So good to have you here, I'm Ren Wechsler. I'm the director of the New York conceived or the humanities and
Along with the Humanities initiative. We are here at NYU. We are very very happy to have you here
My general rule over the last 12 years going back to
Some of you may even remember the the David Hockney
symposium
Which he was arguing that all sorts of old masters used use all sorts of optical devices
Which was a fairly controversial theory and
We did three days on that one. And this kind of is the bookend of that but
my general rule is always that we try to find the third rail of any possible discipline and then
Grab it and grab as many other people as we can and see what happens. And so that's gonna be this kind of date
I think
first of all, please turn off your
your cell phones and
Secondly
What I think I'm announced now and I'll announce it several times is outside this is free and
Outside we have an independent bookseller. Those are very rare species and
You are to go outside and buy books during the breaks because that is how we keep culture going in this country
That's all I'll say about that. Okay quickly about how this is going to go
a
Few years ago. I read this book of Ben Ben stocks
Which I thought was was. Yeah, it's right there. Yeah, let's show it to everybody
For sale outside by doing dependent books teller anyway
And I thought it was really interesting and I was very eager to see what people were saying about it and I was just stunned
To see it had been out for a few years already. It had been out and nobody was saying anything about it and
that continued to be the case which bewildered me and
I
mean, I think I think you'll agree when you hear the theory that it's a very very interesting theory no matter what I'm and I'm
willing to say that I myself am agnostic on whether it's it's
True or not, but but the fact that it's not being talked about I thought was interesting
It was even more interesting when I began to organize this this
Event today that almost all the Vermeer people the big people that you know about Walter lead
Fit Alana Alpers or if they're Wheelock and so forth don't want to be part of this discussion
For reason that we can talk about and basically more or less dismiss it the theory out of hand
Which I also thought was interesting
As a response and it's not that different from other sorts of things that I've we've pimp on in the past
So anyway, my my way of dealing with this is to grab the third rail of this and to invite
All sorts of different types of people which we've done and you'll see will go through the mess today goes goes on
But I thought the way we would begin is to invite been
been stalked
To come and talk by the way, we're not going to give long introductions to people. They that's what the Flyers are for
You have their biographical introduction biographical information
But I thought we'd invite Ben to talk for an hour so to
Bring out the elements of his theory then he and I will have a conversation for a bit
I will in fact channel several of the people
I've mentioned who don't want to be here, but they would talk to me for some reason and
I'll ask some of their questions, but then we'll take a break then. We'll come back. It will have a group of art historians
art critics
in one panel
then another panel of artists then a panel of journalists because I think
parenthetically
This is a more general problem in academia how things get received or not received and how this sort of thing works
And then at the end of the day
Around 5:15 5:30
We will have Anthony Grafton who I've just described as the London whale you will swallow it all and add
Helped us make sense of what we've been through
Anyway, so without further ado. Mr. Abed been stocking
You Ren thanks everyone for coming
It's really a thrill probably
This is one of the big thrills of my life. So good morning and welcome. I
Want to start today?
The way
Ren
does I also want to thank the participants who are it's
Incredibly generous of them
Especially after what we heard people are don't want to come so the people who common from another discipline or put themselves
grab the third rail wonderful people who I
Want to start the way Ren does his classes with a poem. I've just been taking Ren's sitting in on Ren's class at NYU
He calls it the morning prayer in this case
It's the conclusion of a late poem by Robert Lowell epilogue
Which can serve as a succinct summary of Vermeer's art as well as our task here today pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
Stealing like the tide across a map to his girl solid with yearning
We are poor passing facts
Warned by that to give each figure in the photograph his living name
Now in this introduction I want to take you all on a tour a virtual tour of the Frick Collection
Museum which is going to extend out into a tour of the life work of Johannes Vermeer as well as his daughter whose name
graces this conference
so
Let's all take the subway up to the Frick
we go past the impressive lon facing the Central Park and
ends up the stairs and then we can wait in the interior Court until everyone arrives and
When you come in just around the corner at the bottom of the stairway which leads up to
Mr. Frisch's former bedroom where they have some you can I used to used to have some materials they are but I guess it's all
Been moved to the live
Once looked at some files there
You get to the bottom of the stairs and you get to what I call the Vermeer wall
And this is an old photograph. There's no
Photography allowed in the Frick and I wanted to stick with their policy
So the painting nearest to one to nearest to us
Vermeer soldier and laughing girl was clearly the one that Lowell referred to in his poem the
Sun's illumination stealing like a tide across the map
his phrase grace of accuracy
Succinctly distills Vermeer's inimitable synthesis. We observed details
The map its qualities as a physical object the elaborately and brilliantly colored costumes
The expressions and psychologies of the faces the laughing or smiling girl
solid with yearning
Are subtly mediated by poetic restraint?
dissolved lines and the principle of relative color
discovered by Vermeer a few years before Newton
All this is contained in the perfectly balanced composition stilled and timeless as if for eternity
the poet Lowell also claimed that our we were we are warned to give each figure in the photograph his living name and
I propose that Vermeer's models in this instance were his wife
Caterina bulbs and her brother
Willem with his back to us and you actually have
hopefully all
a handout
and we have a little
inside
I don't know what we'd call this and a buy log and supplementary material. And here we have these
Comparisons of details of faces in the painting. So this is what I'm pointing to you. There's a Frick soldier and laughing girl
Supposedly Catherine or possibly and this would be her her brother
Will willem and we'll hear more about the family obviously in due course
This is one of my two foundational theses that Vermeer used
His family as models for all of his paintings
Further refining a strategy of Rembrandt with whom he studied a few years earlier around 1650 for and whose paintings he knew well
that's for example of Bathsheba with
Rembrandt's wife or common-law wife as Bathsheba from 1650 for Vermeer would have seen that unlike Rembrandt probably the other
prodigal son painting within the studio unlike Rembrandt the mat or Vermeer painted only genre scenes that is scenes of everyday life and
What genre is is something that's were discussing today? I guess more specifically in his case. I
Propose the life of a painter whose art was the most central part of his life. Each of his paintings used family members as models
Whether in the rooms of his house or urban landscapes like his little Street
Previous authors have tentatively identified one or two of the figures of his scenes as family members including the late Yale
Economic historian John Monty us who discovered so much vital information about Vermeer's family
He proposed for example, Vermeer's milkmaid was based on the family made tonic and a ver pool
but no scholars address this issue aside from myself in a
Systematic way or its significance and the only published review of my book Vermeer's family secrets
dismissed the idea as absurd I
Now recognize it the way I presented my hypothesis as an obvious fact
Was less convincing so I'm partly to blame for what's called the thunderous silence. Not only about my book, but about Vermeer's family
So I stand before you chastened and ask you to reconsider the question. Can we give these figures they're living names?
Perhaps the most famous example is Vermeer's girl with a Pearl Earring which will itself come to the Frick this fall
So, I think it's in San Francisco right now
Tracy Chevalier in her best-selling novel of that name from 2000 later made into a film starring Scarlett Johansson
Identified the model as the assistant of Vermeer's family made in his own secret model
But that story is a fiction
Was she not instead Vermeer's eldest daughter maria?
We will return to this question
Right now we're still in front of the Vermeer wall of the frick museum
the second large painting in the middle mistress and maid
Has since been moved to the Great Hall at the end of the corridor, which is sometimes used as a dining room
It was in Frick's day and still today but mostly is a place for other large paintings there. You see it on the wall
The middle painting of the Vermeer wall has been changed many times
From it was van Gogh one point. Not sure it was a van Gogh to Kuro and right now it's a minder hub a mob
landscape with a mill
The far painting has always been Girl Interrupted, which is a sign to Vermeer
Now could Lowell have praised this pump painting in the same way
Where are the light filled interior the subtle details?
elaborate costumes brilliant colors compelling characters the grace of accuracy
In place of stillness and timelessness we are confronted as if interrupting her
and admittedly engaging even strikingly modern conception but entirely uncharacteristic of Vermeer one that likely
Likewise gave rise to a novel and then a film of the same name the source of Angelina Jolie's only Oscar
Scholars have sought to justify these problems as either a function of
Vermeer losing his courage or overzealous cleaning resulting in the ruin of her Vermeer
these mutually contradictory explanations make no sense to me and
Themselves lack would Lowell would call the grace of accuracy
Vermeer certainly had weaker periods and paintings, but never ones that violated his characteristic principles in this way and
Conversely a restorer had no reason to erase a Vermeer painting which does not account for what we're looking at
what is left over I mean, why is there this underneath nor can cleaning remove a perspective scheme or
three-dimensional bodies that can't transform elaborate costumes into simple plain cloths
With exaggerated surface folds or render sheet music completely flat without texture
I'm sorry that the the
Well, we that's one of the reasons where I've got so many media, I'm gonna talk about this and but we have for example
This painting right here. I'll put it up behind me
Can you see that or what I could just put it right in front here. It doesn't really matter
But here's a small version you have it here compared with soldier and laughing girls. So that's what we're talking about
And that's that's one of the reasons why you see slides
Artist stories. They're always saying. Oh if you could only see what's in the slide
I want you to we want you to look at these paintings and expose them to light
And
You can see that there's all of these problems when I'm talking about, but I don't think that those are very successful
convincing explanations that it was somehow over cleaned and
some more details
the painting of the cupid on the back wall, and i'm sorry about but I think one of the
Spirits of this third rail is we really don't mind taking many different
Forms of approach different media all of which are imperfect and but that's whatever it takes to look at the painting
We'll try to do and i'm sorry about the slides but one of the things that you see
Here and you can you really can't see it?
