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Luis,

Another great painting.

After looking at the overall composition I am always drawn by details.

Look at the reflection of the cloth in the bottom of the dish and the inside of the lady's sleeve.

Wonderful and with the usual subtle palette.

Luis,

I am sure that it has been said many times before but it stands being said again.

As well as the messages within and the composition of a subject it was an obvious aim of many artists to reflect reality in their work. Photography freed artist to use their imagination in so called modern artforms, abstracts etc. Detail is now often not as nescessary although technology has given the artist a whole new world of macro images to play with.

Art is still a vibrant and ever changing force. We must remember though never to forget the skill and knowledge of those that laid the foundations.

Well I think I can post now the other two paintings by Vermeer that, apart from his Faith, have always intrigued me the most. One of them - The Astronomer - has already been shown by Karen, but I am showing it again below together with The Geographer - which is the other one - as they clearly form a pair. If there could be any doubt about this, both the fact that they were both painted in the same year, 1668, and that they apparently portray the same person, will dispel it. Also, at that time there was a close relationship between Astronomy and Geography.

As usual, you may click on the images to enlarge them.


I pray you take a closer look at the painting on the wall on the Astronomer's back, as it can offer a very likely key to explaining the uncommon choice of subject in these paintings.

But I will let the Complete Catalog of the Painting of Jan Vermeer tell about it.

"The choice of this particular painting-within-a-painting, which represents Moses in the bull rushes, was far from fortuitous. In the Acts of the Apostles, Moses was described "learned in all the wisdom of Egypt." Such wisdom would have no doubt included astronomy in which the Egyptians excelled. Moses was also considered the "oldest geographer" for his leading the Hebrews during their exile and was the patron saint of a type of science which did not seek knowledge through observation and experiment like modern science, but in the return to old sources of wisdom in the ancient civilizations.

Moses also had a particular significance for the Dutch in as much as they considered the United Provinces a kind of new Israel, the Promised Land. Thus, with the inclusion of the Moses painting, Vermeer's Astronomer represents two different types of 17th-century science, the modern beside the ancient.

Curiously, the same painting appears as a prop in Vermeer's late Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, this time, represented much larger than in the Astronomer." (See painting below)

These are very interesting pictures. The light quality in these is particularly crisp. Again those details.

By way of contrast (or similarity) I stumbled upon this PreRaphaelite artists work and was interested to compare window/light and detail. Very different but some similarities. much more English amnd of course many years later, however, that use of side lighting is classic.

Roger

Robert Braithwaite Martineau
"The Last Day in the Old Home" (1862)
Oil on Canvas
The Tate Gallery, London

Roger,

Did you know that Vermeer's Young Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman ("The Music Lesson") is kept in Buckingham Palace, London? There is a note in the Catalog that might interest you.

Miguel

The Music Lesson is frequently inaccessible to the general public. It will hang in Buckingham Palace, in the State Apartments picture gallery for the months of August and September, 2010. Buckingham Palace State Apartments information