discoveries from the Vermeer symposium in Amsterdam

Coinciding with its present Vermeer retrospective (till 4 June), the Rijksmuseum held a symposium in Amsterdam on 28-29 March, bringing collectively specialists from all over the world. This provided an uncommon alternative to share the newest developments in Vermeer scholarship. In a area that has been completely researched over the previous 30 years, it’s astonishing that a lot new info emerged. Final week, we revealed the invention of a possible self-portrait, hidden beneath paint in A Maid Asleep. Right here we current some extra of crucial discoveries.

Lady with a Pearl Earring—in 100 billion pixels

Vermeer’s hottest portray, Lady with a Pearl Earring (round 1664-67, Mauritshuis, The Hague), has been reexamined utilizing the newest scientific strategies. The outcomes, that are being analysed by the conservator Abbie Vandivere and a world workforce, can be offered to guests in a show opening on 8 June, entitled Who’s that Lady?

We are able to report that state-of-the-art imaging, together with 3D digital microscopy, has produced a picture made with over 100 billion pixels. On-line viewers will be capable to zoom in and see huge element, with even particular person pigment particles seen. A four-metre-high 3D picture of the portray can be proven within the Mauritshuis lobby.

Pc scientists are additionally engaged on a digital visualisation of how the portray might need regarded when it left the artist’s easel. Behind the woman, Vermeer initially painted a inexperienced curtain, however the blue and yellow pigments have light, leaving the current greyish-black plain background.

There have additionally been color modifications to the shadows on the precise facet of the woman’s scarf. These would initially have appeared hotter in tone, making the rounded type of her head extra lifelike. Her face would have been redder, significantly within the shadows. So the woman would have appeared extra vivid and three-dimensional.

As for the pearl, Vandivere describes it as “an phantasm—it has no contour—and in addition no hook to hold it from the woman’s ear: it’s just some brushstrokes of lead white.” We lately reported on our web site {that a} pearl this dimension would have been astronomically costly, speculating that the woman might be depicted with a glass bauble.

A web page in a e book recognized

Evelyne Verheggen, a College of Antwerp researcher, has recognized the open e book that seems in Vermeer’s Allegory of the Catholic Religion (round 1670-74, Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, New York, beneath). It’s the 1640 version of Legende der Heylighen (legends of the saints) by Pedro Ribadineira and Heribert Rosweyde (left, high: a element from the portray; left, backside: a photograph of the e book).

She was additionally in a position to determine the web page it’s opened to within the portray, p.546, which incorporates the textual content on Hugo of Lincoln, who died in 1200. Hugo is commemorated on 17 November, which occurs to be the date when the French military was compelled to withdraw from Utrecht in 1673. If certainly there’s a hyperlink with the Hugo web page, as Verheggen suspects, then the relationship of the portray ought to arguably be narrowed down from 1670-74 to late 1673 or 1674. Verheggen believes that the subject material of Vermeer’s portray just isn’t “religion” (as mirrored in its conventional title), however extra particularly Mary Magdalene. She sees the determine of the girl as representing the Magdalene, “a personification of the religious Catholic ladies, praying”.

Vermeer’s feminine patron

In February The Artwork Newspaper revealed that Vermeer’s major patron was a lady: Maria van Ruijven, fairly than her husband Pieter. We are able to now report additional proof, offered on the symposium by Judith Noorman, a College of Amsterdam artwork historian.

The doc is a 1664 codicil to Maria’s will. It was already identified {that a} yr later she bequeathed 500 guilders to Vermeer. However the newly found document reveals that the bequest was extra longstanding.

The codicil, found within the Leiden archives, is necessary for one more motive: Maria gave one portray “of his personal alternative” to a buddy, Nicolaes van Assendelft. Maria and Nicolaes appear to have shared a mutual love of artwork.

Noorman, who’s researching ladies’s impression on the Dutch artwork market, instructed the symposium: “The explanation why Maria has been neglected and why Pieter has obtained many of the consideration, is as a result of he, as a person, was simpler to put and perceive in a person’s world.”

A brand new Vermeer doc

A Dutch scholar, Rozemarijn Landsman (from New York’s Columbia College), has simply found a beforehand unknown archival doc with Vermeer’s signature. This pertains to the bequest of land to the artist’s spouse Catharina Bolnes. Full particulars can be printed in Landsman’s forthcoming article within the artwork historical past journal Oud Holland. With Vermeer, each archival reference is necessary.

Is Philadelphia’s Guitar Participant a thirty eighth Vermeer?

Arie Wallert, a former Rijksmuseum scientific specialist, instructed the symposium about his investigations into one other model of The Guitar Participant (the universally accepted model, of round 1670-72, is at Kenwood, in London). The opposite model (above) is on the Philadelphia Museum of Artwork, the place it has been languishing in retailer because it was downgraded in 1927.

As The Artwork Newspaper reported on its web site in April, Wallert believes his technical examination means that the Philadelphia portray just isn’t solely a Seventeenth-century work, however is definitely “a portray by Vermeer”. The 2 compositions are just about the identical, aside from one key distinction, the guitar participant’s coiffure.

Sasha Suda, the director of the Philadelphia museum, feedback: “The way forward for our Girl with a Guitar can be to encourage dialogue, embracing scholarship, and to hunt extra information and enlightenment from this mysterious portray practically 350 years after its creation”.