The Art of Painting (The Allegory of Painting or Painter in his Studio)

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The Art of Painting (The Allegory of Painting or Painter in his Studio): Johan Vermeer

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Johan Vermeer Oil Painting - The Art of Painting (The Allegory of Painting or Painter in his Studio)

Keywords: Art, Painting, Allegory, Painting, Painter, Studio

Work Overview: The Art of Painting (The Allegory of Painting; Painter in his Studio)
Artist Johannes Vermeer
Year 1665–1668
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 130 cm × 110 cm (51 in × 43 in)
Location Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Art of Painting, also known as The Allegory of Painting, or Painter in his Studio, is a 17th-century oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is owned by the Austrian Republic and is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

This illusionistic painting is one of Vermeer's most famous. In 1868 Thoré-Bürger, known today for his rediscovery of the work of painter Johannes Vermeer, regarded this painting as his most interesting. Svetlana Alpers describes it as unique and ambitious;[1] Walter Liedtke "as a virtuoso display of the artist's power of invention and execution, staged in an imaginary version of his studio ..."[2] According to Albert Blankert "No other painting so flawlessly integrates naturalistic technique, brightly illuminated space, and a complexly integrated composition."[3]

Many art historians think that it is an allegory of painting, hence the alternative title of the painting. Its composition and iconography make it the most complex Vermeer work of all. After Vermeer's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary it is his largest work.

The painting depicts an artist painting a woman dressed in blue posing as a model in his studio. The subject is standing by a window and a large map of the Low Countries hangs on the wall behind. It is signed to the right of the girl "I [Oannes] Ver. Meer", but not dated. Most experts assume it was executed sometime between 1665/1668, but some suggest the work could have been created as late as 1670–1675.[4]

In 1663 Vermeer had been visited by Balthasar de Monconys, but had no painting to show, so it was possibly done "in order to have an outstanding specimen of his art in his studio."[5] Vermeer obviously liked the painting; he never sold it during his lifetime. According to Alpers "it stands as a kind of summary and assessment of what has been done."

The painting has only two figures, the painter and his subject, a woman with downcast eyes. The painter was thought to be a self-portrait of the artist; Jean-Louis Vaudoyer suggested the young woman could be his daughter.[8] The painter sits in front of the painting on the easel, where you can see the sketch of the crown. He is dressed in an elegant black garment with cuts on the sleeves and on the back that offers a glimpse of the shirt underneath. He has short puffy breeches and orange stockings, an expensive and fashionable garment that is also found in other works of the time, as in a well-known self-portrait by Rubens.

The tapestry and the chair, both repoussoirs, lead the viewer into the painting. As in The Allegory of Faith the ceiling can be seen.

Experts attribute symbols to various aspects of the painting. A number of the items, a plaster mask, perhaps representing the debate on paragone,[9] the presence of a piece of cloth, a folio, and some leather on the table have been linked to the symbols of Liberal Arts. The representation of the marble tiled floor and the splendid golden chandelier are examples of Vermeer's craftsmanship and show his knowledge of perspective. Each object reflects or absorbs light differently, getting the most accurate rendering of material effects.

The map, remarkable is the representation of light on it, shows the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands, flanked by 20 views of prominent Dutch cities.[11] It was published by Claes Janszoon Visscher in 1636. This map, but without the city views on the left and right can be seen on paintings by Jacob Ochtervelt and Nicolaes Maes. Similar maps were found in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris [12] and in the Swedish Skokloster.[13] In the top left of the map two women can be seen; one bearing a cross-staff and compasses, while the other has a palette, brush, and a city view in the hand.[14]

Vermeer had a theoretical interest for painting. The subject is presumed to be Fama,[15] Pictura,[16] or Clio,[17] the Muse of History,[18] evidenced by her wearing a laurel wreath, holding a trumpet, possibly carrying a book by Herodotus or Thucydides, which matches the description in Cesare Ripa's 16th century book on emblems and personifications entitled Iconologia.[19][20] However, according to Ripa History should look back [21] and not down as in this painting. Following Vermeer's contemporary Gerard de Lairesse, interested in French Classicism and Ripa, there is another explanation; he mentions history and poetry as the main resources of a painter.[22][23] The woman in blue could be representing poetry,[24][25] pointing to Plutarch who observed that "Simonides calls painting silent poetry and poetry painting that speaks",[26] later paraphrased by the Latin poet Horace as ut pictura poesis. If so, the map is representing history.