But and we have this this painting over here. That's where i've got them all here
but
the
She behind here
If I only had this one slide
Where is the the lady standing and a virginal she's up here somewhere, but she's hiding but you could see the cupid right there
It's very color beautiful color and you could see that the cupid here is kind of strangely gray tones
and also the body is rather awkward and
Lumpy and the hand is cut off by the top of the frame that just that's not something that you would get from over
Cleaning the picture
So I don't think it's it's really explaining it
correctly and this this is not the only coincidence which is there's also
beautiful color of the painting and Braunschweig is coming through but and even with these rough forms and you can see there's there's
repetitions of elements like this chair back appears here and
The woman is seated similarly to this one
and the man leaning over is the kind of combination of this man standing behind her with the
cloth in front of him and the other man who's leaning over so it looks like
It could be Vermeer or somebody else combining elements from a Vermeer painting
How are we are we to count for these problems? Oh
That's much much better I thank you
We should step back for a moment at this point and ask how we even know about Vermeer at all
The dawn of modern art history taya field Toure here are some details. You see that similar
Here I'm just showing you oh that's good you really can see that here's taya field Toure he discovered Vermeer
Changing his opinion from a bizarre artist in 1858 to an incomparable original an unknown genius in 1859
in relation of Ramires view of Delft and soon after dedicated his life to
Recovering the painters erver tour a new soldier and laughing girl
He spoke about his paintings Vermeer's paintings and terms comparable to the poet lowell
but roughly half of the paintings in his pioneering monograph from 1869 are now recognized as
mistakenly
Assigned to Vermeer and in the century and a half since this
1860s
Scholars have gradually narrowed down in a few cases added examples to constitute Vermeer's
Current more or less accepted of 36 odd paintings, but things have changed
Surprisingly little in the representation of Ramirez irva in modern man
a group monographs which of course reproduced paintings in color now and in some cases several at once and
There are also some more interesting examples
Provocative examples such as Ivan gustcles
Vermeer's wager which he might elucidate for us today
but most monographs on
Vermeer places works in implicit order one per page
But the manners never explained matters never explained in terms of a coherent work by work year by year chronological development
What's the relation among the paintings? How do they compare all together?
I'm showing you vincent desiderio x' wonderful painting cocaine a milk and honey land of art books
Which I want you all to imagine or books on Vermeer
Why no explicit chronology in these monographs
Well, first of all art history is a conservative field and it's still evolving to my knowledge
The task has never been performed for the erv of any historical painter
Certainly, not for Rembrandt or his best student and Vermeer's direct precursor Karl Fabricius as I've sought to do
And the traditional irva catalog resume and an old-fashioned French name that evokes the ear of touré reviews
individual paintings one after another
But the paintings aren't placed in
direct relation to each other and no explanation is offered for the artist gradual development a
Second problem is that art historians have increasingly abandoned traditional. Connoisseurship
Which was succinctly to something defined by the famous kind of sort of Italian artist Bern Bernard Berenson
Rachel Cohen may be able to tell us something more about him
He defined connoisseurship as the comparison of works of art with a view to determining their reciprocal relationships
Instead of visually comparing works
Which is what Barris ins did and for which photographic reproductions are crucial and make possible constructs
Undreamt of by Berenson scholars have increasingly come to rely on
Technical examination of the individual object objects called technical art history. I
Believe this shift in emphasis is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of data evidence and scientific method
issues to be discussed today by david poeppel
I believe we need to return to reciprocal relations and this this is the comparison that's in your handout fold-out
Third problem is there are economic cultural and institutional
investments at stake in all this and the frick museum
Vividly illustrates the problem. It's an exceptionally conservative
institution, which is perhaps
appropriately
so to preserve this kind of house and its treasures but obviously it doesn't lend itself to
profound
self-examination
And it's kind of fun that the third rail runs through one of the the the most
old-fashioned heart of New York in some way the most beautiful house
Fourth the task is genuinely difficult. I don't think the solution is easy easy or obvious
I've certainly spent a lot of time on it
So we come to my second foundational thesis along with the fact that Vermeer's family are
recognizable as models in his paintings
the other one is we have to put Vermeer's paintings in a logical and coherent order that reveals his gradual development and
the first and second theses are
Related since recognizing specific family members as models and the paintings helps us to arrange them
You can see for example, if it's a daughter. We see her relative ages and try to look at it. That way I
Also feel we have to go and back and forth between for example
Comparing two large slides, you can look at details or on a holdout and the idea of many
Paintings at once that's part of the idea. I mean if you take it seriously, let's have them out here
I'd I wouldn't have been able to do this without Jerry Davis another
Participant we barely got this here. Just getting him the ear. It's hard
So you could see it's a lot of trouble but it's important
All of these paintings the relative scale. These are the actual sizes of them and
You got to put them in some order now, this is rough
I can't put them in an order but I'm trying to do this is something I just barely got together
This
Yesterday or we were cutting them today and it's still pretty shabby, but it's I hope this is going to be a new
Way of looking at this which is it's on a kind of special paper
I
Can't remember a photo text. I thinks it's called but you can move it around
so I'm hoping this is gonna be a prototype maybe for a pop-up book where people can move the
Paintings around themselves because that's what this is about
Everybody should be able to look at this and if you see something in the order that doesn't make sense
We're going over this but you know you give rough dates
I'm separating them out again. Just to the very gist of this is let's put all the cards on the table
I read somewhere on somebody look google google text or whatever. It's called
I sought the Frick some one person who looked at my book man named Alan DeNiro and said
the whole premise of this book is a house of cards and
That was the only one so if you want to help me out go on the google book or whatever and give me give another
One sentence summary. I don't know whether we looked at it but I say let's put the cards on the table
Let's play with the cards that were dealt
These are the cards and the gist of it is I think some don't belong we can separate them out
That I think allows us to put the ones that are left over for Vermeer and order
I think it allows us to put the ones that don't fit in order. It allows us to relate the two of them
So we'll talk about that. But that's the idea here
I say to my students if you see something say something if you see something it looks like it's out of order
Obviously or less obviously let us know and especially the participants. I'm happy to move these things around
So that's it. We're trying to look at all of these things and use different modes
I'm showing you a scale model
Reproduction. That's the the old photograph of my I'm in my NYU apartment far from here in
2001 and I'm standing there for scale, but you can't really tell how tall I am
So I I included my pug mini who was old and sick
She was sitting on the pillow there and for the breakfast you got up and stood in front of Vermeer's only
Representation of his dog which is in the Diane and her companions now, you'll see Diana and Kirk companions is missing
I don't have some of the early big works. I don't know the view of dough. They're so big
it's very hard to move around and here for some reason the
Poured Brown pride painting which I don't it's called the girl with a wineglass
I prefer to call it the drinking lesson just to distinguish some of these paintings, but that one somehow didn't make it
So we're still blunder along but we've got a lot of stuff covered and and weirdly enough
There's only a couple months ago that I threw out these reproductions
I guess it's kind of a some metaphor for something because they were hanging around
I didn't think they were getting
yellowing nobody but that you have to make them all over again and what a wonderful opportunity to do that for all of you and
Especially thanks to Jerry Davis
This is one-fifth scale
So looking at all the paintings in this way. It is very easier to recognize seven disparate misfit paintings. This is the
Shot of my book from two pages where I have all of those up
Including Girl Interrupted that would be this one here
Which we must put aside in order to
Establish a logical coherent development in Vermeer and his soldier and laughing girl
which is up here I say goes in between its milkmaid and the next painting which I call the
Interrupted music they call it the glass of wine. I just find those titles only are confusing
Doesn't really matter. Those are mine. Not not the most important paintings
his gradual development was in fact
Remarkably consistent and self-conscious. He portrayed progressively ambitious scenes
There's the three I'm sorry milkmaid soldier laughing girl that painting in Berlin
You know starting with the figure in the corner of a room and two figures across the space he's reintroducing the floor, but he
He actually started out extremely
He reached a very high point relatively early on
I mean if you're saying that the milkmaid which I date earlier
That's one of the things the gist of this is that a lot of paintings end up getting moved earlier
You see that after these early history paintings. He really already gets an incredible technical master
He's almost basically unsurpassed in Western art and it's complicating things from there and goes through his own development
That's important to bear in mind when we're trying to look at the larger
development of Vermeer and try to understand what the relation of these paintings
The misfit paintings are also
Arranged in terms of a coherent progression and also in relation of Vermeer's works
we're going to come back to that and
Since these paintings as we saw in examples from the Girl Interrupted seem to be responding to works by Vermeer
Combining elements of his compositions using the same models
Interiors and objects the artist must have been his follower who had access
Actually someone in his home had access to those objects and rooms and so on
We know that Vermeer had no official students and he would have been required to
Register with the guild any official students. So the only possibility for a follower would have been one of his own children
That was a common practice. You didn't register your own children formally and among his children
Maria Vermeer, that's why I had was showing you this which is that this is not only the family but also
Helps you to understand characters in this life of Vermeer's
Maria was 16 to 20 years old in the last years of his life 16 71 75
Which is when we're talking about the paintings that that follower is responding to her from the end of Vermeer's life
