Vermeer's Remarkably Small World

Perhaps you've seen the superb Johannes Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum or, more likely, you've been frustrated by failing to get tickets. Whichever it is, you know the pictures, but how much do you know about the painter himself and the world he lived in? You'll learn so much more if you head to the Museum Prinsenhof in his home city for their show Vermeer's Delft.

It was a remarkably small world; Delft in the middle of the 17th century was a little town by our standards, with just over 20,000 inhabitants. But despite that, Delft was a hub for art and science in the remarkably sophisticated society of the Dutch Golden Age. This exhibition throws light on the life of Vermeer the man, who spent all his 43 years living either on Delft's main square, or just off it, and demonstrates the influences on Vermeer the painter through the artworks and objects that surrounded him.   

There are no Vermeer paintings in this show, but you'll see works by other artists who were active in the city or which feature in his pictures; there are fabrics and furnishings of the sort you'll encounter in his art, and there's a lot of documentation to elucidate what we know about his life. It's all very thoroughly explained and beautifully done. 

 

We quickly learn of Vermeer's early background: His father was an innkeeper who also dealt in art works. Johannes was born in 1632 and grew up first at an inn called De Vliegende Vos (The Flying Fox) on the Voldersgracht, just off the main marketplace, and then at another inn, the Mechelen, on the square itself. So he was exposed to art and artists from an early age, though it's not known who taught him to draw and paint. 

In 1653, Vermeer became a member of the Guild of St Luke, the professional artists' society, so he must have completed an apprenticeship, though we don't know who with. And in the same year, he got married, to a Catholic, Catharina Bolnes. In Protestant Holland, Catholics led a semi-underground existence. It's possible Vermeer converted to satisfy his mother-in-law, Maria Thins; whatever the case, the newlyweds moved in with her on Oude Langendijk, on the other side of the market square. 

The following year, Delft was hit by an absolutely cataclysmic event: The underground store containing the gunpowder for the city's defence -- 80,000 pounds of explosives -- blew up on the morning of October 12, leaving a crater 5 metres deep. Almost every house was damaged. Many died, including the painter Carel Fabritius, today most famous for his picture The Goldfinch in the Mauritshuis, and many more were injured. They heard the explosion on the island of Texel, 120 kilometres away.  

The painter of this depiction of the tragedy was Egbert van der Poel, who had moved from Rotterdam to Delft in 1650 (his father's second wife was one of Vermeer's aunts). Van der Poel lost a child in the explosion, and you can see a printed copy of the report into the blast in the exhibition, with the child listed among the dead (along with Fabritius). Van der Poel returned to Rotterdam and painted the disaster over and over again.

One of Vermeer's earliest paintings is The Procuress, and there was very probably a picture on the same theme and with that title on the wall at his mother-in-law's house, by Dirck van Baburen, one of the Utrecht artists who were followers of Caravaggio. You can have the girl, the old woman is saying, but you've got to pay up first. Doesn't seem a terribly appropriate painting for the household of a devout Catholic, does it? 

It's back in Delft for this show from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and it's of particular relevance in Vermeer's oeuvre, because it turns up as a painting within a painting, hanging on the back wall of two of his interiors. One is The Concert, stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, also in Boston, in the notorious 1990 heist, and the other is A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (on display in the current Rijksmuseum show). Perhaps Vermeer intended this as a moral warning, or perhaps he didn't. 

As you go through the Prinsenhof galleries, you find yourself drawn deeper into Vermeer's world, with the supersized reproductions of his work on the walls adding to the atmosphere. Marvel at the fine fabrics from the studio of the Delft weaver Maximilian van der Gucht with their intricate floral patterns, of the sort you observe in chairs and the carpet-like table coverings in Vermeer's paintings. He had them at home -- six upholstered chairs formed part of the inventory of his estate. 

And, on the left of the photo above, a mirror that is a wonderful work of art in its own right.  At the bottom Cornelis de Man has painted a pearl necklace tumbling out of a jewellery box next to a powder brush on a shelf that is a triumph of trompe l'oeil. You feel some lady is about to return to complete her toilette. Around the mirror are putti, one of whom is pulling aside a curtain to reveal your reflection. But surely even Narcissus would be deterred from staring at himself too long in the glass by the grimacing satyr looking down from the top of the frame. 

Delft was a city full of art; we encounter the notary Willem de Langue -- the Vermeer family were among his clients -- and his wife Maria Pijnacker. They were art collectors, and not just any old art. When de Langue put his extensive collection up for auction in 1655, we see from the printed notice of sale (on show here) that it included a Rembrandt.... and a Jan van Eyck. Vermeer will have been familiar with these works and more, inspiring that unique style which so often combines an air of mystery and silence with the differing intensities of shadows and light cast from windows and areas of white luminosity.

