It is the tale of the two Vermeers, one as tangled as the ringlets on the guitar player at its centre.<\/p>\n
For the first time in 300 years two \u201cidentical\u201d artworks have been reunited after both vied to be recognised as the genuine painting created by the elusive Dutch master Johannes Vermeer.<\/p>\n
The Guitar Player, one of the best-preserved of the 17th-century artist\u2019s small number of surviving paintings, was given to the British state by the Earl of Iveagh a century ago along with his Kenwood House estate in London.<\/p>\n
Until the bequest, however, another painting known as The Lady with a Guitar with an almost identical composition had been recognised as Vermeer\u2019s work. <\/p>\n
This painting, held by the John G Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and which had suffered over the years from poor restoration work, was immediately downgraded and has since languished in the museum storerooms.<\/p>\n
However, new research suggests that far from being a later copy by an inferior artist, the Philadelphia painting may well be by Vermeer himself, becoming only the 38th of his artworks known to have survived. It would also be the only known copy he made.<\/p>\n
The Philadelphia artwork, below right, whose most substantial difference is the absence of ringlets in the guitar player\u2019s hair, has been brought to London to be displayed alongside its doppelganger, below left, in an exhibition opening on Monday: Double Vision: Vermeer at Kenwood.<\/p>\n
As they were mounted next to each other for the first time in centuries, Wendy Monkhouse, English Heritage\u2019s senior curator at Kenwood House, said it was like \u201crecognising a relative\u201d.<\/p>\n
Monkhouse said that while she was not going to \u201cbox myself in\u201d by saying the Philadelphia painting was also by Vermeer, it was easy to see why some were convinced.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is balanced on a hair\u2019s breadth,\u201d she said of the debate. \u201cThere are a whole series of arguments based on the science and you can see where they have used the same pigments in the same place and the same strokes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe quality thing is much harder to comment on because of the condition [of the Philadelphia painting]. It has suffered.\u201d <\/p>\n
It has previously been generally accepted that the absence of ringlets in the hair of the musician in the Philadelphia painting dated it to after Vermeer\u2019s death in 1675, because ringlets were thought to have fallen out of fashion. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody has Cosmopolitan from 1680 that shows exactly how the hair styles are massively changing,\u201d Monkhouse said. However, she added that this was the first time people could study them side by side.<\/p>\n
The Kenwood House Vermeer \u2014 unusually well-preserved for a 17th-century painting, having never been relined in a process that can flatten paint texture \u2014 is regarded as too fragile to travel and was the major absence from the blockbuster Vermeer exhibition at Amsterdam\u2019s Rijksmuseum<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n Tests on the two paintings are so far inconclusive. While some of the same pigments have been used in both, others differ. The blues in the Kenwood work, for example, are ultramarine deriving from expensive lapis lazuli, while the Philadelphia one contains the much cheaper indigo. The ground layer of paint also differs.<\/p>\n