When we indulge ourselves with the historical Dutch Golden Age, one of the names that appears and leaves a lasting impression is that of Johannes Vermeer. This man though left only a small number of paintings behind, they became a means to travel back in time and briefly understand the chapters of daily life of the period while adoring his once forgotten mastery. While I have previously curated a dedicated read about Vermeer, this article is to explain his work The Art of Painting. But before we begin, I need to mention a very fine book written by Arthur Wheelock, which remarkably presents the art of Vermeer from a historical perspective, emphasizing the artistic revolution of the home city of Delft while examining his paintings in detail. He says that Vermeer was able to simulate reality, simplify and highlight the meaning, and establish a sense of time and permanence while creating an enhanced mood through his extraordinary colors, brushwork, and refinements. Not only does it make the art of Vermeer substantially thorough but it is also one of the beautiful reads of recent times. Let’s now learn about Vermeer’s The Art of Painting.
The Art of Painting | Fast Knowledge
The Art of Painting, also known as The Allegory of Painting, is a 17th-century artwork by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Located in Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, it showcases an artist painting a woman dressed as Cleo with a crown of laurel on her head while she holds a trumpet in her right hand and a book in her left hand.
General Information About the Painting.
1. Artist Statement.
As we lack the personal records of Johannes Vermeer or his paintings, here is a statement that Cacilia Bischoff wrote, that captures my attention every time I read it.
“With great painterly assertion, he raises this “inferior” interior to the ranks of highe start and lends this view of a painter’s work the qualities of an allegory. With his perfect balance of pictorial elements, poetic tranquillity and great sensuality of colour, the artist creates an atmosphere of enormous elegance and harmony.”
2. Subject Matter.
Vermeer painted The Allegory of Painting or The Art of Painting in about 1666/67, forming an absolute climax in this oeuvre. There is a use of detailed reproduction with a sublime dimensional picture with delicate transitions between areas of color. The subject matter of the painting is a young woman who holds a book in one of her hands in the artist’s studio, posing for him as he paints her on his canvas. In this large painting, he further portrays a heavy curtain held aside as if an invisible hand does it, through which the viewer’s eyes get invited to enter the painter’s studio. Alongside these features, the artist sits with his back up, holding his easel as he begins to paint through the top of the canvas. We will learn the entire subject matter in later sections.
3. Artist.
Johannes Vermeer, one of the most significant artists from the Dutch Golden Age, painted The Art of Painting. Vermeer, like Rembrandt or Vincent, is more than a mere painter as he shows his continuous efforts to showcase the young girls as his subjects, portraying them with serenity and soft light effects. Though the individual paintings of the artist are well known in the art world, their cumulative impact is greater because of the stylistic and thematic relationships among them, reinforcing and enhancing each work. The genius of the artist was to capture beauty in simple ways, which encompasses the intimate scenes from lives and moments that reassure us momentary experiences are more beautiful. Despite the intimate poetry by the famous artist Vermeer, we are simply unaware of his personal struggles, which might have affected his life or art. The part of reason can be that we don’t know the life story of the artist. In very few paintings, like View of Delft and The Art of Painting, Vermeer reveals the aspects of his personality and character that were otherwise muted in rest.
4. Date.
Johannes Vermeer composed The Art of Painting in about 1666/67.
5. Provenance.
On 24 February 1676, Vermeer’s widow, Catharina Bolnes, was assigned a painted work by her late husband, which depicted The Art of Painting. Her wife intended to keep this work out from the hands of creditors, but despite her best efforts, a year later, the executor of Vermeer’s estate auctioned off this personal manifesto of the painter. This is why it was impossible to find out what happened to the masterpiece until it resurfaced in Austria in the nineteenth century. Then, in 1813, Johann Rudolph, Count Czernin, brought the painting for a nominal fee, unaware that this artwork belonged to the famous Delft master, Vermeer. It was only in the fall of 1860 that the Berlin museum director Gustav Waagen recognized The Art of Painting as the authentic Vermeer. As a consequence, the painting’s history mirrors that of Vermeer himself: he was a minor celebrity in the seventeenth century but languished in obscurity in the eighteenth until he was rediscovered in the nineteenth. The composition expressed the high ideals of the artist about his trade and calling.
