Vermeer

I just watched a new documentary about an exhibition of twenty-seven Vermeer paintings at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It is the largest collection of his works ever assembled. The film, Close To Vermeer, is available on Kanopy, which is a free streaming site from most libraries. There are a few dramatic moments over the authentication of some work attributed to him with art experts, historians, scientists and an art collector weighing in.

The amazing pieces have always fixed my gaze. How he created so much narrative in such a small canvas, how he captured the Delft light and centered women as the focal point, all come together to astonish the eyes and add to the mystery. As my friend said, he revealed rather than depicted. Milkmaid, Girl with A Pearl Earring, Lacemaker, Woman playing the Flute, Love Letter, Woman playing Guitar are just a few of his well-known canvases.

The film calls into question the skepticism of science against the subjective response of the viewer. Yes, the green pigment was not applied in exactly the same fashion in one painting as it was in several others or the subject was at variance here from his usual body of work.

For a man who just spent forty million dollars I suppose these are matters of utmost concern. For the rest of us, who cares? Perhaps there was a copier of the master or maybe he was a mentor to a small group of wannabees or it could even have been painted by one of his daughters.

The detail of both the domestic scenes and even the view of Delft across the water or the street scene is so rich it is best viewed in the close-ups which the film renders. Given the crowds to view at museums one cannot get close enough to do justice to each scene.

Here is a poem I wrote about thirty years ago when Peggy and I returned from a trip to Delft.

 

In This Light

For the maid-servant it was just another chore among chores.

Morning bread, milking and now, the pouring.

For Vermeer secreted in the hallway

it was the sun on her flaxen smock, powdered blue,

his encounter with Delft light bent from the canals

filtered by linden trees from the mullioned windows.

He would still her sudden grace, pacify the noise

of fishmongers and his seven children playing.

There was an adoration in her face

as if the milk were an offering from her breast

fixed in his piercing eyes.

 

Yesterday our Holland trip came back in your photos.

There were the usual artsy and even a few

that died into postcards but there was also

the amazing ordinary which friends might shuffle past:

the elderly woman on the train peeling an apple,

a man in a suit at a sidewalk café,

reading a book, rocking his baby,

or the arrangement of freesia, sandwich and Heineken

as we lunched in our B&B.

How you halt time and the commotion,

compose it with shadow and angle.

The way Vermeer saw bread you see texture

and lift it to new life. You are no Johannes Vermeer,

just a descendant who sees with devotion and reverence.