She's the most likely candidate less likely is the second daughter Elizabeth who are going to talk about who is 13 to 17 at
That time and therefore less likely
So my two fundamental theses that Vermeer's family served as his model and as paintings must be arranged in a logical and coherent order
Stand on their own as an aspirational challenge to Vermeer studies in art history, generally
They are hypotheses offered in places where hypotheses are lacking. They are imperfect
Hypotheses and open to criticism and improvement
They also combine for third hypothesis that Vermeer's daughter was a painter who made 1/5 of the works currently assigned to him the titular
Theme of this conference and all of this is obviously relevant for the Girl Interrupted
Which likewise present us with figures who in Lowell's words demand their living names perhaps Maria is one
interrupted as Wren only recently suggested to me not by us but by her father
And the painting also deserves to be placed in a sequence that reveals its own
Development and aims a different kind of accuracy even a different kind of grace
But before we leave the museum, we should turn to that middle painting the last one from the Vermeer wall
Which was later displaced of the Great Hall
Mistress and maid clearly also lacks a light-filled interior
Which scholars have explained as unfinished but folds of brown of a brown curtain behind are discernible the composition also
Uncannily echoes Vermeer's much smaller girl writing a letter in washington d-c
You see here the yellow satin jacket with faux
Er mine trim the rumpled blue tablecloth and objects on the table. I'm sorry
Except that Vermeer's
Delicate and refined
Subtle treatment of details is replaced by a relatively crude exaggeration and surface plasticity with horse hard forms as
Evident in the glass ink wells here that look metallic. Here's a detail of the Frick painting. This is in Washington a
late painting by Vermeer, which gets increasingly dark and increasingly
soft and pastel like and I guess Ward's chardin like
The overly busy narrative of the maid receiving a letter while the mistress is
bringing a letter to the
mistress who's still writing a letter
seems to be a combination of elements from two of Vermeer's paintings the love letter where she's being brought up letter by the maid and
Mistress riding with a maid where she's writing a letter
More specifically in this case
The follower appears to have restaged a composition in the first example using the same objects
But elaborated in terms of the second and third compositions
narrative structure using different models
now the story is getting a little complicated for the confines of the Frick and
at stake
I think are two fundamentally different ways of looking at art as individual valuable and perhaps somewhat fetishize objects in
isolation in museums and as works originating as part of the artists creative process his or her
broader development personal histories and experience as
We leave the gallery we pass by
the polish writer
Which reminds us that the problems of this nature are not limited to Vermeer nor they solely
Monetary in nature as many of you probably know the Rembrandt research project is a team of sculls scholars seeking to reevaluate
Rembrandt's serve
Infamously rejected the polish writer back in 1984 and more recently
They've claimed instead that it was largely completed by an unknown student
The subject has also never been identified I've argued and I continue to make the case that Rembrandt and Rembrandt alone
Painted the composition at the height of his powers and the rider is not polish, but rather Hebrew or Jewish
He's a naturalistic portrait of the young biblical David before Jerusalem based on a contemporary Jewish model
But this is a topic outside the scope of this conference, but let it be said not all that
I not only question the Frick's masterpieces. I also defend them if need be even against the museum itself
Now normally we would walk over to the Metropolitan Museum which is often open later
You can grab a hot dog on the way and it contains ramires involving some of the same issues
But as it turns out the Dutch galleries are closed right now
It's the only time I remember except after nine-one-one that you couldn't see a Rembrandt or Vermeer and the Met
so good thing that we're talking about them here and I propose instead that we take the
Subway back down to the Kant or film Center
And watch a film that I made to be shown in Florence at Ren's request
It's a it's a rough film and one that reflects my former
Irritatingly dogmatic self certain attitude towards my hypothesis
I hope you'll forgive me. But I do think I hope that it presents the some of the different threads of this
argument in
accessible form
Everyone loves Vermeer's paintings with good reason we can characterize his achievement in terms of essential qualities
Extraordinary subtlety of intense light caresses walls objects and faces and eliminates linear contours
Brilliantly harmonized colors also relative to light turn a blue tablecloth partly yellow for example
Astoundingly refined detail combined with its occlusion or distortion at strategic points evokes how we actually see
Restrained convincingly naturalistic human psychologists are never acted or staged
silence and stillness envelop an eternal world of pristine perfection
On the other hand several misfit paintings currently included in Vermeer's Irvan. Don't seem to belong
compare these two paintings on a wall of the
Metropolitan Museum New York or this even more striking contrast on a wall of the neighboring Frick Collection
separated by a strategic Kuro
Some of these compositions lack the essential qualities of Vermeer's paintings subtle light harmonious colors
refined detail restrained psychologies
silence and stillness
earlier scholars noted problems with these works
But never address them as a group or in a systematic way and sought to justify the problems in various
Unconvincing ways as forgeries unfinished the result of poor condition later over painting or a bad day
only one idea made sense
These are paintings by an assistant or apprentice or since Vermeer had no official students one of his children
Who he did not need to register
Yet scholars never seriously pursued this possibility in part because no document refers to another Vermeer as a painter
I will explain the reasons for this absence of written documents
But in any case these circumstances should not lead to neglect of the visual documents which are the foundation of art history
People have not been looking carefully enough at the paintings
Indeed the most important questions about Vermeer's paintings the relation of form to content and his art to his life
Still have to be answered
Also, no scholars placed Vermeer's were in clear chronological order
Previous authors identified Vermeer's family members in some of his paintings
But recent scholars deny such connections as anachronistic and romantic
The romantics invented art history or writing about paintings in ways that could not be articulated in their own time
Including issues like the relation of an artist's life and work
Tear-filled Toure who discovered Vermeer as an unrecognized genius around 1860
Called him the sphinx of Delft because so little was known of him
He devoted the rest of his life to recovering facts about the artists biography in his life work, although roughly half of these were mistaken
Today Vermeer is still thought of as a mysterious figure, but we know a great deal about his life including
fascinating family secrets
Vermeer and his wife had 11 surviving children a
Patron bought 20 of his works and he ultimately died bankrupt at the relatively early age of 43
Yet scholars have never told us how his life illuminates his work or indeed how his art illuminates his life
I propose that at least one family member appears in each of his paintings and informs their content an idea. He elaborated from Rembrandt
Vermeer also explicitly reflected in his paintings on the role of his family which even determined the development of his career
Perhaps most importantly his eldest daughter
model for the girl with the Pearl Earring
Started painting for herself and created the misfit compositions one fifth of those now assigned to her father
She did not continue as a painter as far as we know but some of her works
Suggest she too could have been a great artist
Admittedly the relation of art and life can be represented crudely or
Misrepresented as in Irving stones biographical novels about Van Gogh and Michelangelo lust for life and the agony and the ecstasy
later made into films
Tracee chevaliers best-selling novel from 2000 the girl with a Pearl Earring made it into a film of the same name
Presents a similar case she too made things up in her case a maids
Assistant who ends up as Vermeer's love interest in secret model for his painting girl with a Pearl Earring
His jealous wife finds out about the painting attacks it with a knife and complains
The film's significantly undermines chevaliers fiction by dressing Vermeer's wife as she appears in his painting woman in blue in
Truth Vermeer painted his wife over and over more than any other model beginning with his earliest compositions
He eventually exhausted every possible variation and grew tired of her or she of him
His girl with a Pearl Earring a relatively late work was based on his eldest daughter Maria as earlier scholars recognized
Vermeer's little street offers an ideal
entry point to his art and life one scholar declared the location of the little street has never been
Identified in the probability of slight that it ever will be but the first and most obvious
Proposal was correct back in 1888
Mango assumed Vermeer portrayed his own house and in tribute called his painting of his house in aural the street the yellow house
Vermeer was born in
1632 and grew up in his father's tavern and art gallery on the north side of Delft Central Market Square
After his father's death left the family in debt at the age of 21
He married a girl from a wealthy Catholic family and moved into her mother's house across and just beyond the main square
The neighborhood was dubbed the Papists corner
Catholicism was illegal in the Dutch Republic yet tolerated by local authorities when they were given money to do so
After the emancipation of the Dutch Catholics in 1837
the entire block was eventually replaced by a neo-gothic Catholic Church the vestry of which now stands on the former site of
home
The position of the house and maps corresponds to the house in Vermeer's painting with its stately
16th century climbing crenelated gable full of repairs and iron reinforcements one of the few that survived the Great Fire of
1536 the one visible window and dimensions of the shutters correspond to windows in Vermeer's paintings, which he based on the rooms in his house
The woman sewing and the threshold was therefore most logically his wife in a costume that appears in parts and his other paintings based on
Her a little girl playing or drawing on the stoop must have been his eldest daughter Maria who was around 10 in
1664 the likely date of the painting with a boy
Companion the servant fetching water from a barrel in the alleyway would be the family made
recognizable from her build and costume and other Vermeer paintings such as his milkmaid an
Open window of the upper storey front room
Which Vermeer uses his studio with its Northern Light could have served to air it out during his absence
The little street embodies in visual form the connection of art and life later formulated in romantic texts
Including Emile Zola's succinct definition of modern art a corner of nature is seen through a particular temperament
Modern art is genre painting
It's content is not a religious or allegorical message, but rather the artists skill and idiosyncratic vision in relation to his environment
Ramier began as a painter of historical scenes yet as earliest compositions already use his wife as model and drawn his own
circumstances
His procuress of 1656 celebrates his turn to genre based on his family as models
His wife at the right plays a horror her brother the client fondling her