6. Location.
The painting is on exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
7. Technique and Medium.
The painting has a medium of oil on canvas. It is the illusionism of The Art of Painting that provides a framework for the thematic interaction between the model and the artist. There is a use of linear perspective in the elaborated conceived interiors, which Vermeer provided through his masterful observations of light illuminating the figures and rest of the room. And finally, there is a use of symbolism, which we will learn in later sections of the article. There is the use of impastos with darker and thinner strokes of ocher in the shadows in the painting, portraying the illusion of object in it.
| Artist | Johannes Vermeer |
| Year Painted | 1666-7 |
| Genre | Allegorical Painting |
| Period | Dutch Golden Age |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 120 x 100 cm, Framed: 152.5 x 133.5 x 10.5 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Kunsthistorisches Museum |
Detailed Description of The Art of Painting.
About the Artist: Johannes Vermeer.
Among the greatest exponents of genre paintings depicting scenes from everyday life in elegant bourgeois settings is the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is estimated that thirty-six of his paintings have survived to date. However, some scholars have cut that number by rejecting some of the attributions. A majority of the paintings depict domestic interiors with figures engaged in simple activities. There are also two religious paintings, one mythological scene, two city views, two allegories, and four studies of heads. Due to the absence of a biographer, we know very little about Vermeer’s life despite systematic archival studies. However, the research revealed an intriguing picture of his family’s history over three generations. Aside from notarial deeds and other legal documents, Vermeer appears as a minor figure in this context.
There is a good reason to believe that the artistic production of Vermeer was really brief as only three of his paintings were recorded in the documents as the property of the painter’s widow, and in the 1696 exhibition of Amsterdam, twenty-one more were listed in the catalog of an auction of paintings. At the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, another five paintings were included in the auction catalog. Hence, we understand that he had limited production. Many contemporaries of him rewarded his painstaking work with higher prices. For instance, the French nobleman, Balthasar de Monconys, who visited the Delft briefly in 1663, wrote,
“I saw the painter Vermeer, who did not have any of his work: but we did see one at a baker’s for which six hundred livres had been paid, although it contains but a single figure for which six pistoles would have been too high a price in my opinion.”
One of the known facts about Vermeer is that the professions of being an artist and art dealer were not clear about him, as Vermeer always documented himself as a painter in legal documents, but usually, many painters listed themselves as dealers or merchants. Talking about the early work of Vermeer, when he was a child, Delft was not the significant center of Dutch painting. Before 1650, when he turned eighteen, the new artistic currents originated in Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht, and Leiden. In the Delft, when he was in his youth, Bramer was the most admired local painter in the area, so it might be possible that Vermeer studied with him. However, Vermeer’s style of art was much different for the entire seventeenth century, which led us to sense doubt his initial teachings. One of the problems in finding other artworks by the artist is that he dated only three of his works- The Procuress, dated 1656, Astronomer, dated 1668, and The Geographer, dated 1669.
Historical Background of The Allegory of Painting.
I have already told you that certain creditors, such as her mother, were angry about Catharina’s prior disposition of paintings, which they believed would prejudice the interests of other creditors. Catharina protested loudly when her mother, Maria, told her to sell The Art of Painting at auction despite her desire to save it.
The painting does not have a much-prolonged provenance as we do not know under what conditions Vermeer painted The Art of Painting. But I am tracing the historical events around the period of the 1660s so that I can tell you a few possible reasons.
In 1661, the construction of new quarters for the Delft Guild of Saint Luke began on the Voldersgracht, directly behind the Vermeer’s house. The classicizing facade of the new building had a surmounting of the bust of Apelles, a painter of antiquity, and the interiors were decorated with allegorical representations of paintings, architecture, and sculpture. In the same period, Bramer was one of the officers of the guild, and in the following year, Vermeer got the title, serving the board in 1662, 63, 70, and 71. Consequently, he must have been involved, if not in the planning of the building but in its decorations, including the symbol representation of the arts. It was at this period that Vermeer painted The Art of Painting (approximately).
