The Complete Interactive Vermeer Catalogue

The signature

No signature appears on this work.

Dates

c. 1670–1672
Walter Liedtke, Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, New York, 2008

c. 1670–1671
Wayne Franits, Vermeer, 2015

(Click here to access a complete study of the dates of Vermeer's paintings).

The painting in its frame

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Provenance

Exhibitions

The painting in scale

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The painter's tombstone

The burial records of the Delft Old Church indicate that Vermeer was buried on December 15, 1675. The once-prosperous painter left ten minor children and substantial debts to his wife, Catharina. In an effort to free herself from her creditors, she lamented the lack of financial resources, attributing it to her husband who had lapsed into "decay and decadence." The term "decadence" may have suggested that the artist had taken to drink, a common problem in the Netherlands, or perhaps experienced a sudden physical decline, such as a stroke or heart failure. Catharina stated that the artist had become so burdened by his financial troubles that "as if he had fallen into a frenzy, and in a day and a half had gone from being healthy to being dead." Although a tomb marker identifies Vermeer's grave in the Old Church, its original location has been lost over the centuries.

One of Vermeer's last paintings

According to Vermeer expert Walter Liedtke, the "similarities of this picture and in four late paintings by Vermeer might be taken as evidence of authenticity or imitation. Even the double shadow behind the music stand, the bluish-white illumination of the wall and its slight irregularities could be interpreted as extremely subtle derivations from late works by Vermeer, assuming the imitator had access to them and the expertise to imitate their unusual effects. However, technical analysis and conservation have revealed that the painting is at least 250 years old and that it was made from the ground up with materials and methods distinctive of Vermeer. The canvas is so consistent in its comparatively coarse weave with the support of The Lacemaker that they may be from the same bolt of cloth."

Furthermore, the orthogonals of the perspective all lead to a pinhole, a practical method employed repeatedly by Vermeer and other painters to work out and verify the perspectival construction. Perhaps the most convincing and peculiar piece of evidence in favor of the work's authenticity is the presence of natural ultramarine blue in minimal quantities in the gray paint mixture used to depict the background wall. This technique is unusual but not rare among upper-tier Dutch painters of the time.

Dating the painting

The most significant information regarding the possible dating of the present work was furnished by Marieke de Winkel, a costume expert for the Rembrandt Research Project. Based on research collected from a wide range of sources, including contemporary letters, prints, paintings and dollhouses, De Winkel established that the hairstyle and arrangement of the red ribbons were fashionable only for a couple of years at most, around 1670.

The combination of hair pulled back into a bun with ringlets hanging down on each side and a mix of thin red and white ribbons in the hair soon gave way in popular fashion to the style seen in the two London paintings. In those paintings, the hair is still drawn back into a bun but with numerous small decorative curls around the hairline and no ringlets or other embellishments. The Louvre Lacemaker, which is generally dated around 1670 on stylistic grounds, shows very much the same hairstyle as that seen here. This, together with the technical evidence linking the two pictures, suggests very strongly that the present painting of A Young Woman Seated at the Virginal should also be dated to around 1670, making it Vermeer's first exploration of the theme that would provide the subject for his two famous paintings in the National Gallery.

Nonetheless, this dating has been contested by the majority of Vermeer experts, such as Walter Liedtke, who hold that the picture is one of the artist's last, if not the very last, works.

The artist's final hardships

A Walking Musketeer Seen from Behind
Anthonie Palamedesz
1640s
Black chalk, brush and brown ink, 20.5 x 15.2 cm.
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lest we judge too harshly the final works of Vermeer, it should be kept in mind that he must have painted very little in his final years. His life, like the lives of many, was plagued by social unrest and economic misfortune caused by the French invasion of the Netherlands in 1672, as well as an ever-growing family that proved increasingly difficult to provide for. Debt slowly closed in on Vermeer and his family, although until the end of his life, there is evidence that he was considered a respectable citizen. He was inscribed as a schutter, or marksman, of the Delft Civic Guard, a position that guaranteed a degree of honor and social standing.

