomplished painter.
Rembrandt's earliest
known works, the for wonderfully
expressive but rather
crude panels below,
reprise Lievens' allegory
by giving the senses
the innovative theme
of quasi-medicinal cures.
Sight, at left, is the spectacle
seller.
Smell is smelling salts.
Touch is the stone operation,
a remedy for madness.
And hearing is music, a balm
for the soul
and cure for melancholy.
Their paintings of the raising
of Lazarus of a few years
later demonstrate how
collaboration inspired
artistic breakthrough.
Rembrandt and Lievens' studio
ethos
of self-imposed competition
produced one
of the great rivalries
in the history of art.
And if you're
interested in reading
about artistic rivalries,
I recommend Rona Goffen's
Renaissance Rivals, which will
tell you all about Michelangelo
and Raphael
and Sebastian Smee's The Art
of Rivalry about rivalries
between Francis Bacon
and Lucian Freud, Degas
and Manet, Matisse and Picasso,
and Jackson Pollock and Willem
de Kooning.
Presumably, Rembrandt's
and Lievens' extraordinarily
close working relationship
had at its heart
a great friendship.
The humanist notion
of friendship
carried connotations of virtue,
stemmed from Cicero
and Aristotle, and was expressed
and in Rasmussen's adages,
friendship is equality,
and a friend is a second self.
We can only imagine though
the dynamic of working
side-by-side,
the excitement of competing
neck-and-neck,
the intimacy and pain of being
open to criticism
and comparison.
But we can see
the transformative impact
of rivalry
as Rembrandt and Lievens came
into their own,
or I think I should say,
as Rembrandt surpassed Lievens.
The mellow dramatic arms
of Lazarus--
have you spotted them?
Here is Lazarus, his arms
sticking up from the tomb--
to me, exemplify Lievens'
increasing tendency
to over-dramatize and cut
corners.
Who knows whether it was
the intensity of their rivalry
that, by 1631, led both to leave
Leiden
and go their separate ways.
We do know, however, that 25
years later, these two paintings
hung together in Rembrandt's
house.
One of their last painted
rivalries took the form
of an organized, sanctioned
competition.
Rembrandt and Lievens'
strikingly similar paintings
of Christ on the cross,
which emulate a model by Peter
Paul Rubens,
suggest that Constantine Huygens
orchestrated for the two
to compete for a commission
for the Stadtholder.
This is all getting too far
into Rembrandt and Lievens,
but a little bit more
of Rembrandt.
Gerrit Dou who, in 1628, at age
14, signed on as Rembrandt's
first pupil,
grew up in this climate
of intense rivalry.
Near the end
of his apprenticeship,
Dou boldly subverted Rembrandt's
artist in his studio
to create a contrasting notion
of the painter.
Rembrandt, on the left,
crafted the studio
as a spare and solitary place,
and as the sight of inspiration,
signaled by the light that
floods in and hits the front
of the panel on his easel.
Dou's light struck easel is
a nod to Rembrandt's.
But otherwise, Dou made
his picture bigger,
he brought the painter
to the fore, and he added
emblematic accouterments
of the ideal painter.
Books and classical sculpture
signal his knowledge,
the lute inspires, a globe
evokes his universality.
In contrast to Rembrandt's
artist alone in his studio,
Dou's painter inhabits a place
of intellectual and artistic
discourse,
suitable for receiving
appreciative liefhebbers.
Dou and Rembrandt continued
to inspire each other.
With his self-portrait of 1647
on the right, Dou made a display
of rethinking his master's
self-portrait of 1640, which
is a tremendously famous
self-portrait at the time.
In Dou's, the sculpture
of Hercules overcoming Cacus
stands for virtue's triumph
over envy.
Dou claims noble envy, the kind
of virtuous rivalry
that spurred
creative competition
among friends.
Dou and Rembrandt each achieved
the height of fame,
with Rembrandt becoming
the master of the rough style,
and Dou becoming the master
of the fine manner.
Rivalry and emulation encouraged
artistic community.
Through self-portraits,
Rembrandt's pupils--
Dou, Govert Flinck,
and Ferdinand Bol among others--
paid homage to their master
by producing
their own original variations
on Rembrandt's 1640
self-portrait.
So with Rembrandt and Lievens,
we saw an instance
of youthful extreme rivalry.
Rembrandt and Dou began
as master and pupil
and for decades engaged
with each other on occasion.
In the case of Vermeer,
we know nothing
about his education,
and we must rely largely
on his works to understand
his exchange
with other painters,
such as Dou.
Vermeer has been regarded as one
of the most original
and independent of the high life
genre painters, and indeed he
is.
Yet the exhibition reveals him
to be interested in,
and dependent on,
the art of his contemporaries.
To understand his originality,
we need to see his works,
in 17th century terms,
as aiming
for dissimilar similarity.
