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Vermeer Newsletter no. 46

Jan 13, 2023

Essential Vermeer Newsletters

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Hi
Jonathan Janson

IN BRIEF

exhibitions

  1. 2023 Amsterdam Vermeer retrospective tickets now available
  2. The Lacemaker exhibited in Dallas Texas
  3. The National Gallery of Art stages a Vermeer-related  exhibition and proclaims the Girl with Flute is not by Vermeer
  4. Vermeer's Milkmaid: Discoveries
  5. The Frick Collection publishes the most comprehensive study to date on Vermeer and maps
  6. Dutch Vermeer-related reality show: De Nieuwe Vermeer

in brief:
1. 2023 Amsterdam Vermeer retrospective
2. Vermeer-related exhibiton in Delft

1.
VEMEER RETROSPECTIVE
Johannes Vermeer
February 10–June 4, 2023 (daily 9:00 to 18:00)
Museumstraat 1, 1071 XX Amsterdam
<https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/vermeer>

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam will stage the world's largest Vermeer exhibition ever beginning February 8, 2023

The exhibition will feature 28 paintings by Vermeer (click here for full list)  include masterpieces such as The Girl with a Pearl Earring , The Geographer, Frankfurt am Main), Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid  and Woman Holding a Balance . Works never before shown to the public in the Netherlands will include the newly restored  Girl Reading a Letter at an Open WIndow from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.

Please note:   Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring of the Mauritshuis (The Hague)  will be exhibited  at the Amsterdam retrospective only until 1 April, while the other two Vermeer paintings of the Mauritshuis collection, View of Delft and Diana and her Companions, will stay until the end of the exhibition. The Girl with a Pearl Earring should be again on view at the Mauritshuis from 2 April.

The research for this exhibition focuses on Vermeer’s artistry, his cartistic choices and motivations for his compositions, as well as into the creative process of his paintings. Researchers work closely with the Mauritshuis in The Hague. A team of curators, restorers and natural scientists to examine in depth the seven paintings by Vermeer in Dutch possession, including The Milkmaid, The Little Street, The Love Letter and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. Works by Vermeer from other collections are also involved in this project.

According to Taco Dibbits, due to the fragility of Vermeer's canvases coupled with the growing competition among museums for loans a show on this scale, which is likely not to happen again, will provide a new generation of researchers and public a unique chance to study many of Vermeer's major works side by side. The Rijksmuseum is working closely with the Mauritshuis with a team of curators, restorers and natural scientists to examine in depth the seven paintings by Vermeer in Dutch possession. Works by Vermeer from other collections are also involved in this project.

Parallel to the Vermeer exhibition in the Rijksmuseum, Museum Prinsenhof Delft will stage the exhibition The Delft of Vermeer (10 February–4 June, 2023). This will be the first ever exhibition to explore in depth the cultural-historical context in which Vermeer’s practice flourished. Works by Delft contemporaries are displayed alongside Delft pottery, Delft carpets, archival materials and letters.

TICKETS

All tickets must have a start time. Only Friends of the Museum can come when they want without booking.

<https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/tickets/articles>

ACCESSIBILITY

  • Guide dogs allowed
  • Wheelchair access
  • Lifts on every floor
  • Free cloak room
  • Photography allowed
  • Free WiFi

RIJKSMUSEUM FRIENDS

  • € 50 per year or one individual. Upon online purchase you will receive a pick-up voucher to collect your Friendship card in the museum at cash desk number 1 (a priority lane desk). Friendship card gives you all benefits for 1 year and is valid for 1 person.

FRIENDSHIP FOR TWO

<https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/support/friendships/friends>

  • € 75 per year for 2. Upon online purchase you will receive a pick-up voucher to collect your Friendship card in the museum at cash desk number 1 (a priority lane desk). Friendship card gives you all benefits for 1 year and is valid for 2 persons.