In peacetime, acceptance in the militia required one to be "among the most learned burgers from the most admirable families and those who are men of property." However, in times of war, the entrance criteria could be stretched to include an occasional shoemaker and tailor. A guard's pay, compared to their duties, consisted of a small subsidy or a (partial) release from certain taxes, was negligible. Nevertheless, membership in a Civic Guard was a matter of civic pride, an honor that led to the development of a kind of "civic nobility" (burgeredeldom).

A final blow to Vermeer's fortune must have been the death of his long-time patron, Pieter van Ruijven, in 1674. Van Ruijven had acquired more than half of the artist's total output, assuring the artist an economic base that allowed him to paint as he wished, free from market pressures.

Recent critical acceptance

On March 30, 2004, Sotheby's announced the sale of A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals (not to be confused with the London painting of a similar theme and title) as an authentic painting by Johannes Vermeer. This small, unsigned canvas (about 25 x 20 centimeters) was first identified by modern collectors at an Amsterdam sale in 1814. Since 1960, it has been held in the private collection of Baron Freddy Rolin in Brussels, who passionately believed in the painting's authenticity. Even though the work never elicited more than a lukewarm critical response, experts such as Hofstede de Groot, Phillip Hale and P.T.A. Swillens had accepted it as an authentic Vermeer. Lawrence Gowing included only a photograph of it in his 1952 monograph but did not provide a comment about its artistic merits. In a later publication, he referred to it as a "melancholy relic."

The painting's fortune began to change when Walter Liedtke, curator of the comprehensive Vermeer and the Delft School show in New York and London (2001), decided at the very last minute to include it in that exhibition, even though it was not included in the catalogue.

After more than 10 years of extensive research by a team of leading scholars and painting conservators, the painting has now been proposed as a secure addition to Vermeer's limited oeuvre. Walter Liedtke included it within Vermeer's oeuvre in his 2008 complete catalog of Vermeer's paintings, and after years of doubt, Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. has come to accept it in the artist's slim oeuvre, although he believes it had been retouched in some areas.

Vermeer's limited fame

Although the figure of the isolated genius painter toiling away within the confines of his studio may be a central myth of modernism, it had little to do with earlier times. In his famous Vite, the artists that Giorgio Vasari admired are the same Renaissance artists we admire today, in nearly the same ranking and degree. Much the same could be said for the French, Dutch and Spanish schools.

Perhaps the greatest exception to this rule is Johannes Vermeer. Aside from a few celebrated works that held their own in the Netherlands, Vermeer's fame languished in near obscurity until the middle of the 19th century. He now keeps company with a handful of the greatest masters, such as Leonardo, Raphael and Rembrandt van Rijn.

Although Vermeer was admired in his own city, and his works commanded relatively high prices, his fame did not extend beyond Amsterdam. Ironically, the spread of his fame was substantially impaired by his own way of working and doing business. He painted slowly and produced very few works of art, no more than three or four a year. While 37 works have been proposed by authoritative scholars as authentic, there are good reasons to believe he probably painted no more than 60.

On the other hand, popular artists like Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals and Jan van Goyen produced works in the hundreds; in van Goyen's case, more than one thousand paintings have survived. The output of Gabriel Metsu and Pieter de Hooch, Vermeer's direct "rivals," far exceeds Vermeer's.

More than half of Vermeer's works of art were purchased by a single local collector, Pieter van Ruijven and his wife Maria de Knuijt. In an age when there were neither public art galleries, museums, art publications, nor photographs, the distribution of a great number of paintings and/or graphic works was perhaps the best way to ensure that an artist's work would inscribe itself into the collective consciousness. Otherwise, to guarantee sufficient public exposure, works of art would have to have been exhibited in important public buildings or churches. This made widespread sales imperative in the Netherlands because it is well known that both public and religious patronage were in short supply in the United Republic.