Woman standing and a woman
seated at a virginal, which date
from the early 1670s,
show how a competitive spirit
inspired late-career creativity.
Although it has often been
proposed that Vermeer painted
these as pendants, meant to hang
together, the counter arguments
have prevailed.
These are, they're
two similar subject matter.
They're differing provenances,
but going only back
to the 18th century,
and they're very slightly
different sizes, really
only within what we would call
the margin of error.
And they're supposedly having
been painted a couple of years
apart, although they are
undated.
Typically, they hang, and have
for years hung,
in separate rooms
at the National Gallery
in London.
Technical analysis, fairly
recent, specifically computer
analysis of the canvas weave
and that this--
I won't explain it here,
because that would take a little
too long.
You're going to have to trust me
that the image on the right
maps the average distances
between the warp threads.
And what it indicates
is that the canvases are
from the same bolt of cloth.
They're able to figure this out,
which is totally amazing.
Which increases the likelihood--
it by no means prove it--
but increases the likelihood
that Vermeer painted these two
paintings at the same time,
as does the fact that they were
painted on canvases prepared
with the same grounds.
The iconographic argument-- that
is the argument based on subject
matter--
that they form a pair,
put forward in the 1970s
by the late Christine Armstrong,
is that they evoke contrasting
notions of love.
Virtuous love,
a domestic sized version
of sacred love,
is embodied in the woman
standing upright
in a room washed with light.
The picture within the picture
is based on this emblem
from Otto van Veen's
popular Amorum Emblemata,
or Love Emblems.
And it is captioned,
perfect love is for one person
only, and it shows a cupid
holding up a card in the print
with a one on it.
This image of virtuous love
is contrasted with profane
or illicit love, embodied
in the seated woman, who wears
darker clothes in a dimly
lit room with drawn shades.
On the wall hangs Dirck van
Baburen's Procuress, a lusty
painting about prostitution.
The man offers a coin
to the young woman.
This painting belonged
to Vermeer's mother-in-law,
and note that Vermeer has picked
up the blue
and white from the prostitutes
dress.
Armstrong argued
that the contrasting two
mountain landscapes in the woman
standing and the flat landscape
and the woman seated
reinforce this contrast
of innocence versus experience
by invoking the high road
to virtue and the low road
to vice.
This distinction
between high road and low
derives from the imagery
of the crossroads, where
Hercules must choose
between sacred love,
at left, who points
to the mountain of virtue
and profane love,
the scantily clothed voluptuous
who lures him
to the path of vice.
Annibale Carracci's
famous painting was circulating
in print by this time, but there
many other images.
Vermeer's response to Dou's
painting demonstrates how
emulative imitation,
or dissimilar similarity,
makes the conventional original.
Dou had already innovated
within the convention
by featuring the young woman
alone, often there was a music
teacher or people making music
with her, and looking directly
out at us, which was quite
unusual.
Vermeer, in turn,
at once displayed
his appreciation of Dou's
address to the viewer
and improved upon it by closing
in on the woman to heighten
our intimacy with the picture.
Vermeer also pushes the viola da
gamba out towards us, making
the pictures invitation
to the viewer accompanyist more
emphatic.
Finally, Vermeer makes it
a darker evening scene.
Vermeer's handling of paint
and rendering the gilt frame,
clothes, and instruments
seems calculated to contrast
with Dou's fine manner.
As if Vermeer is defining
his optical style
and broadening it
some in opposition to Dou's
descriptive illusionism.
Vermeer also moderates Dou's
pleasing decorative richness
which Philips Angel, for whom
Dou is the exemplary painter,
recommended as a way
for the painter
to make money and attract
attention.
And Dou, by the way, charged
by the hour,
an old-fashioned way-- well,
a number of artists
did-- but it was still
an old-fashioned way of pricing,
but one that emphasized
the time-consuming detail
for which Dou was famed.
Reportedly, he painted
with a brush with a single hair
and took three days to paint
a single broom.
Vermeer rejects Dou's painting
of lots of stuff for painting
light, and he rejects Dou's
artificiality for naturalness.
In these pictures of women
adorning themselves
before a mirror,
we see that contrast
of Vermeer's plain elegance
and Dou's copiousness
and decorative richness.
Angel rightly predicted
these features would ensure
that Dou's pictures would fetch
the highest prices
and appeal to the most
refined buyers.
Is it possible that Dou was
responding to Vermeer's painting
here?
Vermeer's woman is in profile.
She looks in a mirror--
we just glimpse it's shimmer
in the frame
between the windows--
as she ties the ribbons
of her necklace.
Dou ingeniously shows his woman
in profile with her hands
in front of her
and in full face,
as he demonstrates that he can
imitate both real flesh
and blood and the visage
as
distorted by the reflective
surface.