their mother is dressed in a nun's habit as the female pimp or madam assisted by her son-in-law Vermeer's musician who offers a
masturbatory toast to his adopted family source of housing money models and provocative ideas as
JM mattias only recently discovered
Vermeer's mother-in-law was estranged from her violent and abusive husband a role taken over by her son in relation to his sister
Vermeer's wife
Vermeer apparently found their Catholicism and dysfunctional relations exotic and colorful as his painting suggests
Yet his brother-in-law eventually became a problem
Threatening to beat and tormenting Vermeer's wife when she was pregnant and had to be placed in the house of Correction around
1665
Vermeer's following girl at a table portrays his wife in the aftermath of a raucous family altercation
Autoradiography has revealed. He removed a man at the threshold
Presumably her brother
His following letter reader shows her standing at the window of the upper storey front room, which he took over as his studio
here he began to use a camera obscura a
Forerunner of the modern camera with a pinhole through which light cast an image of the outside world
inaugurating his mature style
Subsequent works refine a strategy with his wife the family maid and other family members and multi figure scenes
Each composition adds a new dimension or alteration including full-length figures floors and windows
He reached a point of sublime complexity in his music lesson after which he returned to single figure paintings of his wife
pregnant as she often was at this time a
Conscious repetition to suggest the cycle of creation and his rivalry with his wife as creator
Coming circle to his earliest mature composition
reliving his youth in early art
at this point Vermeer's attention apparently wandered outside his studio window to the small merchants house across the canal for a now lost or
unrecognized painting he then went over to this house to portray his own house in the little street and
Moved on to a small house just beyond the old town walls to paint his view of Delft
Vermeer's monumental city view which likely took him a year more to paint was a wager with history to create a work of
unsurpassable perfection and ambition Toure discovered Vermeer through the painting an episode Marcel Proust
Reworked in relation to his own last year of life in his novel in search of lost time
True fictional novelist bare gut goes to see the view of Delft at a Paris exhibition
Recalls a critics reference to a little patch of yellow wall and dies before the painting
the motif illustrates and proofs words the
Genius consists in the power to reflect and not in the intrinsic value of the scene reflected
We can further unfold proofs in sight in relation to the scenes content
The dull red roofs at the left lie under heavy clouds the salmon colored ones in the center
Background are illuminated by light peeking through and the little patch of yellow
Wall to the right is actually a red roof that reflects the direct light of the Sun
heightened by its steep angle
nodding together several cruise metaphors
The yellow wall could be said to illustrate the reflective power of genius
The light of Vermeer's Sun which still reaches us long after his death
Vermeer had nowhere to go but back home yet upon his return
he renewed his art through his eldest daughter Maria who was now old enough to take her mother's place and serve as his model or
Convinced him. She was he commemorated the moment in his girl with a pearl necklace
Here, she plays her mother and her father's model
discovering her beauty as a young woman
Art and life are tied an inextricable knot
She appears again in his art of painting
Scholars have misidentified her is Cleo the muse of history writing yet
Vermeer was not a history painter his own wife and mother-in-law referred to a female
personification of painting had scaled her constant specifically Netherlandish painting in
opposition to the reigning ideal of Italianate historical or allegorical painting
Vermeer affirms genre painting as modern art a love for the visible all around us real people concrete objects and everyday settings
Both his evolving art and her mature and beauty reached their simultaneous apex in his girl with a Pearl Earring
Several of Vermeer's late works include a heavyset round-faced wall-eyed
Matronly model based loosely on his mother-in-law in two cases together with the family made
her newfound prominence in Vermeer's art presumably resulted from his increasing financial dependence on her and
coincided with his artistic and physical decline
The allegory of Catholic faith has often been identified as Ramires worst painting or one mistake with its overweight model
Awkwardness and religious symbolism. Alien to his art
Doubling his beautiful art of painting his parody. Although scholars have been at a loss to explain why
The obvious answer is his mother-in-law
Commissioned a composition based on his art of painting with herself as model to proclaim her own Catholic agenda
And he could not refuse
Yet his artistry could not help but subvert her ideology from within
The heavy-handed symbolism and her own heavy self his model render the message ridiculous and even scandalous
Above all and the glass sphere meant to evoke God in the universe
Contained by faith which through its exacting naturalism
reflects the Protestant new church across the street outside in the light of day
ramires last remaining model a homely and vaguely
Melancholic girl who's been recognized in his girl writing a letter girl with a guitar and lace maker
Within one scholars description the same cutting out jaw bulging forehead and round widely spaced eyes
not unlike Vermeer himself
Must have been his second child Elizabeth or Elizabeth the first example heralded the darkness of his late paintings
Whereas his brighter and peculiarly eccentric last two paintings posed a riddle of the conclusion of his career
We have come a long way in unfolding the core of Vermeer's visual thought since Torres pioneering catalog as
In to raise time our accounts have profoundly influenced by reproductive technologies
The most recent exhibition on Vermeer's milk made at the Metropolitan, Museum, New York
Included reproductions of what the curators identified as the 36 extant paintings by Vermeer
although not in chronological order or scale
People were fascinated by what was not there when the real things laid just around the corner
Although these are often difficult to see let alone compare
As a visual thought experiment we can substitute better quality reproductions and scale that move around in our film
This strategy allows us to address the six
Misfit works normally included among Vermeer's paintings and a seventh only recently added to reserve under dubious circumstances
Like most books the Metz grid placed Vermeer's grow of the Pearl Earring near to related small head studies
grow with a flute and girl with a red hat
Both portray the same girl with short dark brown hair and exotic hats of uncertainty
'real seated before invented tapestry backgrounds painted on recycled panels. Otherwise unknown in Vermeer
Their presentation is bold
spontaneous experimental and strikingly modern with bizarre color juxtapositions
exaggerated light contrasts an aggressive non-naturalistic camera obscura Effects of blurs and
distortions
The compositions also include uncanny mistakes in skewed chair finials an
Impossible flute a lace collar that was scraped away and the peculiar construction of the hats
scholars at different times have compared the two panels to
Self-portraits citing the girls positions the way they gaze out at us their hats and other elements
All these dimensions are at odds with Vermeer's characteristically cautious meticulous perfection
The panels have been explained as 19th century forgeries as a result of over painting by a later artist
Or is possibly painted by one of Vermeer's children without pursuing the matter
beginning painters often made self-portrait studies because they were always available as a model and the brash
spontaneous experimental approach of the panel's their technical difficulties and
Incongruities and the recycling of a use panel are all in keeping with a young artist
The girls further resemble Maria and her father's paintings most obviously in his girl with a Pearl Earring and her girl in a red hat
Particularly when we allow for the reversal of her image in the mirror
All these examples exhibit almost invisible eyebrows above deep eye sockets high cheekbones slightly upturned
Noses a pronounced philtrum or vertical groove beneath the nose and thick lower lips
Maria presented herself more as a creative subject than a beautiful object in shrouded in shadows slightly older with darker hair
Presumably eighteen or nineteen years old around sixteen seventy one or two two years after his girl with a Pearl Earring
Between the two panels and Vermeer's girl with a Pearl Earring in the Mets. Grid, we find portrait of a woman
Scholars have noted her wide flat face and mongoloid features
And stunted her clumsy hand the Buran like folds of her light blue drapery. There are no relation to a body
Scholars recognize the same model as in Vermeer's girl writing and girl with a guitar Maria's younger sister Lisbon
Maria apparently sought to emulate her father's portrait study of her using her sister as model
But she had difficulty harnessing the distorting effects of a camera obscura and constructing a three-dimensional body for a formal portrait
Mistress and maid appears in the Metz grid on the opposite side of the girl with a Pearl Earring and has a similar brown background
Which is at odds with Vermeer's light-filled interiors
The composition has been explained as unfinished, but in fact includes the fulls of a brown curtain behind
Earlier scholars proposed the work was painted by an assistant and
Compared what Wren Wessler amusingly calls her lobster claw hand to the similarly stunted hand and girl with a flute
The composition also pieced together several elements from Ramirez paintings
Following her father
She used her grandmother as model for the maid whereas her aging mother served as mistress
dressed in an elaborate hairdo and jewelry a red card dangling from her maternity dress
Despite her technical limitations Maria's composition is vigorous engaging and amusing and now hangs alongside other
Masterpieces of Western art in Henry Clay Fricks Great Hall as his last and proudest purchase
Another painting in the Frick assigned to Vermeer Girl Interrupted at her music is found in the Metz grid beside two of his similar
Interior scenes which share many compositional elements, but these elements are pieced together in Girl Interrupted
In the pastiche like manner of Maria's mistress and maid with a similar narrative of one bustling figure seated at a table
Interrupted by another from behind some proposed that Vermeer lost his courage or was not able to get it, right
others invoked poor condition
But that would not explain the absence of a perspective
scheme or the dark
Distorted painting of cupid which was based on the pristine version in Vermeer's ladies standing at a virginal painted around the same time
Her head is tiny yet an appearance and attitude the girl interrupted by a male companion recalls
Maria's
self-portrait studies her situation also corresponds to Maria Vermeer's who had to give up painting after she got married the following year a
Sixth misfit woman with a lute is located in the Mex grid beside Ramirez woman with a picture and has a similar
Composition but lacks, its clarity of definition and space and light
Here two diverse elements were drawn from Vermeer's paintings
But combined more synthetically the musical theme and overall setting appear to be elaborated from Maria's Girl Interrupted
scholars recognize the same model in portrait of a young woman
Lisbeth's gaze out the window suggests an eagerness to be interrupted as well
the map of Europe evokes the more global outlook of a younger generation
As it turned out most of Maria's paintings ended up in what was then New Amsterdam?