    • BENEFITS FOR FRIENDS

    • Unlimited and free access to the museum and all exhibitions, the shop and Café
    • Visit whenever want without booking a start time
    • Use of Friends Fast Lane and Friends Cloakroom
    • Invitations to previews, evening openings and other Friends activities
    • More than 50 online interviews, lectures and tours exclusively for Friends
    • 15% discount in the museum shop and web shop (excluding books)
    • 10% discount in the Rijksmuseum Café

    FRIENDS GET INVITATIONS TO:

    • Previews of major exhibition
    • Evening openings and (digital) lectures
    • Pre-registration for public activities (lectures, courses, workshops)
    • With a Friendship for 2 you can always bring a guest to the museum.
    • Friendship can be bought online at the museum or online. Friendship membership bought online can be collected at the museum. It is also possible to make a gift to someone else.

    RENEWAL

    • Friendship is valid for one year after the first use. At the end of this year the Rijksmuseum will as members if they would like to renew the Friendship.

    TERMS AND CONDITIONS

    FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

    • How many works from his oeuvre (that we know) will there be? Never before have so many works been collected. At least 27 works at the moment.
    • What are the opening hours? The exhibition is open every day from 9 am to 6 pm.
    • Do you need a reservation? Yes, everyone must book a tee time in advance, except Friends of the Rijksmuseum. As a Friend you always have free access and you do not have to reserve a start time.
    • How long can you stay? As long as you want, the exhibition closes at 6 pm.
    • What does a ticket cost?
    • Does a ticketfor the exhibition include a visit to the Rijksmuseum itself? Yes. The entire museum is open until 5 pm, the exhibition until 6 pm.
    • Is photography allowed? In the Rijksmuseum it is allowed to take pictures without a flash.
    • Do you expect many visitors? Interest will be great. We offer a limited number of tickets because we want to guarantee the quality of everyone's visit. We recommend booking in time.
    • Are you considering extended opening hours? The exhibition is open an hour longer (6 pm instead of 5 pm)
    • Can tours be booked? No guided tours are offered.
    • Is there an audio tour? No, no audio tour is provided.
    • Are there special moments/programs for people with disabilities? Two ornings with fewer place

    PRESS

        • The Guardian - "For Vermeer fanatics like me, 2023 will be a year when dreams come true"
        • The Washington Post - "So Vermeer did not paint ‘Girl With a Flute.’ Why think less of it?"
        • The New York Times - "Peering Under Vermeers Without Peeling Off the Paint"
        • The New York Times - "Vermeer Did Not Paint ‘Girl with a Flute,’ National Gallery of Art Reveals"
        •  Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 14:2 - "Vermeer’s Studio and the Girl with a Flute: New Findings from the National Gallery of Art"
        • The Art Newspaper - "Rijksmuseum upgrades three Vermeers ahead of blockbuster show—but not everyone agrees."

    Amsterdam Travel Ticket
    <https://www.holland.com/global/tourism/information/public-transport/amsterdam-region-travel-ticket.htm>
    The Amsterdam & Region Travel Ticket gives you full access to buses, trams, trains and metro anywhere in the Amsterdam region for the duration of your ticket: options are available for one, two or three consecutive days. When you purchase the ticket online, you’ll receive a voucher by email which you can present at one of the AKO bookshops at Schiphol Airport Plaza in exchange for your ticket. The card is activated from the first time you use it when entering a bus, tram, train or metro. All you need to do is check in and out when entering and exiting each vehicle or means of transportation. Along with your ticket, you’ll receive a map which highlights some suggested routes and sightseeing adventures.

    The Amsterdam & Region Travel Ticket can also be purchased at the  amsterdam Visitor Centers and the ticket counters of the participating public transport operators.

    1 day - €19.50 2 days - €28.00 3 days - €36.50

    How to use the Amsterdam & Region Travel Ticket
    Tickets are valid for 1, 2 or 3 calendar days. A day in this context begins at 00:00 and ends the next day at 04:00. You must check in and out with your card every time you enter and exit a bus, tram, train or metro. Your ticket is activated from the first check in. Tickets are valid on all metro, tram and bus lines operated by GVB, Connexxion, AllGo and EBS, including night buses. While the flowers are in bloom between March and May, you can use the ticket to travel from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to Keukenhof Gardens (Arriva bus 858). Tickets are also valid on NS trains in the Amsterdam Area.
    2.
    VERMEER RELATED EXHIBITION IN DELFT

    Vermeer’s Delft
    Museum Prinsenhof of Delft
    February 10–June 4, 2023
    <https://prinsenhof-delft.nl/ontdek-het-museum/tentoonstellingen/het-delft-van-vermeer>

    from the  Museum Prinsenhof of Delft website:
    Throughout the 17th century, Delft was a city full of talent and innovation. Here, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) grew to be an artist of global scale. For the first time ever, the life of this world-known Delfts master is the focus of an exhibition. Prime pieces of Delfts peers will be presented alongside Delfts ceramic, Delfts tapestries, archival objects and personal documents. With these pieces, we'll paint a clear picture of the artistic, intellectual, and social climate of Delft in the 17th century.