For the woman standing
at a virginal, Vermeer drew
on the duet by Frans van Mieris,
an influential painting that
must have been
available for many to view.
Vermeer enhances the focus
on the woman
by eliminating
the other figures.
The page becomes the cupid
on the wall.
He turns her around--
was he thinking of pairing her
with the seated woman--
So that the chair becomes
an invitation to an admirer.
He also improves upon van
Mieris' use of the geometry
of the picture frame,
around the painting hanging
on the wall,
to draw attention to her head.
And he provides a source
for the light that illuminates
the front of van Mieris' woman.
As Vermeer brightens the room,
he casts the woman's face
in shadow
to emphasize her modesty.
If, as I'm arguing,
these were pendants,
then let's also consider how
rivalry affects
our understanding of how they
work together.
As a pair, they show Vermeer
emulating two masters,
or three if we include Baburen.
They also show Vermeer rivaling
himself, and they demand
comparison with each other.
Vermeer had already featured
Baburen's painting
in the concert.
So it's almost a decade later,
in the woman seated, that he
reprises the concert, in which
Baburen's Procuress serves as
a foil,
or a provocative comment,
on a seemingly chaste threesome
making music.
Rethinking
the music-making theme, Vermeer
zeros in on the young woman
at the keyboard who is no longer
so demure.
Again, he uses Baburen's
painting to inspire
comparative thinking,
or comparative viewing,
to help characterize
the young musician.
But also to leave us
uncertain as to what exactly
to draw from that comparison.
Two, I guess I would say,
more typical pairs of paintings
in the exhibition
present the viewer
with narratives
about correspondence.
In Gerard ter Borch's pendants,
an officer writes a letter
and a young woman
seals her response.
In Metsu's pair, the man writes
the letter that the woman then
reads, or Arthur has
a different argument about this,
because he's hung them
in the opposite way, whichever.
The Maid, pulling aside
the curtain,
enhances the narrative
with a bit of humor,
for she uncovers a picture
of a ship at sea
which suggests that she already
knows the letters contents.
Tell tale pictures of ships
in either calm or stormy seas
were standard features of love
letter imagery.
Vermeer, in contrast,
provides no narrative.
Instead, he issues a challenge
to compare.
Side-by-side, the two pictures
vie for our attention.
I'm told that they hang
in different rooms in London,
because the public looks
at the lighter, brighter picture
and ignores the other.
However, to the liefhebber,
attentive to painting style
and practice, they would have
presented a unique test
in discernment.
To those connoisseurs who
especially valued naturalism,
they would have demonstrated
Vermeer's prowess
in representing daylight
versus nightlight.
Nightlight which would expand
the notions of true
versus illicit love.
The more schematic handling
of the young woman seated
has been interpreted as a couple
of years stylistic difference.
Yet, this is Vermeer's
only dark, maybe night scene,
and differences between it
and the young woman standing
seem calculated to bring out
the contrast
between bright, natural light
and low-level, artificial light.
The day-lit frame sparkles
brightly,
whereas the artificially-lit
frame glows.
Its rhythmic dashes of paint
creating the effect
of flickering candlelight.
Baburen's Procuress suggests
that Vermeer aim to rival
Carravaggesque lighting.
Likewise, Vermeer has varied
his painting of their clothes.
In daylight, the satin skirt
is crisp and shiny.
The silver, gray trim
on the woman's sleeves
sparkles with highlights.
These are the circles
of confusion ascribed to viewing
through a camera obscura which
Vermeer transformed
into a signature
stylistic feature.
In dimmer light,
the silvery trim has fewer dots
of light, and the blue overskirt
appears more softly sensuous.
Viewers in the
know would have been especially
attentive to the pictures'
contrasting themes and the two
lovely,
refined young women who vie
for our attention.
The upright, modest, young woman
standing looks thoughtful,
and it's amazing what a bit
of shadow can do.
In contrast, the woman seated,
with her direct gaze,
seems more open and engaged,
suggesting that perhaps she's
not so modest.
And by no means do I think we're
meant to liken her to Baburen's
buxom prostitute,
but then again, I don't think
she's the absolute opposite
of that prostitute.
As a pair, Vermeer's paintings
present the 17th century viewer
and us with a choice
between the high road
and the low.
They are not so much didactic
as efficacious, immediate and
intimate.
Their effect is to subtly
instill manners, civility,
and ethical human behavior
by gently demanding that we ask,
am I going to behave moderately
or immodestly?
Am I going to fall
for the allure
of nocturnal desire?
Rivalry engendered
the dissimilar similarity
of Vermeer's extraordinarily
intimate London paintings.
Whether sold together or not,
they must have been developed
comparatively in Vermeer's mind
and studio.
For only as a vying pair do they
set each other off and make
each other better, and only
as a pair do they prompt such
a profound meditation
on light and dark, innocence
and experience, virtue and vice.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