Only just lost to the British
- of Maria's paintings are now found on what I like to call the Baker's wall of the Metropolitan Museum
Because two paintings owned by Vermeer's Baker which he assumed were both by Vermeer also hang there
Vermeer died in 1675 in debt and owed the most money to the Baker
he had already traded his woman with a pitcher which his patron did not want against a prior debt to the Baker for bread and
He continued this strategy for feeding his family up to his death
But his patron bought his last paintings his wife nevertheless
settled the Baker's debt with two paintings described in a document as
Two persons one of whom is sitting and writing a letter and the other with a person playing a citroen a round bottom
lute like instrument in other words
She paid the debt with her daughter's paintings mistress and maid and woman with a lute this deception would only be possible
If no one outside the family knew that Maria was Vermeer's apprentice
Their decision had to be made early on with Vermeer's tacit approval or active collusion
Maria's woman with a lute even consciously emulated her father's woman with a pitcher then in the Baker's possession to underscore their connection
Given the family's debts Vermeer's declining health Maria's precocious abilities and their predisposition is hidden Catholics
There were plenty of reasons to keep her late apprenticeship a family secret
Vii misfit at the end of the Mets grid young woman seated in a virginal was included in early monographs
But later rejected as the work of a pupil and a pastiche of Vermeer's lady
Standing at a virginal and lady seated at a virginal in once collars harsh words a tasteless mishmash
with arms like pigs trotters
Technical examination in
2004 revealed the canvas was cut from the same bolt as Ramires lace maker of the same dimensions a team of scholars
Convened by Sotheby's for this purpose affirmed the composition as an undisputed Vermeer and rejected earlier
speculations about an assistant
They claimed that it has been agreed. The earliest days of Vermeer's scholarship that he had known such apprentice or pupils
Not only is there no documentary record, but there is also no body of surviving work
Sotheby's sold the painting for 30 million dollars to Steve Wynn who later resold it after the
Explanation offered here was first published in
Truth the possibility of an assistant has been raised repeatedly since the earliest days
There is no documentary record of Vermeer's apprentice because painters did not register their own children and her activity was a family secret
her surviving body of work discussed here presents the closest analogies for the paintings simple costume with
exaggerated surface folds flat forms and
non-naturalistic camera obscura effects
The figures bust length profile pose truncated hands and deadpan expression are likewise characteristic of the other misfit paintings
leaving aside dubious financial motives the error betrays a failure to look carefully at and
Understand Vermeer's paintings the same problem is evident in the Mets grid
Scholars have not identified Vermeer's models or recognize the underlying relation of his life to his work
Which makes it impossible to place his paintings in chronological order?
Separate out the misfit paintings or understand their dependence on his example
At stake are two separate herbs and two separate lives
Which mutually influenced each other?
Maria had grown up watching her father paint surrounded by his works
Became is model early on and likely served as his studio assistant
preparing paints and canvases
She understandably wanted to try her hand at painting and apparently inherited her father's talent
Her relatively late age can be explained in so far as Vermeer did not foresee her as his
Apprentice and perhaps thought to wait for his eldest son who was still only 8 in 1672
She sees the initiatives with her informal self-portrait studies and her more formal portrait of her sister
Mistress and maid was her largest composition followed by the more ambitious
But seemingly cruder girl and erupted in which she already registered the conflicting pressures of a young artist
by the time of her woman with a lute she was an active forger serving her family and
Also appears to have provoked her father's response in his girl with a guitar
Helping him out of the slump of his late paintings produced under the influence of her grandmother and his mother-in-law
The matching dimensions of Vermeer's lacemaker and Maria's young woman seated at a virginal suggest an explicit competition between master and apprentice
father and daughter at the end of his life
It was presumably her idea since she worked on a small scale and likely prepared their canvases
Vermeer responded by adapting her bold and spontaneous effects to a naturalistic purpose
dribbling red and white paint to suggest dangling threads twisting and turning in space a
Composition of classic simplicity and a final concentrated tour de force
She sought to create a Vermeer like interior in a tiny field and executed her composition with remarkable precision
But thereby magnified her technical limitations
She too included minuscule threads of matching red ribbons and white strands of pearls and Lizbeth's hair
But these lie unconvincingly flat on the surface
the short course of Maria's apprenticeship served to sacrifice her initial bold originality
For the purpose of assimilating of father's technical achievement had she pursued her vision. She may well have become a great artist
Alas, like most women painters from this period who likewise learned from their fathers and unrecorded apprenticeships Maria
Must have given up painting when she married in May
1670 for
Her decision not to pursue her art was likely
Influenced by the family's debts and the deception they had perpetrated as a result as well as her father's declining health and death in December
1675
Maria's girl in a red hat remains when the most fascinating works of Western art its feathery red glow calling out to us
Liked a little patch of yellow wall
The light of her moon orbiting around his son
To raise discovery Vermeer as an unrecognized genius took over a half a century to be accepted by the art historical
establishment and a similar term may be required for
acceptance of my own modest discovery of Maria Vermeer as a painter
For her sake and his I appealed to you
It seems to me that at very least are something to talk about here
And it is striking that it's not we're not going to do that mrs. Hoving
Yeah, it is striking that we that how long has taken for the conversation? But let me just one thing you might do
man is show can you put up the
The two last paintings again the side-by-side so we can just talk about that a little bit clearer
So just bring out because I was a little bit confusing
I think one of your nicer points is is the thing about the red talked about that a little bit the
that
he as I said, he's
working on her level of
Scott's eyes so that it's a way that they were right here
They are
There they are on the the size and I wanted to show you the two little
self-portraits which are hidden behind here
So you can see there's a strange way that in at the end of her little career of what we have of a few years
They came back for one final one where he they were working on small canvases that are like her little studies
And that's part of her genius. I think she was doing something very interesting that he seems to have been responding to
at the same time
She her whole career had been about technically mastering his techniques so that it came to the possibility that she could do this
Which is her most accomplished in terms of some things
Perspective scheme the light of the back wall
But in some ways it's disappointing because it seems like she's subordinated all of her interesting vivid precocity in her own originality
in trying to emulate him and one of the ways that you see this is
He's done this beautiful thing of dripping paint and you can scholars have talked about this. You can see that he's literally been
dribbling it from the paint brush thick paint in the manner of Pollock, but in order to suggest
Threads coming out of this little sewing cushion, but you could see that even though it's dripped paint. He absolutely
Masters little threads coming down and three-dimensional twisting and turning over the table
It's an incredible performance. What she did was did something similar in these little red ribbons in the hair and a
little supposed to be white
They're supposed to be pearl little teeny pearl necklace but it too is on the surface of the canvas
but because she's trying to make ribbons it actually looks
characteristically flat that in this little
Play and trying to imitate or or measure up on this kind of incredible close reading or close painting
close close painting
You see that one of the characteristic problem. She has is she doesn't master depth on the level that he does
And it's almost like a metaphor because he's learned from her this incredible freedom that he could dribble and do something really
experimental which is kind of beyond the normal Vermeer whereas she's subordinated herself to trying to
Make this decorative ribbons that it that then betray their flatness and you could see the same thing as going on
we could talk about this with the
Hands that there's a strange way that these hands she wasn't able to master kind of hidden in the piano. They're not very convincing
Whereas he's doing the their book presumably both the younger sister second-youngest Elizabeth both were models
But you see how Lisbeth's in Vermeer's painting is doing this incredibly careful
Work with her fingers that suggests the articulate miss an eloquence of the hands Vermeer's painting of hands in her hands
And she's also making our own little visual
Kind of sewing a close painting
Sewing it's kind of a Chuck Close type of metaphor for painting
Actually, I just gave my little two senses that I'm convinced that the v-- show where the VM is and
this is
This is there's a there's a kind of em here in the collar and there's a V in the little threads
No, I actually see them in the hands. Well, it could be also
but this is one of the things that when they when the south of these people decided this was definitely going to be something that
They could sell for thirty million dollars
one of their major points was and the seem to be the deal clincher was that they were able to prove that the bolt of
Cloth that it was done on was exactly the same bolt has the same
The same what is it thread count thread weave, so that sealed it. This had to be a Vermeer
But of course, this is an alternative thing. Just been the two of them working together. Can you show the
Elizabeth
with a
hand one that
The hands the comparison of hands the the this one the Trani
alright
Yeah, I mentioned this because I was with Walter lead get the in the closed Dutch
Rooms of the at the met they will open in a few weeks or a few months and they are pipe beautiful my life
But he I just want to compare how the two of you talk about this. He makes an argument. This is Vermeer
He says no doubt its Ramirez
Obviously Romero and the single most brilliant thing in it is the wrists at the bottom
he says
and he goes on to say that this was only a genius could come up with this idea of putting a wrist down there and
That that in turn have you put your hand over it you can do this experiment yourself that it's very very flat
but the minute the wrist is there it says if the wrist is on the on the
Right, you can see you can he argues that the wrist is what gives the whole thing a three dimensionality and it pops everything forward
And so forth whereas you have another reading for the hand, which is what?