The double-headed eagle, symbol of the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire, which possibly adorns the central golden chandelier, may represent the former rulers of the Low Countries. The large map on the back wall has a prominent crease that divides the Seventeen Provinces into the north and south. (West is at the top of the map.) The crease may symbolize the division between the Dutch Republic to the north and southern provinces under Habsburg rule. The map shows the earlier political division between the Union of Utrecht to the north, and the loyal provinces to the south.[28] This interpretation might have appealed to Hitler who owned the painting during the war.[29] According to Liedtke a political interpretation of the map and the Habsburg eagle is unconvincing; they overlook other motives.[30] The map could suggest though that painting has brought fame to the Netherlands;[31] ships sailing over the folds suggest that.

The painting is considered a work with significance for Vermeer because he did not part with it or sell it, even when he was in debt. On 24 February 1676, his widow Catharina bequeathed it to her mother, Maria Thins, in an attempt to avoid the sale of the painting to satisfy creditors.[32] The executor of Vermeer's estate, the famous Delft microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, determined that the transferral of the work to the late painter's mother-in-law was illegal and, according to John Michael Montias, at least a curious transaction.[33] On 15 March 1677 most of his paintings were sold in an auction at the Guild in Delft.[34] It is not known who bought the Art of Painting; perhaps it was Jacob Dissius.[35] It can not determined with certainty whether the painting is quoted in the auction Dissius of 1696 as "Portrait of Vermeer in a room with various accessories." The painting was owned by Gerard van Swieten, and passed into the hands of Gottfried van Swieten.[36] In 1813 it was purchased for 50 florins by the Bohemian-Austrian Count Rudolf Czernin. It was placed on public display in the Czernin Museum in Vienna.

Until 1860, the painting was considered to be by Vermeer's contemporary Pieter de Hooch; Vermeer was little known until the late 19th century. Hooch's signature was even forged on the painting. It was at the intervention of the German art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen that it was recognised as a Vermeer original.

In 1935 Count Jaromir Czernin had tried to sell the painting to Andrew W. Mellon, but the Austrian government prohibited the export of the painting.[39] After the annexation of Austria, Philipp Reemtsma with the help of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring attempted to acquire the painting. The transaction to a private person was refused being cultural heritage.[40] It was finally acquired by Adolf Hitler for the collection of the Linzer Museum at a price of 1.82 million Reichsmark through his agent, Hans Posse on November 20, 1940.[41] The painting was rescued from a salt mine near Altaussee at the end of World War II in 1945, where it was preserved from Allied bombing raids, with other works of art. The painting was escorted to Vienna from Munich by Andrew Ritchie, chief of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFA&A) for Austria, who transported it by locking himself and the painting in a train compartment.[42]

The Americans presented the painting to the Austrian Government in 1946, since the Czernin family were deemed to have sold it voluntarily, without undue force from Hitler. During the early to mid-1950s Czernin continued in his attempts to claim restitution, each time being rejected. In 1958, Vermeer's The Art of Painting was finally moved from temporary status into the permanent collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

In August 2009 a request was submitted by the heirs of the Czernin family to Austria's culture ministry for the return of the painting. A previous request was submitted in 1960s however it was "rejected on the grounds that the sale had been voluntary and the price had been adequate." A 1998 restitution law which pertains to public institutions has bolstered the family's legal position.

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Vermeer himself tells us this in his Art of Painting, his visual testament to his ambitions. The composition shows a painter seated at his easel from behind, dressed in an old-fashioned Netherlandish costume, painting a young girl adorned with laurel and holding a trumpet and book. The painter is often identified as Vermeer based on his comparable hair and costume in his Procuress of 1656.

Since 1949, the girl has been called Clio, the muse of history writing, following the conventional notion that history was the highest category of art. But the mature Vermeer did not paint history. Scholars have also mistranslated documents in which Vermeer’s widow and mother-in-law described a painting “in which ‘Painting’ is being depicted [uytgebeeld, which also means performed as a role, or personified as a character on stage].” The girl personifies Painting [Pictura], holding attributes associated with Painting, while others are arrayed on the table before her. These include a blue and yellow “garment of changing color,” likely the same textile artfully wrapped around her head as Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring, who therefore might also personify Painting. In neither case does she take her job very seriously. In place of “high” historical or allegorical content, Vermeer characterizes Painting through his playful relation to his model as a particular individual that he knows intimately. As a painter of modern life, Vermeer’s greatness lies in the domestic, familial character of his art.