Listen to period music

Den Meij (The May), Anon. [997 KB]

performed by Hendrik Broekman
on a Flemish muselar virginal after Ruckers.
http://www.hubharp.com/sound_samples.htm

Together with the harpsichord the virginal (or virginals) has its origin in the medieval psaltery with a keyboard applied, to be able to play polyphonic music (i.e. melody with accompanying chords). It is mentioned for the first time c. 1460 in a treatise by Paulus Paulirinus of Prague. Although limited in its tonal resources, the virginal occupied a crucial position in the musical life in the 16th and 17th centuries as it was smaller, simpler and cheaper than the harpsichord.

The main center of virginal and keyboard making was Antwerp and Flanders, with the renowned families of Ruckers and Couchet. Italy was the second center, and after King Henry's VIII purchased five virginals it enjoyed considerable appreciation in England. Until the 18th century, the virginal remained in use both as a solo instrument, even in private circles of music making, as well as for accompaniment of the singing voice or melodic instruments, like the viola da gamba.

The virginal usually appears with a rectangular case, although polygon forms in various sizes were also built. The metal strings run roughly parallel to the keyboard. They are plucked by plectra mounted on jacks. The jacks (one for each key) are arranged in pairs and placed along a line running from the front of the instrument at the left to the back at the right. They pluck in opposite directions so that the pairs of jacks are separated by closely spaced pairs of strings. Each pair of jacks is usually served by a single slot in the soundboard, together with another slot below in a thin guide above the keys. Leather on the soundboard and lower guide provides a quiet bearing surface for the jacks.

The typical Flemish "muselar" type (probably invented by Hans Ruckers) has the keyboard to the right side, their strings plucked at a point near the center for virtually their entire range, producing a powerful, flute-like tone. Although the jacks and keys for the left hand are placed in the middle of the instrument's soundboard, any mechanical noise from these is amplified, and the central plucking point in the bass strings makes repetition difficult because the motion of the sounding string interferes with the ability of the plectrum to connect again. Thus, the muselar is better suited to chord- and melody-music without complex bass parts.

Muselars were popular in the 16th and 17th centuries and their ubiquity has been compared to that of the upright piano in the early 20th century, but like other types of virginals they fell out of use in the 18th century.

The virginal in Dutch interior painting

Husband and Wife of the Lossy de Wariné Family
Gerrit Donck
Oil on panel, 47.7 x 62.9 cm.
1631 (?)
Private collection

In Dutch interior painting, the virginal almost always conveys positive connotations of love and harmony. In the present work, which displays none of the elaborate iconographic dialogue of A Lady Seated at a Virginal and A Lady Standing at a Virginal, it is difficult to understand if the instrument can be truly understood as having symbolic meaning or if was nothing more than a straightforward sign of a young lady's musical inclination.

Although 90% of the virginals in 17th-century Dutch painting are pictured with women, they were included in more complex contexts such as Vermeer's Music Lesson and Gabriel Metsu's Man and Woman Sitting at the Virginal in which both men and women are present. In the Marriage Portrait of a Husband and Wife of the Lossy de Wariné Family by Gerrit Donck a finely crafted virginal, which rests on a rather unusual stand, occupies a notable part of the composition. Its conspicuous presence must have been intended to underscore the musical theme which apparently played an important part in bonding the lives of the husband and wife.

A portrait?

Following its inclusion in the complete catalogue of the artist's work by Walter Liedtke (2008), this minuscule canvas has attracted scarce critical scrutiny.

If the date currently given to this picture is correct, it was presumably executed shortly before or shortly after the A Lady Seated at a Virginal in London, in which a solitary woman plays her music in the corner of a dimly lit, contemporary room.

If one compares the present picture with a detail of the London picture, they appear closely related. In the smaller work, the young musician appears to be seated slightly further from her instrument while the forward side of her virginals is shrouded in deep shadow instead of being fully illuminated. From a compositional point of view either the present work was a sort of preliminary study for the more complex London work or, if executed afterward, a reworking of the figure.

In any case, the present work seems to be extraneous to Vermeer's customary manner of picture-making. It displays neither the elaborate iconographic structure of the artist's last works nor the frank simplicity of the bust-length tronies.

Liedtke has commented that it is conceivable that Vermeer was asked for a picture of the same themes as the Lady Seated at the Virginals in the years of economic hardship, "a time when any sale was welcome."