Well, I was suggesting that there's problems in Murray Vermeer's hands. I I have a just I prepared
A little comparison that's actually slide
Slide I spend more time on the slide than any slide I've ever made
Not this one with Maria's hands
Those are all over Maria Vermeer
paintings or the ones that I attribute to her and you can see the strange thing about that's not so bad the Frick but
She's not
There tend to be blocked out or hidden they have certain kind of animal-like qualities
People are invoking p1 in the upper left hand corner, which is that that's from what that's lead
Cos hand the one he really liked. No, no that the other corner. That's the girl with a flute
That is a girl with a red hat
Something the nail looks a little bit funny, too
But I just thought this was the slide that I spent so long and not that long
But it took a long time a lot of amps on that slide, but you could see that in in
Vermeer hands are often incredibly
Delicate and articulate and always doing all kinds of things and it seems a natural
association for the the the painter who's accomplished I
would say -
Walter lead cos
Claim
that I mean first of all
looking at Berenson
I mean the reciprocal relations it's it's important to compare so there is something about the comparison of here and here he may be
Right that this serves an important purpose. I would ask him and he says this is the essence of its genius
does he feel that way about the head the
historically then says is that you should all
What does he call the second law of connoisseurship?
That you should always judge a painting by its best passages and not its worst passages. It's did he tell you where he got that?
No
No, no, I was wondering, you know, I'd love to know by the way I have been training this guy for know you
But you said you were going to ask him red. I
Forgot to ask him that I think it's an important principle
I don't I'm not exactly sure what he means by it. But I actually think in this case
He says you've got to base it by the strongest passages and he then he says the hand is the strongest passage
But first of all, most Vermeer scholars actually have problems with that hand
Yeah, and I would say the strongest things in Moorea Vermeer are
Actually things about she has more empathy
It seems for her subjects, and there's ways that this so if we're talking about I love this painting very much
I think it's very very interesting and it has strong things
But I don't think what it's strong on is things like mastery of the hand or of the three-dimensional head
I think there's a lot of human sympathy for the for the girl. I think it's a it's a beautiful painting by any
Measure it's quite intriguing and it's beautifully done. I just don't think it it's characteristic of
Vermeer's
paintings and it's interesting about
principles of kind of Saoirse I would have said the first one was Berenson's that it's reciprocal relations in order to
Established by comparison. So is this the same painter? Are they two different sensibilities and
a
Second principle of kind of search if I would actually say is it's not enough to just do it yourself
There's good. There's better connoisseurs in other words with value Berenson because people have Rachel tell us about this
I mean people accuse him of all kinds of things and there was some shady dealings. No doubt
But I think that Berenson's judgments have in the long run really held up
very strongly was a brilliant man who made lots of lists of things that were compelling and
Sorted things out
so
But I would just to invoke the name of another for me great great a scholar of our history greatest one of the great connoisseurs
Not a professional kind of servant Leo Steinberg is a hero of mine. He's no longer with us, but I saw the
Vermeer show with him and we were sitting on the steps after her and I was evolving this theory at that time and
We were sitting there and he looked across the street because that that was on a banner
For the Inverrary said I never liked her ugly mouth. I
Thought oh my god, that's one of the paintings too
that's that's literally the way this thing went which is I was in there looking at something else and and
The Sotheby's painting was in there. Some of them are more obvious
But that's certainly what we're talking about here, which is what is connoisseurship. Who is saying what?
I
Think it's an interesting observation about the hand but also
Walter Lidia hasn't published that he's not making that argument
So that's partly what we're talking about is what is it that people do say in Vermeer's scholarship and why?
Can you go we were also going to talk about self-portraits? Can you show us again side by side the
Red Hat and Lee the
girl with the Pearl
which I would argue by the way are to expect ocular paintings no matter what what we're saying a
Few things. I mean, this is also on your on the front of your brochures. Yeah, you have right there, right?
Talk about the diversity in portrait or self-portrait in terms of what apart what they look like. Well I actually had
there's this I
had another
I'm gonna put this one away cuz it's not relevant. I had prepared and another little slide
It's not easy to find these
This is it
I'm just gonna show you
Because I I I've been thinking a lot about this. I'm do I'm glück II enough to be able to teach a class on
Self port the history of self portraiture and then this fall and Cooper Union
I'm really excited about it
And I wanted to invoke, you know
when you get
You apply to Cooper you have to make them two different kinds of self portrait one is using yourself
Physically and one is not using yourself because everybody knows that an artist also expresses themselves when they paint
Whatever it is
So we have this interesting thing that theoretically all paintings are self portraits if they really express the artist. These are
Chuck Close there's a Jerry Davis painting. This is a Vince desiderio painting and in April Gornick painting
I think we all see that we also see that there's something special about the artist
depicting themselves that we recognize it and
One of the proofs of that is the idea that you can recognize a self-portrait when it's not been recognized
so that's one of the things that's at stake and
people before me saying the girl with the red hat was a self-portrait and
I think this has to do with also some things that we rehearsed in the film, which is
What is a self-portrait that relates to the question of what is Jean repainting and what is modern art
There was this idea from Proust that it's about the reflection not the thing reflected
So it's not
Literally that it shows you the artists face and we know that's Maria Vermeer like we know that's Chuck
Close and we the point of the painting is to show us what Chuck Close looks like the
Point of the painting is to show us how Chuck Close thinks
How Chuck Close paints but there's something very special about his using his own face to do that
And I'm saying this is a genuine mystery for me these two things on the one hand
we can't simply erase the importance of self portraiture because all painting really is self portraiture and
especially because there's the idea that can we
recognize it and we do recognize Chuck the closest of portraits and I was suggesting that there's some Vermeer's
unrecognized self portraits and it's important for us to know it that all of these things somehow are in play about
the relationship between the inner
sensibility of the artists how they paint with their external circumstances who they are a
white male or teenage girl or
What their circumstances are and I should say by the way one things Walter said was?
Are we to believe that a teenage girl was able to make that picture?
You'd be amazed at what teenage girls can do behave yourself behave yourselves. I'm sorry
This Red Hat
But
but in all seriousness that is going to be a
Serious criticism that that your theory has to deal with it, which is the youth of the the prodigious
Talent that is being
portrayed by this by this person and what's interesting here is the polemic goes against me from both sides as it should which is
These misfit paintings. There's a lot of criticism of them that's part of the problem. That's what we're trying to address
Why are they so disparate from Vermeer which seems to me to fit in with it being a young painter?
I don't really know about what to think about gender. I think it's a very
important category
And I think we're gonna be talking about this
Linden Ocwen, it's not gonna be coming
but she of course famously wrote this essay about why are there no women artists and part of the
Responding of Virginia Woolf who was talking about Shakespeare's sister. I mean part of the assertion is the
circumstances the economic and social
circumstances which artists produce
limits
Women and young women because we know there's some brilliant young men boy painters Durer
13 year olds we've seen do incredible things
And this is somehow part of the mystery or part of what we're looking at
that
The implausibility or the the weight of the evidence or you know the problems with what i'm proposing?