    Audio tour
    Admission includes an audio tour, available in English, Dutch and French.

    Podwalk
    In this narrated walk (in Dutch), we take the listener into Vermeer’s city. You can listen to the podwalk anywhere: on the sofa at home, on the train and on a walk through the city of Delft, before or after visiting the exhibition.

    Family programme
    A ‘family trail’ (in Dutch) is available to families. It consists of a booklet with see and do assignments children (ages 4 to 12) can do with their (grand)parents to discover all sorts of things about Vermeer and his world.

    Publication
    A lavishly illustrated publication, produced in cooperation with Waanders Publishers (Waanders Uitgevers), will accompany the exhibition. In English and Dutch, 128 pages, circa €28.95 (paperback).

    City programme
    Alongside the exhibition Vermeer’s Delft, a city programme is being developed in cooperation with Delft entrepreneurs and cultural partners.

    Online tickets 
    Tickets are currently available onlinel. Advance reservation is recommended.

    <https://tickets.prinsenhof-delft.nl/#/tickets/timeslot>

    Dutch art historian and Vermeer expert dies

    Albert Blankert - 16 June, 1940 - 22 November, 2022
    Dutch art historian and expert in 17th century Dutch painting and the art of Johannes Vermeer. Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1999 to 2000.

    Albert Blankert was among the most authoritative modern Vermeer scholars and has written extensively both on Vermeer's art and Dutch painting. His influential, no-nonsense volume Johannes Vermeer van Delft, 1632–1675 (1975 ) contained a critical catalog and an important chapter on "Vermeer and His Public," in which for the first time attention was drawn to a group of collectors of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who viewed Vermeer not so much as a "sphinx" but as a "first class painter." His essay, "Vermeer's Modern Themes and Their Traditions," in the catalog of the 1995/1996 Washington D.C./The Hague Vermeer exhibition, remains one of the most lucid iconographical studies of Vermeer's painting to date.

    In his 1976 volume he included 31 authentic works by Vermeer and rejected 4 works which were, and still are, largely accepted by authoritative experts of Dutch painting: Woman with a Lute, Girl interrupted in her Music, Girl with a Red Hat and Girl with a Flute. He also excluded the Young Woman Seated at the Virginals (Leiden Collection, New York) and Saint Praxedis (National Museum of Western Art )from consideration.

    I was never able to meet Albert personally but would like to remember him via an answer he gave in an interview that he kindly granted to the Essential Vermeer in 2005.

    "We appreciate, like, admire, love Vermeer's work a very great deal. We want to express all this in words and find them insufficient, so we sing, jubilate, dance, scream, paint, drum, yes, similar to what we do for a loved one or for a god, what is the difference? Personally I find that we should observe utter restraint, but in how far is that a rational stance?"

    an interview with Albert (2005)
    Essential Vermeer
    <http://www.essentialvermeer.com/interviews_newsletter/albert_blankert_interview.html>

    "Specialism with a human face" (2004)
    Gary Schwartz Art Historian: Art History from Holland
    <http://www.garyschwartzarthistorian.nl/210-specialism-with-a-human-face/>

    "Vermeeren of verminderen: in memory of Albert Blankert" (2022)
    Gary Schwartz Art Historian: Art History from Holland
    <http://www.garyschwartzarthistorian.nl/411-vermeeren-of-verminderen-in-memory-of-albert-blankert/>

    essential bibliography:

    • Johannes Vermeer van Delft, 1632, 1675 with the collaboration of Rob Ruurs and Willem L. Vvan de Wetering, 1975
    • Vermeer, Albert Blankert, John Michael Montias, Gilles AillaudI, Rob Ruurs, Willem van de Watering, and Philip Resche Rigon, Amsterdam, (English ed. New York, 1988)
    • "Vermeer's Modern Themes and Their Tradition" in Johannes Vermeer. eds. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Ben Broos. National Gallery of Art, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1995.
    • "An adjustable leg and a book: Vermeer's Lacemaker compared to others." Albert Blankert, and Louis P. Grijp. in Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, 1995

