Details of Vermeer's Painting Technique

As the art critic James Elkins pointed out, "The most challenging and innovative art history is written in thrall of detail: we are not only curious about it, we invest it with the capacity to unlock entire artistic practices, to reveal the way beyond critical impasses, to reach deeper strata of pictorial meaning, to show how images themselves are constituted in their historical, psychological and formal origins. The detail can be seen as the object of a properly scientific investigation. Just as a scientist looks into an atom, or a doctor into an ear, or a biologist into a microscope, so an art historian can peer into a picture. In this…model, when art historians concentrate on details they are only doing what scientists are charged with doing: they are systematically dissecting or disassembling their objects into component parts."^{James Elkins, "On the Impossibility of Close Reading: The Case of Alexander Marshack," Current Anthropology 37, no. 2 (April 1996): 185-226.}

Detail appears no less important for practicing painters than for art historians and scientists, especially beginners, who tend to indulge in minor incidents instead of attending to the larger planes of modeling. By concentrating on detail, the amateur painter creates space without air, and figures without solidity. Good illusionist painting, instead, is not the sum of many good details but principally the product of the broader relationships which, once captured, can be brought into greater focus via well-chosen detail. Period literature constantly reiterates this precept. Nonetheless, fine detail was and continues to be the raison d'être of various schools of art.

The ability to paint detailed works was a way for Dutch artists to showcase their skill and virtuosity. During this period, art was becoming more of a commodity, and artists often sought patronage from the burgeoning middle class. Demonstrating skill through detailed work was a way to attract patrons and distinguish themselves from other artists.

How far should detail be carried in a painting? Dutch painters went to both extremes. It was reported that the fijnschilder (fine painter) Gerrit Dou (1613– 1675) worked two weeks on a broom handle, and then claimed he had hoped to finish it in a few days more. Frans Hals (1580–1666) would paint a head in an hour. The answer lies in the central idea behind the picture. A "cabinet picture," a small canvas, will admit all the microscopic detail you can see. Large works must be painted very broadly.

While the ability to capture microscopic detail was lauded by Vermeer's contemporary public and art writers, painters were nonetheless advised to avoid excessively uniform modeling. Even Dou, who achieved a truly unbelievable level of detail, was praised by a contemporary painter and the art writer

Philips Angel II (c. 1618–1664) for a "curious looseness of brushwork." He warned "those less skilled than Dou against the lifeless description of surfaces that would result from painting in too stiff a manner."^{His booklet Lof der Schilder-konst ('Praise of the Art of Painting') situates itself in a line of art historical and theoretical writing in the Dutch Republic that started with the 'Schilder-boeck' published by Flemish émigré Karel van Mander in Haarlem in 1604. Angel gave his lecture at a time when he and other painters in Leiden were seeking permission to establish a guild to protect their economic interests. They likely also sought recognition as a group with an important socio-economic status in local society. The latter is reflected in the first part of the book which seeks to affirm the status of the painter's profession.} Angel’s appreciation of Dou will probably strike most twenty-first-century observers as contrary to fact, but Dutch art lovers were evidently more used to inspecting paintings at very close quarters, at times, with the aid of a magnifying glass.

Vermeer did not dwell on detail. A magnifying glass is never necessary to fully appreciate any part of his pictures. Like Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin 1699 –1779) , who, when asked how he painted, said that he kept putting on touches until the thing looked finished, Vermeer was always interested in the overall impact. Monet (1840–1926) and Rembrandt, both accused of leaving their works unfinished, said the same thing as Chardin. On the other hand, for Van Mieris and Dou, detail was even more important than the whole. When the viewer walks away from their pictures, it is always this or that detail that is remembered rather than the composition, the lighting, or the sensation of space. Of all the fine interior painters, only Gerrit ter Borch  (1617–1681) and Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) were able to subordinate detail for the sake of the whole, but surprisingly, the latter only when he emulated the works of Vermeer. With Vermeer, every detail stays back as it would in nature, losing itself in the part to which it belongs; modestly waiting to be sought out, unseen until it is looked for.

By clicking on the title of the painting to access a brief discussion of a particular aspect of Vermeer's painting technique and relative image.