Which comes from both ways? Oh, those are too good for a young girl or those are not good enough for Vermeer
But it's also bound up in historical circumstances, which is I don't see why someone with Vermeer's DNA
couldn't have been as good a painter as him if with time or maybe better depending on what she got from the mother but
one of the things that we're talking about here is the reason why we're the reason why this hasn't come up presumably is
because of these circumstances these economic and social circumstances written Maria's Vermeer's case if I'm correct about
The baker and what the family pressures were were particularly enormous not just that you didn't have room of her own
She didn't even get to paint her own paintings for herself
she was already trying to dig the family out from their debts when she was a young woman and
And this goes both ways that people will say apparently
Lika said, well it's very convenient for him. There was a family secret well
But we're also trying to account for these circumstances
let's
the
There's a few points I want to make but one of them is you you were Shakespeare's sister and and so I suppose
One kind of criticism that one can make here is you know
Are we in the terrain here of all of Shakespeare was done by an albino?
transvestite, you know those kinds of theories, you know that uh that
Or all Shakespeare was done by Francis Bacon or all Shakespeare was done by Shakespeare sister or you know, I mean, there are
various kinds of theories that go that way
Earl of Oxford the Earl of Oxford that kind of thing and so
in that context
There's a nice I was gonna put these quotes on this fielder's had to hear them
doesn't but noble we're not to put the on screen but
The
There was a quote that I'll read to you and then we'll figure out who is who says it
Creative ideas are often attacked because people oppose change or do not understand new concepts
When a prominent discovery is revealed particularly if it provides an obvious and simple answer to an important question
experts who have worked for years
Unsuccessfully on the same problem lash out of the creator and the idea because they themselves did not find the solution
creatively creativity requires courage
now the cool thing about that quote is that it's from
Dr. Henry Heimlich, the guy who made the Heimlich maneuver
Except that it's from him in his later years in his cranky years when in this particular case?
This quote is about his theory that malaria would be a cure for AIDS
So, I mean, you know, in other words you can have elaborate theories and and and so forth that that
That you know are wonderfully renegade and wonderfully insurgent and so forth and there's a romance the insurgency, but but they don't necessarily
Are necessarily right and and and I think we have that feeling we have that problem some of the Shakespeare, you know
And by the way, one of things that's fascinating about that
Is that the people who do these things spend years and years as you have?
coming up with all kinds of things that seem to make it seem right and so I mean there's an interesting logical problem here if
You keep on looking you'll find stuff. I'm not
Epistemology is very important IIIi. There's a couple things to say about Shakespeare a very important example
Which takes us outside the realm of art history proper. I
would say first at the
bracketing off
whatever
The albino transvestite theory. I'm not familiar with and the
But I don't about the the Earl of Oxford and the Francis Bacon theories and I actually would put that opposite
Shakespeare scholars, like
Stephen Greenblatt, I know was a teacher of mine at Berkeley and they do close
Readings fill illogical readings of some of the late plays Henry the eighth or Cymbeline. It seems that late Shakespeare
Either didn't was getting tired or for various reasons had some collaboratory that were doing certain sections that you could see a
Different meter and so on which is relevant because that's what we're talking about the late
Vermeer also that he has his own there's a strangeness to like Shakespeare
There's a strangeness too late Vermeer, but those theories are based on
actually, very very close readings and trying to
structurally explain everything that we know in terms of
Biography and whereas the Earl of Oxford and the Francis Bacon are based on a kind of emotional
Irrational
incapacity if I understand correctly the gist of it was that it had to be a
A nobleman or someone who went to college that they wouldn't accept the fact which just doesn't really make sense because Shakespeare
did an internship at a law legal offices where you got a little vocabulary something like that, but but it's relevant in the sense that
and I mean Shakespeare himself wanted to have a coat of arms and all song dois not without mustard as Ben Jonson said but I
would say that the irrational
not wanting Shakespeare to be a middle class is actually
comparable to the current consensus about Vermeer that there's an emotional investment in not
Looking too carefully at these misfit paintings or putting them an order
That might not be right
But I'm saying you have to look carefully to see on the on it on two sides of an issue
Which one is the empiricist? I also think?
You know
Nobody's calling into question
Hamlet I hope I mean that the Earl of Oxford people are not the Stephen Greenblatt people and
Here, we know that the soldier and laughing girl was by Vermeer. Nobody's calling a question
We're talking about these problems which themselves present problems. Not a theory that I came up with because I I'm a
Purely a feminist. I mean a quasi feminist, but or to get myself attention, I actually feel like I'm trying to address
Problems the family and Vermeer the order of his paintings these disparate works which has a lot to do with
illuminating Vermeer better
Understanding him in the in the mode of the green but I would also say on the other hand you want to make a distinction?
between
For example plays and paintings that late plays where you're working hard and you have seen done by somebody
versus individual paintings or small paintings
or in the case of Rembrandt
That polish writer we saw and then I would then I would say I think our history is behind
Literary criticism are certainly Shakespeare scholarship where they've been over a lot of stuff and Stephen Greenblatt has things to say
But he's doing he's kind of polishing the diamond there of everything. We know about Shakespeare Wars
I'm saying some pretty fundamental work to be done on Vermeer and Rembrandt servers. It seems to me just by way of preface
Ingush entra we need to look more carefully at eccentric exertion see
Insurgencies in the case of the paintings. Maybe then the plays
the
Another point, by the way, this is I was just reading that her heard
The late Thomas mcevo Lee's book art and other nurse and he at one point
Is this was during his critique of the big MoMA show the primitivism show
But he was he was saying he invoked the principle of economy
Quote on which all science is based that the explanatory principles are to be kept to the smallest possible number
the principle of economy does not of course mean keeping
Information to a minimum but keeping to a minimum the number of interpretive ideas that one brings to bear on information
The point is that unnecessary principles will usually reflect the wishful thinking of the speaker and amount to deceptive persuasive mechanisms
in this context merit westerman who I spoke with was saying I agree with Ben about
Everything but why does he need the woman? I?
Agree that those seven or eight paintings are problems. Why can't he just stop there?
Why does he have to then go on and we have this elaborate theory of I wish Mariette would have published that well
use the single voice of affirmation but
It's now it's now out there we all heard Mariette and that's good that's that's halfway there. I
Think that if you if you you we could stop it short
I don't think that we need to stop short because it makes people uncomfortable
I think you have to present as best you can so on the one hand. I try to be simple
Family in the paintings put them in order
Put those together and you get us a portrait
On the other hand it gets kind of complicated
At the end there with the recognizing Lisbet
Her face changes Maria's painting technique changes. They're influencing each other
Has to do with outside things that are happening in the family
The relation among these paintings are some things we could talk about the patron who owned what?
But all of that should come back to I would say along with Ockham's ray
We should have a different kind of like Occam's
Shaving cream or something about having all of the stuff there the cards on the table
I think we should be talking about what's going on, which is these paintings and
also for me
I'm fascinated by the word
era
Which is a strange
But one of these things art history borrows a name from French over which should remind you of those funny old catalogues
But it also means something very specific
It means a life work, but our life work is all of the stuff that we do we got borrowed a suit from somebody
No, whereas every means the kind of catalogue that was made by somebody in the 19th century. There's one after another but that can change
So it both has to do with physical representation of something like aura but also what is an era
It's something that we kind of belatedly made up and continue to tinker with a life work
That's reminded. By the way of I was gonna invoke this at the end of the thing, but I'll invoke it now
One of my favorite people in the world is is Auden in the late autumn speaking of morning prayers and
he he has a poem called archaeology, which I'll just read the beginning of
This is one of his last poems the archaeologists Spade delves into dwellings vacancy long ago
Unearthing evidence of life ways know and would dream of leading now concerning which he has not much to say that he can prove
the lucky man
Knowledge may have its purposes but guessing is always more fun than knowing
There is a profound sense in which we're never going to know
And that that and there's something wonderful about that, by the way
But it seems to me and here here. I actually would
Come to your defense if let's look at the the other
Fret to the the muddy Frick the green Frick Girl Interrupted Girl Interrupted
if
the thing if you're not going to put
if we're not gonna use a theory like yours and say that it wasn't done by Vermeer you then have to put it somewhere and
And and I think that's similar with a lot of these pictures especially of LG of Elizabeth Lisbet
Not so much this one
But but but some of these things
You're gonna put them on the basis that he wasn't yet at his peak or that he was something like that
Generally the places that they put that one in particular as they put it way way up front
Similarly with Elizabeth for example when they do
The point is that I guess what I'm trying to say
I mean, I'm not being rare ticket
the point is that
that
if it is true that these are portraying some family members and if you can or at least they're portraying the same model whether or
Not they're family members. They're showing up at all kinds of crazy places. Actually, that's even better the loot up there
This is based on you know
Walter Lido, when he put them in order which is not in the catalog for the milkmaid show and it's an over mere books
No other books besides mine put all the paintings together
But they did do that milkman show was actually after my book and then they put these up there
But it wasn't in scale
But here they are in the order that so this in particular, I guess I want to talk about this one here
but the point is if that is in fact the same model as that and and you know
So and so on and if you put it here because of the relatively it's not that good a picture
But it's kind of good but and parenthetically it's the it's the most premier like of the ones that you call Maria's
But you would have to put it fairly early for various reasons in terms of their logics
But then it doesn't make any sense because it's the same person who's down here at the same age, basically
And and so you get an account he given to the Baker which was one point in the film
You understand the talk about to do to talk about for a second about the to the discus and the Baker to what is that?