    2.
    Tickets available to the Vermeer retrospective in February 2023
    Vermeer
    Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
    February 10-June 4, 2023
    open daily from 9:00 to 18:00

    Tickets are now available for the 2023 Vermeer retrospective at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

    the latest news addition:
    The Rijksmuseum has  made public the paintings by Vermeer that will be on display at the retrospective of his works beginning 10 February, 2023. Although the Rijksmuseum is sticking with the figure of 28 paintings, its curators have a lingering hope that one or two absentees might still be coaxed into the exhibition before the opening. The Girl with a Pearl Earring will be shown only for the first two months of the exhibit. But no need to despair, it will return to the Mauritshuis  in The Hague, only a short train ride to Amsterdam. The major absentee is The Art of Painting, the closest thing to what you could call  a  "manifesto" of his profession.

    To see which paintings will and won’t be in the exhibit, visit my Instagram post on that here:
    <https://www.instagram.com/p/CkdnTsmIJYE/>

    exhibition news:
    <https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/vermeer/story/the-largest-vermeer-exhibition-ever>

    tickets (start time required):
    <https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/vermeer/>

    3.
    Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl exhibited at The Hague Mauritshuis
    Manhattan Masters
    Frick Collection, New York City
    September 29, 2022 - January 15 , 2023
    <https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en/what-s-on/exhibitions/manhattan-masters/>

    The Mauritshuis Anniversary year concludes with a special exhibition: ten paintings from The Frick Collection in New York. This will be a one-time opportunity to view this selection of paintings in Europe, which (with one exception) left the continent more than a hundred years ago and have been in the United States ever since.

    Of the ten paintings in the exhibition, Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl and Rembrandt’s 1658 Self-portrait will be the absolute highlights.

    tickets:
    <https://tickets.mauritshuis.nl/en/tickets>

    4.
    Vermeer's Lacemaker visits  Dallas
    Dalí/Vermeer: A Dialogue
    Meadows Museum, Dallas TX
    October 16, 2022-January 15, 2023
    <https://meadowsmuseumdallas.org/exhibitions/dali-vermeer-a-dialogue/>

    from the Meadows Museum website:
    Thanks to the generosity of the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, Spain, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Dalí/Vermeer: A Dialogue, unites Johannes Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (c. 1663) and Salvador Dalí’s interpretation thereof, The Image Disappears (1938), for the very first time.

    A key part of any artist’s formal training has always been the study of their predecessors’ works, the imitation of which is seen as a crucial step in the development of one’s own style and technique. Dalí stands out as among the modern artists who most revered—indeed obsessed over—the painters that preceded him. The famed surrealist came of age just as earlier painters were being celebrated and publicized outside of their countries of origin, as was the case with the Dutch painter Vermeer, whose work he at first knew only through reproductions.

    While a kind of Vermeerian iconography would come to pepper Dalí’s compositions throughout his career, less common are the instances in which the Surrealist painter reinterpreted whole compositions by Vermeer. Among these is The Image Disappears, Dalí’s interpretation of Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. In The Image Disappears, whose title describes what the image does rather than what it depicts, Dalí takes the basic forms and elements of Vermeer’s composition—a woman wearing a blue night jacket, standing in profile reading a letter in front of an unseen window from which emanates soft light—and plays a visual trick on viewers, creating a second image of a mustachioed male face in profile that has been identified as that of Velázquez.

    Not even Dalí would have seen these two paintings side-by-side; thus, the exhibition offers the unique opportunity to contemplate imitator and imitated within the context of the Meadows’s collection of Spanish art. The Meadows welcomes visitors to not only enjoy this rare moment to see a Vermeer in Texas, but to contemplate the broader question of imitation: is it flattery or conceit?

    Additional works by Dalí from the Meadows’s collection, including works on paper, will be featured elsewhere in the museum and round out this fall’s celebration of the artist and his many evocations of art historical themes.

