Does the Philadelphia Museum of Art hold an unknown Vermeer?

May a nearly unknown Vermeer portray be languishing within the storeroom of the Philadelphia Museum of Artwork? His footage are very uncommon and curators of the present Rijksmuseum retrospective Vermeer (till 4 June) state that there are solely 37 surviving works.

Arie Wallert, a former Rijksmuseum scientific specialist, advised a symposium in Amsterdam that he believes there’s another. He’s satisfied that there are two variations of the younger girl taking part in a guitar: the long-accepted portray at Kenwood Home, in north London, and a really related composition that has been within the Philadelphia museum’s shops for practically a century.

Philadelphia’s Woman with a Guitar was assumed to be the unique, till the Kenwood model emerged in 1927. However as a result of Kenwood’s The Guitar Participant was in significantly higher situation and appeared genuine, it was rapidly accepted because the prime model.

As Vermeer was not believed to have had a studio or followers, and no different contemporaneous copies of his works are identified, the Philadelphia image was then downgraded as a later copy. It has by no means been displayed within the museum’s important galleries and has very not often been reproduced in color (the museum’s web site solely has a black-and-white picture).

Wallert, who examined Philadelphia’s Woman with a Guitar and analysed paint samples, believes it’s not solely a Seventeenth-century work, however is definitely “a portray by Vermeer”.

He recognized traces of ultramarine, an costly pigment utilized by the grasp, in addition to lead-tin yellow, which went out of use in round 1700. He describes the pigments he discovered as “mixtures that no person else used on the time”.

Wallert additionally made a exact comparability of the 2 footage, that are the identical dimension, and he believes that they had been each comprised of the identical working drawing, which is now misplaced.

The compositions are nearly the identical, aside from one key distinction: the woman’s coiffure. Though Wallert has not commented on it, it not being his specialist area, the corkscrew ringlets within the Kenwood image had been worn in Vermeer’s time, though they’d have been sophisticated to look after. If each work are certainly by Vermeer then it’s tough to elucidate why he selected to painting two quite totally different hairstyles.

Sadly, the Philadelphia portray is in what Wallert describes as a “stunning” situation. A lot of the highest layers of paint have been abraded, most likely attributable to over-cleaning earlier than it entered the museum in 1933. The portray was final conserved in 1973, when outdated varnish and retouching was eliminated, revealing appreciable floor injury and an outdated tear within the decrease proper.

The earliest agency provenance for the Philadelphia image seems to be the Cremer assortment in Brussels within the nineteenth century. It was later acquired by the Pennsylvania lawyer John Johnson, who died in 1917.

The standing of Philadelphia’s Woman with a Guitar will now want additional reassessing, following current investigations at Washington, DC’s Nationwide Gallery of Artwork. The Washington specialists have controversially argued that their very own Woman with a Flute was made within the “studio of Vermeer” (relationship it to 1669-75), a shock since till now it has been assumed that Vermeer labored by himself, with out assistants. The Rijksmuseum rejects the Washington conclusion and is presently exhibiting the Woman with a Flute (1664-67) as by the grasp.

But when the existence of a studio is accepted, then it might open the door to contemplating Philadelphia’s Woman with a Guitar as a piece by somebody near Vermeer, quite than as Wallert argues, by the grasp.

Kenwood’s prime model, now dated to round 1670-72, is among the many artist’s ultimate works. It couldn’t be offered within the Rijksmuseum’s present Vermeer exhibition, since its fragile situation made it too dangerous to journey.

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