Well, we know that
We actually have a lot of information about Vermeer and one of the things that we know is
Here is my let me go back one
This page here and
We actually have this different ways
But this is from my book and this is the new one that I'm making where everybody can participate and we'll move it around
But and one of the things you could do is strip them off
In other words what I'm saying is we can look at this dis iasts didn't own this
Who dis you Susan?
I'm sorry that you yo
Johannes van r alvin is the man who was Vermeer had a kind of patron. He lent to money he gave him a
yearly stipend in order to pick have first pick of his works and
Here i'm showing you
These are the dizziest works that why is it called as this is his son-in-law?
The patron son-in-law who there was a list made up where they described them and the list mostly corresponds
you know a woman pouring out milk or a girl who's sowing we know the greatest paintings are it seems
the the ones that are in the most famous
Museums and you in national collections of europe which were the earliest ones formed are on this list
20 paintings for van. Robin Vermeer's painting paint patrons strangely
There's 21 on the disi assist of his son-in-law and that's a mystery right there of Vermeer scholarship
Why was there one more painting that wasn't seen before Monte's suggest? Well, maybe they missed the little street, which doesn't really make sense
Why would they have missed one of his paintings?
my explanation is
This is what van Raavan that
the xxi
dision
Vermeer painting more specifically van Raavan bought this painting knowing it wasn't by Vermeer
But enjoyed it the same way walter leak enjoys it anew maria was a model for the paintings that she was in
But this by the time that someone made up the list after his son-in-law died
They no longer knew the difference
So they called it 21 Vermeer paintings and there is a painting that corresponds to this a Ditto of the head study
It's a little bit
Esoteric, but I also think it's very important understand because you can do the inverse and you could say these are not the discus paintings
these are the paintings that the Vermeer's painting didn't buy obviously a bunch of
Early history paintings probably from before he knew him. He gets a gnome around there
There's that wonderful painting letter reader and Dresden which Wren said, oh, I love that
I would have wanted that but it's possible that Vermeer held back for various emotional reasons
Some of his own paintings occasionally this one the painter didn't wanted to end up going to the baker
this one
Who's a baker there's a was a baker in the town Hendrik van. Bouton
That what Vermeer did was he first ran up a bunch of big debt for bread?
He was feeding his family than in dominating his family feeding. How many in his family eleven children?
hungry kids and
Well, you know in Dutch they call it a boat's favor someone who writes for a living in you
this is like a boat skilled, er a painter who paints for bread and
It was also I think something going on here that people have noted. It was noted by a French traveler. Mr. Monk oi nice
I think his name is who said I saw a painting and
I
Can't remember the map
But he said I think it's ten times too much
Vermeer had no paintings to show me if they sent me to the Baker and I saw this one painting there
But it seemed to me twas they paid ten times too much for it
And it's possible people argue about was did he get it right was the Baker lying?
It's possible the Baker paid an enormous amount of money for painting because normally you couldn't get it for mere painting
People knew him and the Baker knew the family knew but all the paintings were going to the patron
So the Baker was happy to get that painting Vermeer
obviously happy to sell an occasional painting for ten times what it was worth and
There was may have been a thing word that was about bread that the Baker had plenty of bread
So he led Vermeer run up the bill. This is some speculation, but it's all about accommodating the evidence
But this was already fairly early on that
This happened the bill that Vermeer left for the Baker 700 guilders was incredible. That's like
You know many times over a year's salary
Huge debt, and the Baker was the first person in line to get money for the Vermeer estate
So the the wife traded him two paintings
In the it was funny
There's even an additional quote from a legal document that Matias found the two paintings by the aforementioned Vermeer was dead
One representing two persons one of whom is sitting and writing a letter and the other with a person playing a sitter and a satyr
Sit turn is something in between. It's a little bit like those Greek instruments like a balalaika in between a lute and a guitar
But it's a it's when the one that she's playing them in the music lesson. The funny thing is this is what
Vermeer scholars with the exception of - who says there's another possibility
they all say that these are the paintings of the baker God which is strange because
It's called a woman with us with a sit turn and they're giving him the girl with a guitar
when we know that the pain the
Patron had a painting called girl with a guitar
So why are they saying that a guitar is a lute and thus?
It turn is a guitar
So what do you thinking because they're saying these are late paintings and they assume that the baker got the last
Painting says Vermeer died
But the patron got from here's last paintings patron who was alive it'll died around the same time as Vermeer got his last
paintings the lacemaker
I say there these two paintings woman sitting writing a letter with another and
A woman playing a satyr which is you can mix up a lute and ass it turn pretty easily
The people who describe these paintings had them in front of them
But the ramier scholars don't want to see that because they think these are middle period works
But they're not really middle period works
They look vaguely middle period because they're kind of blurry
But in fact if you look at Vermeer's middle period there's nothing corresponding to this and I've suggested they're late works that are pastiche
But this would be the the theory that these were traded to the Baker after Vermeer is dead. Let me by the way just
Give a little bit background on history here
Which is that?
in
in the early
1670s louis xiv invades holland it is parenthetically the first instance of rape
warfare in modern European history
Which is to say he goes for the town of Maastricht?
Which is the Maastricht Treaty and so forth
And he orders his troops to rape all the women as a way of terrorizing the Dutch into all collapsing the Dutch in response
breached the dikes
Which is why you get so many paintings in Dutch
literature of
The Pharaohs army being swallowed up by the Red Sea. There's that's an ongoing thing the Dutch painting
That's very effective. It stops li xiv cold
He no longer continues invading however, it collapses the Dutch economy
As it collapses the Dutch economy
Suddenly Vermeer who was a paint deal a painting dealer in addition to a painter goes bankrupt. He goes bankrupt with 11 children and
Very quickly dies, one of the things that the that Vermeer people say is well, he was an old man. He was getting old
No, he wasn't old. He was 42 years old. He was he he did the lacemaker in that last year
He's at the peak of his powers at one level. But in any case he dies quite quickly
Ben and I've been if Ben is right and we've been having conversations
It seems to me that it might not have been a plot all along. It might have been
You know the daughter and the mother sitting there saying god, we've got this bill of sale over this we got 700
guilders to pay the
Bread the the Baker and and then it might have just come up in the middle of the night in the conversation
Well, you know, what about?
Maybe we could give him to a mine. He doesn't know why don't we just give it and it might have been it that way
you and I have different and know your whole notion that the that the that the
The patron would have had to know been in on the secret maybe or maybe not we can have Congress we can write different novels
about that
but but but one thing that I think is fascinating and and I did want to get you to bring out is that
All it is weird that all eight of the paintings that you described as as
There's one of them we won't go into that dito, but all eight of the paintings that you described
Maria premier are here in the united states, right?
So in other words the europeans got the good paintings and we got the maria's
Happened. I was not the we got the soldier and laughing girl. Yeah
We got a couple but we got the last choice on the other hand
We were the ones with the money for the last ones available
So that point in other words between 1860 and 1870 1888
The Vermeer's that have recently been discovered are entering the National Museums
Of the different countries and mostly the ones on that list that were owned by the patron and which were always in the public
I mean there's a these paintings were always there people always knew they were good
But it's Toure who starts thinking about this man Vermeer?
so even what the discovery of Vermeer is is kind of complicated on what level is it that
We started thinking about a life and delimiting a nerver as opposed to knowing that these were good paintings
it's it's a it's a I I
completely agree with wrens wonderful
story about the dinner table
The only thing is that I think I think that's probably exactly how it happened
I think it's just more likely that it happened before Vermeer died
mm-hmm partly because for example
This is one of Maria Vermeer's paintings and it just seems to me weirdly
uncanny that she seems to be
imitating in detail from a painting that was act a baker a painting that was made when she was just a little girl a
baby, girl
And she would have had to go see at the Baker's now. She probably wouldn't got bread for the family
But the idea that she somehow
Decided suddenly and this painting that seems too perfect for the Baker to even do kind of made to order
Baker painting so to speak. I might might it might be just a coincidence
but I
think if there was that family discussion the other reason why I think it is is because
If they had that discussion sooner than later
they would have had to have made an effort to make sure that nobody knew about her being an apprentice because if the Baker gotten
You into that. It's less likely he would have been
Accepting being fobbed off with paintings like this that they were they were leftover. So, okay
Well, listen, we we've got I think it's a good idea for us to take a break
We could take a 40 minute lunch break right now and come back at
1:30, but I think we have maybe you'll stay for a few minutes and have people can come up and talk to you directly about
things but I think we've certainly laid out the general idea of the theory and
Now, let's see what happens when we when everybody else gets to put their hands on the third rail