It is the more conservative scholars who apply an anachronistic, premodern paradigm of art as illustrating an institutional (historical) message. Vermeer was instead a pioneer of the modern paradigm of art as expressing the artist’s unique circumstances, experiences, and sensibilities, a paradigm first articulated in texts from the Romantic period. The same period witnessed the founding of the modern discipline of art history, which began to gather individual artists’ oeuvres, relevant facts about their lives, and diverse interpretations of their works, and first “discovered” Vermeer as an unrecognized genius. We continue to pursue these goals today.

Surprisingly, given the number of monographs devoted to Vermeer’s relatively few paintings, no scholar put forward an account of his gradual painting-by-painting development before my 2009 book. Several authors identified the figures who appear repeatedly in his compositions as Vermeer, his wife, his gradually ageing eldest daughters Maria and Elisabeth (Lijsbeth), and even the family maid in Vermeer’s Milkmaid (the suggestion of the historian J.M. Montias and likely inspiration for Chevalier). But no one sought to address Vermeer’s use of family models in a systematic way, and some rejected the possibility altogether.
In his Art of Painting, Young Woman With a Pearl Necklace, and Girl With a Pearl Earring, scholars recognized the same beautiful young model who resembles Vermeer’s wife in earlier compositions. Maria was born around 1654 and would have been 13, 15, and 16 if the paintings in question are dated 1667, 1669, and 1670, respectively. The plainer model in Vermeer’s Girl Writing, Girl With a Guitar, and Lacemaker, who resembles Vermeer in his dated self-portraits, would have been his second daughter, Lijsbeth.

Another crucial dimension involves roughly a fifth of the paintings currently assigned to Vermeer—five in New York City alone—that were based on the same models, objects, and interiors and adapt or combine elements of Vermeer’s compositions but do not correspond to his level of technical mastery, characteristic approaches, or logical development. The failure to identify these “misfit” paintings, which possess their own divergent appeal, has precluded the recognition of Vermeer’s painting-by-painting development and vice versa. Dates now assigned to Vermeer's paintings are also often too early, because they are not based on a painting-by-painting account of his development, include the misfit paintings, and do not take into consideration his models and their approximate ages. Earlier authors had questioned each of these misfits as possibly painted by a pupil or one of his children but did not pursue that possibility or the paintings as a group. Vermeer did not register any pupils, but his follower could have been one of his children, whom he did not need to register, most plausibly Maria. Two misfits, Mistress and Maid in the Frick Collection and Woman With a Lute, were also traded against a huge debt to a baker after the deaths of Vermeer and his patron, who bought Vermeer’s Lacemaker, his last painting. That is, the paintings were sold and possibly produced as forgeries to alleviate the family’s financial straits. Maria’s apprenticeship must therefore have been a family secret. Perhaps partly because of these circumstances, she does not appear to have pursued painting after her marriage and her father’s death.

Most intriguingly, two of the misfit paintings, Girl With a Flute and Girl With a Red Hat, have been associated with or even identified as self-portraits, and together with a third, Girl Interrupted, also in the Frick, appear to portray the same model as Girl With a Pearl Earring. Since the Frick paintings cannot travel, the present exhibition offers the only possibility of comparing the originals in proximity. Did Maria portray herself in these works? If so, despite her technical challenges, she surpassed her father in psychological intimacy. Girl With a Red Hat, which would portray her at about 18 around 1672, also offers an astounding virtuoso display, including what may be the most fascinating (albeit implausible) headgear in the history of art. Her precocious masterpiece, if that is what it is, further mirrors and thereby transforms our experience of her father’s earlier Girl With a Pearl Earring as not just a pretty face or even an image of Vermeer’s daughter, but a portrait—another portrait—of the artist as a young woman.

These ideas, the subject of an all-day symposium at the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University last spring, are admittedly speculations. Yet no one has previously sought to identify the models in these paintings in a systematic way, account for the misfit paintings, or explain Vermeer’s painting-by-painting development. These factors are inextricably linked in the ongoing process of understanding Vermeer’s work, including Girl With a Pearl Earring and might ultimately lead to the discovery of another unrecognized genius.

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The Art of Painting (The Allegory of Painting or Painter in his Studio)

Johan Vermeer

Work Overview