Lastly, the clear proof of the fact that the painting is an allegory was given by the title in the document of 1676: De Schilderkunst or The Art of Painting. Instead of a descriptive title, it focussed on the meaning of the painting, showing that the picture has a representation of an artist at an easel depicting a woman dressed as Clio, the muse of history, and other significant compositional components like a map, tapestry, and chandelier to incorporate the Vermeer’s conviction about the meaning and significance of The Art of Painting.
Understanding the Meaning of The Art of Painting.
The Art of Painting was considered a realistic glimpse into a painter’ studio, and Theophile Thore even speculated erroneously that it might be the portrait of Vermeer, but today, it is recognized as an allegorical painting.
Cesare Ripa, one of the influential Italian inventors and explicator of symbols, wrote in the Iconologia about The Art of Painting to portray its symbols. He wrote,
“the mask and the ape show the imitation of human activities.”
The painter’s costume is medieval rather than contemporary, and so to a seventeenth-century viewer, the painter was dressed in an antique way. The woman, Clio posing for him, who wears a laurel wreath, carrying a book and trumpet showcases the Muse of history. Hence, the artist shows the allegorical painting with different meanings attributed to his art style, which was new for the viewers, compared to his previous works. Vermeer expressing the idea of history painting as a symbolic guise was the artist’s noblest calling. Clio wears a wreath of laurel, which never withers, and is accompanied by a trumpet. Then, the map in the background, which depicts the Netherlands, alludes to the fame and importance of Netherlandish painting. One of the significant things to note is that the artist did not portray political divisions in the Netherlands, instead, he portrayed it as a single entity.
Next, in The Allegory of Painting, Vermeer combines the delicate attention to detail exhibited in his three earlier works of women with the complex spatial effects exhibited in the Music lesson. There is no other piece that so flawlessly integrates naturalistic technique, brightly illuminated space, and complex composition. Though the intellectual ideas, which the painting portrays have deeply ingrained tradition, the interpretation of Vermeer is unique. Rather than presenting it as a single theme allegorical figure, Vermeer developed abstract concepts from the specific realities he had come to rely upon for inspiration. This allegory takes place in a recognizable room filled with objects taken from daily life. Thus, the artist immortalizes the muse of history through this painting, for she guided an artist’s aspirations to record the higher reaches of the human mind throughout history. The seventeenth-century painters believed that painting could only achieve its highest achievement by combining abstract concepts of human behavior with allegories and representations derived from the Bible and mythology. Despite the apparent disconnection between this ideal and Vermeer’s genre scenes and landscapes, his art had always attempted to probe those essential truths of human existence beneath the surface of reality.
Subject Matter and Dominant Elements.
The subject matter of the painting is a woman- Clio as a model with a book and trumpet of frame in her hand in the artist’s studio where Vermeer is seated with his easel to paint her in the studio, filled with objects like maps, chandelier, curtains, etc.
To understand the subject matter of the painting in detail, let us look through the elements and figures one by one.
The lady is dressed as Clio with a crown of laurel on her head to portray honor, glory, and eternal life, with one hand holding a trumpet of fame and another clasping a thick tome, perhaps a volume of Thucydides, symbolizing history. Vermeer posed her in the guise of the allegorical figure to connect the muse of history with life and significance. The figure of Clio combines the meanings of artistic vision, intellectual and emotional associations of history, fame, and honor traditionally brought to her in this painting. Standing motionless, Clio has a young face with her eyelids lowered and mouth slightly open to depict serenity and tranquility. To give her further visual stability while enhancing her visual importance, Vermeer positioned her near the left side of the wall map with the tints of sunlight over her. Her head is carefully placed at the juncture of the vertical and horizontal borders of the map, coinciding knob of her trumpet with the outer edge of the wall map. Wearing blues, she has a flesh tone on her face, which harmonizes with the soft tonalities of the map’s variegated colors.