    5.
    Vermeer exhibition at the National Gallery, Washington D. C. The Gallery claims Girl with a Flute is not by Vermeer's hand
    Vermeer’s Secrets
    National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.
    October 8, 2022 – January 8, 2023
    <https://www.nga.gov/press/exhibitions/exhibitions-2022/5675.html>

    from the National Gallery website:
    Only about 35 paintings by Johannes Vermeer are known today. The National Gallery owns four works by or attributed to this beloved 17th-century Dutch artist: Woman Holding a Balance, A Lady Writing, Girl with the Red Hat, and Girl with a Flute.
    Friday, October 7, the Gallery announced that on the basis of new research done in the past two years the Girl with a Flute has been definitively proven to be the product of someone likely close to Vermeer, but not the painter himself. The Gallery now believes that the work originated in the “studio of Vermeer,” which, however nothing is known about.

    According to the Gallery:
    "The mystery artist who painted Girl with a Flute was familiar with Vermeer’s unique methods and materials, but unable to achieve his level of expertise. He may have been a pupil or apprentice in training, an amateur who paid Vermeer for lessons, a freelance painter hired on a project-by-project basis, or even a member of Vermeer’s family.

    "This exciting notion of a studio calls into question the long-held idea of Vermeer as a lone genius. On the contrary, he might have been a mentor and educator, training a future generation of artists.

    "For decades, conservators, scientists, and curators at the National Gallery have conducted research into this quartet of paintings as well as two enigmatic works that are now considered to be 20th-century forgeries. Vermeer’s Secrets draws on 50 years of imaging technology and microscopic examination to illuminate—and sometimes revolutionize—our understanding of how Vermeer achieved the compelling effects of his paintings’ light-filled moments of quiet solitude.

    "The exhibition incorporates vivid technical images made using innovative technologies pioneered by two leaders in the field of scientific imaging, the National Gallery’s senior imaging scientist John K. Delaney and imaging scientist Kathryn A. Dooley. Using hyperspectral reflectance imaging techniques first developed to map minerals for remote sensing of the earth and subsequently the moon and Mars, as well as X-ray fluorescence imaging spectroscopy, Delaney and Dooley are able to identify and map pigments and also reveal what lies beneath the surface of a painting. While earlier technical examination (magnified examinations of the paintings, analysis of microsamples, and X-ray fluorescence spot analysis) allowed Melanie Gifford and Lisha Glinsman to hypothesize the stages in Vermeer’s working methods, these advancements in imaging technologies provided the opportunity to try and visualize those stages. The resulting images allowed the team to analyze the distribution of pigments across the paintings, distinguish compositional changes, and in the case of the Girl with the Red Hat, reveal more details about an earlier unfinished bust-length portrait of a man with a wide-brimmed hat."

    NGA articles:
     

    6.
    Surprises: Vermeer’s Milkmaid
    Recent research into Vermeer’s Milkmaid have brought to light two objects on the world-famous painting: a jug holder and a fire basket.

    The artist himself later painted over the objects. The most recent scans also uncovered what is clearly an underpainting, suggesting that the master worked much faster than previously assumed. These new findings follow a very recent announcement by the National Gallery of Art in which similar discoveries were made after technical examination of the Vermeer paintings in Washington.

    The Art Newspaper
    Martin Bailey
    8 September 2022
    <https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/09/08/investigation-of-vermeer-painting-reveals-startling-discoveries-about-his-technique>
     

    7.
    The Frick Collection publishes the most comprehensive study to date on Vermeer and maps
    Vermeer's Maps
    Rozemarijn Landsman
    2022

    The Frick Collection in association with Del Monico Books/D.A.P. New York (hardcover, 7 1/4 x 9 3/4 in., 128 pages, 68 color illustrations)

    Of the approximately thirty-four paintings attributed to Vermeer—whose extraordinary art has captivated viewers since his rediscovery in the nineteenth century—wall maps and other cartographic objects are depicted in nine of them, including The Frick Collection’s renowned Officer and Laughing Girl and the artist’s masterpiece in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, The Art of Painting. With stunning reproductions and incisive text, the Frick’s new publication, Vermeer’s Maps, is the most comprehensive study of the artist's depiction of wall maps to date. Drawing on rare surviving examples of the physical maps and other primary sources, author Rozemarijn Landsman examines this intriguing aspect of Vermeer’s work, greatly enriching and expanding our understanding of the art and life of the "Sphinx of Delft."