Among Delft painters we've mentioned Fabritius, and let's not forget Pieter de Hooch, celebrated at the Prinsenhof a few years ago with a fantastic retrospective. But other artists in the city were experimenting and introducing new ideas and techniques.

From about 1650, Gerard Houckgeest used a sophisticated new perspective involving two vanishing points to make architectural painting appear more true-to-life, more three-dimensional (David Hockney has, we presume, looked into this at some stage). Other Delft painters, including Vermeer, were quick to pick up on his innovation. It has to be said, though, that Houckgeest didn't get it quite right in this view of William the Silent's tomb in the Nieuwe Kerk on Delft's main square, with the tiles at the bottom right seeming to slope away rather alarmingly to somewhere outside the frame. 

Also among Delft's painters of note: Maria van Oosterwijck, painter of floral still lifes, and represented here with a bouquet from the Mauritshuis. Women painters couldn't join the Guild of St Luke, but those flower paintings were highly prized and sold for large sums. 

Jan Steen was in Delft too. He rented a brewery on the rather upmarket street-with-a-canal-running-down-it, the Oude Delft. And in 1655, he painted the portrait of the grain merchant who lived across the canal, Adolf Croeser, and his 13-year-old daughter Catharina. The Oude Kerk, with its out-of-kilter spire (The Leaning Tower of Delft; who knew?) is in the background. 

 

As Croeser sits on the steps in front of his house, he's approached by an old woman and a small child, seeking alms. Because while 17th-century Holland comes down to us looking all neat and tidy and middle-class with lots of paintings on the walls, there was plenty of poverty around. Not in Vermeer's paintings, though. 

But in his life. Vermeer and Catharina had 15 children. That's a lot of mouths to feed, a lot of bread to eat. And Vermeer wasn't exactly a prolific painter, knocking out canvases just like that. French diplomat and art lover Balthasar de Monconys visited Delft in August 1663 to see Vermeer in his studio. But Vermeer didn't have any work to show him; he had to send him round to the baker, who had one of his paintings on the wall.  

Things got bad in 1672; the Dutch found themselves at war with their neighbours, the economy collapsed, and the art market with it. Vermeer died suddenly three years later. 

He was buried in the Oude Kerk -- there's the record in the recently discovered burial register above -- with 14 pallbearers and bells tolling. It must have cost a few guilders, but in fact there was not enough money left in the estate to pay the customary tax towards poor relief. And they still owed the baker more than 600 guilders, equivalent to more than three years' worth of bread. Catharina gave him two paintings as collateral. She never got them back.  

Practicalities

Vermeer's Delft is on at the Museum Prinsenhof in Delft until June 4. The museum is open daily from 1100 to 1700, and full-price tickets cost 13.50 euros. Book ahead with a timeslot online here. We spent 1 3/4 hours going round this exhibition; there's quite a lot of detail and documents to take in, alongside an exploration of other themes such as contemporary scientific advances.  

The Prinsenhof is located on Sint Agathaplein, right next to the Oude Kerk. If you're travelling from The Hague, tram 1 takes around 20 minutes and stops right outside. From Amsterdam, frequent trains to Delft take somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour (9292.nl gives you times for public transport across the Netherlands) and Delft station is less than 10 minutes walk from the museum.

While you're in the Prinsenhof....

After briefly being distracted by the story of the murder of William the Silent, the first Prince of Orange, in the Prinsenhof, then his residence, in 1584 (you can see the bullet holes in the wall) and the gruesome torture and execution of his pro-Spanish assassin, you may wish to venture upstairs to see the permanent collection; there are paintings by Golden-Age Delft artists, including church interiors by Houckgeest and others, and of course plenty of Delft Blue pottery. 

Images

Exhibition views courtesy Museum Prinsenhof Delft; photos: Marco de Swart
Egbert van der Poel (1621-1664), Explosion of the Gunpowder Store at Delft, after 1654, Museum Prinsenhof Delft, on loan from the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency
Dirck van Baburen (1590/95-1624), The Procuress, 1622, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
Gerard Houckgeest (1600-1661), Ambulatory of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, with the Tomb of William the Silent, 1651, Mauritshuis, The Hague
Jan Steen (1626-1679), Adolf and Catharina Croeser, Known as ‘The Burgomaster of Delft and his Daughter’, 1655, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Registration of Vermeer in burial register, 1675, City Archives Delft; photo: Marco de Swart