The background of the painting consists of a shiny golden chandelier, a Netherlandish map without political divisions, a table, a chair, and drapes with great artistry. The painter, Vermeer sits on his seat to paint the model on the canvas with his easel, showing his back as he wears classic medieval clothes. The painting showcased the proclamation of the Vermeer’s presence and his control. Vermeer constructed an artifice whose meaning needs to be carefully considered in this theater of large tapestries pulled back on the left. The artist showing himself in his work constructs a kind of view to the beholder’s eyes to reveal the creative process behind the art of painting. The elegant costume with a distinctive doublet with slits across his back and sleeves elevates a great level of fine craftsmanship. Talking about the map, it represents the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands and its major cities and has the Latinized name, Nicolaum Piscatorem on the upper right edge. Symbolically, it is not merely a map but an object that alludes to recent Dutch history. Further, he adds a chandelier to portray excellent and elegant craftsmanship.
Now, Vermeer might have included a chandelier with the map to give a framework to the essential core of the painting.
Formal Analysis of The Art of Painting.
1. Line.
The painting showcases the profusion of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines with the use of linear perspective. In The Art of Painting, Vermeer uses diagonal lines through the position of the book in Clio’s hand, the edges of the drawing board, and the edge of the table. At the same time, he uses horizontal lines to display calmness and serenity in the painting. Talking about the linear perspective used in the artwork, the artist took the vanishing point in a small pinprick near Clio’s hand, reinforcing the direction of the artist’s gaze as he prepared to record her on his canvas.
2. Light and Space.
Vermeer used the illusionistic character of the image through the firm foundation of perspective and awareness of optical laws. Through the overlapping of the corner of the map, Clio’s trumpet, and the large book on the table, the viewer is urged to push a little to reveal more room in the artwork, convincing us to see the lesser space Vermeer put into the composition. Talking about the light, Vermeer used a triangle of light over the left side of the painting, taking Clio inside, by which the beholder’s eyes first focus on her. Similar to this, the artist’s canvas shows light and darkness as well.
3. Color.
Vermeer has used a variety of colors, folds, and textures in the painting, portraying the balance and harmony of a perfect artist’s studio. The model, Clio wears a blue dress with warm and fleshy skin, harmonizing the hues of the wall map behind her. With such cleverness, Vermeer gave prominence inside the artworks through the black beret, hair, jacket, and pantaloons against the regular geometric shapes of the easel, painting, map, and wall. He used short strokes of varying shades of white, blue, red, and green to convey the design and nuances of light. He portrayed the light in such clarity that the chandelier or the blue dress literally reflects off the light from their irregular surfaces.
Conclusion and Opinions.
Bleywijck listed Vermeer as one of the artists active in Delft, thereby not including a single word about his artworks. To us, the history of Delft would have remained in an indistinguishable form, but through this allegory painting, The Art of Painting, the emphasis on the anonymous experiences by the artist during his lifetime brings glory to his homeland. The painting is not just a masterpiece because of its colors and excellent rendering but also the theoretical concepts, which Vermeer didn’t miss to underlie.
Resources.
- Vermeer of Delft: Complete Edition of the Paintings by Albert Blanket.
- Vermeer by Roberta D’Adda.
- Johannes Vermeer, National Gallery of Art.
- Vermeer of Delft: His Life and Times by Michel P. Van.
- Vermeer and The Art of Painting by Arthus K. Wheelock Jr.
- Featured Image: The Art of Painting by Johannes Vermeer, Johannes Vermeer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Frequently Asked Questions.
Johannes Vermeer, the artist of the Dutch Golden Age, painted The Art of Painting in 1666-7. The painting subjects a young lady dressed as Cleo, posing with soft expressions as the artist paints her starting from the top of the canvas.
The Allegory of Painting or The Art of Painting is an allegorical painting from the Dutch Golden Age.
For a long time, The Art of Painting was believed to exhibit a look inside the painter’s studio until only Cesare Ripa, an Italian inventor and explicator of symbols, mentioned that the composition is a symbolic representation of history. In the composition, Johannes Vermeer, or the artist is dressed in an antique manner, and the woman, or Cleo, is the Muse of history.
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