    As Landsman writes in the book’s introduction:
    "While scholars continue to remark on the prominence of maps in Vermeer’s art, these objects are rarely the center of attention. […] Questions about the maps in Vermeer’s paintings linger: What kinds of maps are they? How were they made? For whom were they produced? What were their functions? Above all, the questions of what maps meant for Vermeer and his art and what may have motivated him to choose these specific objects to adorn his painted walls remain to be addressed."

    PDF Press Release:
    <https://www.frick.org/sites/default/files/pdf/press/2022/Vermeer_Maps_pressrelease_September_20_FINAL%20%281%29.pdf>

    sample pages:
    <https://www.frick.org/sites/default/files/shop/preview/2022-vermeer-maps-sample-pages-2.pdf>

    purchase:
    <https://shop.frick.org/vermeers-maps>
     

    8.
    Dutch reality TV show; De Nieuwe Vermeer (The New Vermeer)
    First episode: Sunday the 12th of February on NPO1

    2023 will be the year of Johannes Vermeer. As one of the biggest Dutch painters in history, he will get his largest exhibition ever in the Rijksmuseum. However, six paintings are missing. The new Dutch television program De Nieuwe Vermeer gives creatives all over the Netherlands the chance to recreate one of these missing artworks. Everything is allowed, from abstract to realistic and from a painting to a tapestry, as long as it is made in the spirit of Vermeer.

    In every episode two professional painters get the task to recreate one of the missing paintings of Vermeer–in Vermeer’s style. They need to let go of their own style and completely immerse in the world of the famous painter. They will get the help of experts Pieter Roelofs and Abbie Vandivere while they try to find and capture the true essence of Vermeer and his style. Not only do the professional painters get a chance of participating in the competition, as every artist in Holland can join in the second category of the competition;  de Vrije Categorie. Their assignment is to focus on their personal interpretation of Vermeer. They can use their own style and materials, as long as it meets the given criteria for the size of the artwork. Hostess Dionne Stax will follow every step of their journey, as they create their own version of one of the six missing paintings.

    Judge Pieter Roelofs (Head of Paintings and Sculpture at the Rijksmuseum) and Abbie Vandivere (Paintings Conservator at the Mauritshuis) will eventually decide who will win the episode and earn a place to the exhibition.

    The program will be broadcasted by Omroep Max on NPO1 (Dutch public network). The first episode will be on Sunday the 12th of February at 20:30u (GMT+1).

    The show can also be watched at NPO start <https://www.npostart.nl/>.

    1.
    Dutch art historian and Vermeer expert dies

    Albert Blankert - 16 June, 1940 - 22 November, 2022

    Dutch art historian and expert in 17th century Dutch painting and the art of Johannes Vermeer. Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1999 to 2000.

    Albert Blankert was among the most authoritative modern Vermeer scholars and has written extensively both on Vermeer's art and Dutch painting. His influential, no-nonsense volume Johannes Vermeer van Delft, 1632–1675 (1975 ) contained a critical catalog and an important chapter on "Vermeer and His Public," in which for the first time attention was drawn to a group of collectors of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who viewed Vermeer not so much as a "sphinx" but as a "first class painter." His essay, "Vermeer's Modern Themes and Their Traditions," in the catalog of the 1995/1996 Washington D.C./The Hague Vermeer exhibition, remains one of the most lucid iconographical studies of Vermeer's painting to date.

    In his 1976 volume he included 31 authentic works by Vermeer and rejected 4 works which were, and still are, largely accepted by authoritative experts of Dutch painting: Woman with a Lute, Girl interrupted in her Music, Girl with a Red Hat and Girl with a Flute. He also excluded the Young Woman Seated at the Virginals (Leiden Collection, New York) and Saint Praxedis (National Museum of Western Art )from consideration.

    I was never able to meet Albert personally but would like to remember him via an answer he gave in an interview that he kindly granted to the Essential Vermeer in 2005.

    "We appreciate, like, admire, love Vermeer's work a very great deal. We want to express all this in words and find them insufficient, so we sing, jubilate, dance, scream, paint, drum, yes, similar to what we do for a loved one or for a god, what is the difference? Personally I find that we should observe utter restraint, but in how far is that a rational stance?"

    an interview with Albert (2005)
    Essential Vermeer
    <http://www.essentialvermeer.com/interviews_newsletter/albert_blankert_interview.html>

    "Specialism with a human face" (2004)
    Gary Schwartz Art Historian: Art History from Holland
    <http://www.garyschwartzarthistorian.nl/210-specialism-with-a-human-face/>

    "Vermeeren of verminderen: in memory of Albert Blankert" (2022)

    Gary Schwartz Art Historian: Art History from Holland
    <http://www.garyschwartzarthistorian.nl/411-vermeeren-of-verminderen-in-memory-of-albert-blankert/>

    essential bibliography:

    • Johannes Vermeer van Delft, 1632, 1675 with the collaboration of Rob Ruurs and Willem L. Vvan de Wetering, 1975
    • Vermeer, Albert Blankert, John Michael Montias, Gilles AillaudI, Rob Ruurs, Willem van de Watering, and Philip Resche Rigon, Amsterdam, (English ed. New York, 1988)
    • "Vermeer's Modern Themes and Their Tradition" in Johannes Vermeer. eds. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Ben Broos. National Gallery of Art, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1995.
    • "An adjustable leg and a book: Vermeer's Lacemaker compared to others." Albert Blankert, and Louis P. Grijp. in Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, 1995

    2.
    Tickets available to the Vermeer retrospective in February 2023
    Vermeer
    Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
    February 10-June 4, 2023
    open daily from 9:00 to 18:00

    Tickets are now available for the 2023 Vermeer retrospective at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

    the latest news addition:
    The Rijksmuseum has  made public the paintings by Vermeer that will be on display at the retrospective of his works beginning 10 February, 2023. Although the Rijksmuseum is sticking with the figure of 28 paintings, its curators have a lingering hope that one or two absentees might still be coaxed into the exhibition before the opening. The Girl with a Pearl Earring will be shown only for the first two months of the exhibit. But no need to despair, it will return to the Mauritshuis  in The Hague, only a short train ride to Amsterdam. The major absentee is The Art of Painting, the closest thing to what you could call  a  "manifesto" of his profession.

    To see which paintings will and won’t be in the exhibit, visit my Instagram post on that here:
    <https://www.instagram.com/p/CkdnTsmIJYE/>

    exhibition news:
    <https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/vermeer/story/the-largest-vermeer-exhibition-ever>

    tickets (start time required):
    <https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/vermeer/>

    DelftView of Delft with a Fantasy Loggia
    Daniël Vosmaer
    1663
    Oil on canvas
    Museum Prinsenhof Delft (loan from the Cultural Heritage Agency)

    3.
    Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl exhibited at The Hague Mauritshuis
    Manhattan Masters
    Frick Collection, New York City
    September 29, 2022 - January 15 , 2023
    <https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en/what-s-on/exhibitions/manhattan-masters/>

    The Mauritshuis Anniversary year concludes with a special exhibition: ten paintings from The Frick Collection in New York. This will be a one-time opportunity to view this selection of paintings in Europe, which (with one exception) left the continent more than a hundred years ago and have been in the United States ever since.

    Of the ten paintings in the exhibition, Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl and Rembrandt’s 1658 Self-portrait will be the absolute highlights.

    tickets:
    <https://tickets.mauritshuis.nl/en/tickets>

    Vermeer's Lacemaker visits  Dallas
    Dalí/Vermeer: A Dialogue
    Meadows Museum, Dallas TX
    October 16, 2022-January 15, 2023
    <https://meadowsmuseumdallas.org/exhibitions/dali-vermeer-a-dialogue/>

    from the Meadows Museum website:
    Thanks to the generosity of the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, Spain, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Dalí/Vermeer: A Dialogue, unites Johannes Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (c. 1663) and Salvador Dalí’s interpretation thereof, The Image Disappears (1938), for the very first time.

    A key part of any artist’s formal training has always been the study of their predecessors’ works, the imitation of which is seen as a crucial step in the development of one’s own style and technique. Dalí stands out as among the modern artists who most revered—indeed obsessed over—the painters that preceded him. The famed surrealist came of age just as earlier painters were being celebrated and publicized outside of their countries of origin, as was the case with the Dutch painter Vermeer, whose work he at first knew only through reproductions.

    While a kind of Vermeerian iconography would come to pepper Dalí’s compositions throughout his career, less common are the instances in which the Surrealist painter reinterpreted whole compositions by Vermeer. Among these is The Image Disappears, Dalí’s interpretation of Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. In The Image Disappears, whose title describes what the image does rather than what it depicts, Dalí takes the basic forms and elements of Vermeer’s composition—a woman wearing a blue night jacket, standing in profile reading a letter in front of an unseen window from which emanates soft light—and plays a visual trick on viewers, creating a second image of a mustachioed male face in profile that has been identified as that of Velázquez.

    Not even Dalí would have seen these two paintings side-by-side; thus, the exhibition offers the unique opportunity to contemplate imitator and imitated within the context of the Meadows’s collection of Spanish art. The Meadows welcomes visitors to not only enjoy this rare moment to see a Vermeer in Texas, but to contemplate the broader question of imitation: is it flattery or conceit?

    Additional works by Dalí from the Meadows’s collection, including works on paper, will be featured elsewhere in the museum and round out this fall’s celebration of the artist and his many evocations of art historical themes.

    Vermeer exhibition at the National Gallery, Washington D. C. The Gallery claims Girl with a Flute is not by Vermeer's hand
    Vermeer’s Secrets
    National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.
    October 8, 2022 – January 8, 2023
    <https://www.nga.gov/press/exhibitions/exhibitions-2022/5675.html>

    from the National Gallery website:
    Only about 35 paintings by Johannes Vermeer are known today. The National Gallery owns four works by or attributed to this beloved 17th-century Dutch artist: Woman Holding a Balance, A Lady Writing, Girl with the Red Hat, and Girl with a Flute.
    Friday, October 7, the Gallery announced that on the basis of new research done in the past two years the Girl with a Flute has been definitively proven to be the product of someone likely close to Vermeer, but not the painter himself. The Gallery now believes that the work originated in the “studio of Vermeer,” which, however nothing is known about.

    According to the Gallery:
    "The mystery artist who painted Girl with a Flute was familiar with Vermeer’s unique methods and materials, but unable to achieve his level of expertise. He may have been a pupil or apprentice in training, an amateur who paid Vermeer for lessons, a freelance painter hired on a project-by-project basis, or even a member of Vermeer’s family.
    "This exciting notion of a studio calls into question the long-held idea of Vermeer as a lone genius. On the contrary, he might have been a mentor and educator, training a future generation of artists.

    "For decades, conservators, scientists, and curators at the National Gallery have conducted research into this quartet of paintings as well as two enigmatic works that are now considered to be 20th-century forgeries. Vermeer’s Secrets draws on 50 years of imaging technology and microscopic examination to illuminate—and sometimes revolutionize—our understanding of how Vermeer achieved the compelling effects of his paintings’ light-filled moments of quiet solitude.

    "The exhibition incorporates vivid technical images made using innovative technologies pioneered by two leaders in the field of scientific imaging, the National Gallery’s senior imaging scientist John K. Delaney and imaging scientist Kathryn A. Dooley. Using hyperspectral reflectance imaging techniques first developed to map minerals for remote sensing of the earth and subsequently the moon and Mars, as well as X-ray fluorescence imaging spectroscopy, Delaney and Dooley are able to identify and map pigments and also reveal what lies beneath the surface of a painting. While earlier technical examination (magnified examinations of the paintings, analysis of microsamples, and X-ray fluorescence spot analysis) allowed Melanie Gifford and Lisha Glinsman to hypothesize the stages in Vermeer’s working methods, these advancements in imaging technologies provided the opportunity to try and visualize those stages. The resulting images allowed the team to analyze the distribution of pigments across the paintings, distinguish compositional changes, and in the case of the Girl with the Red Hat, reveal more details about an earlier unfinished bust-length portrait of a man with a wide-brimmed hat."

    NGA articles:
     

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    Looking Over Vermeer’s Shoulder

    The complete study of Vermeer’s materials, artistry and painting techniques

    Jonathan Janson

    (painter & founder of Essential Vermeer.com)