The first admirers of Vermeer saw a celebrant of the worldly \u2013 not a painter of allegories and annunciations<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
There is merit in many of Graham-Dixon\u2019s readings. For instance, it seems plausible that some religious imagery enters into the probable pair of \u2018The Milkmaid\u2019 (Martha) and the \u2018Woman With a Balance\u2019 perhaps weighing souls in her scales. There are, too, some paintings from later in Vermeer\u2019s short career which must be regarded in the light of philosophical statements, for example \u2018The Astronomer\u2019, \u2018The Geographer\u2019 and his very unsatisfactory \u2018Allegory of the Catholic Faith\u2019, whose theological substance was, uniquely, acknowledged in catalogues soon after the painter\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
But does this argue in favour of Graham-Dixon\u2019s suggestions that seemingly innocent works showing women playing virginals are actually about divine grace? Or does it suggest that Vermeer, who could never have painted profitable large group portraits of massed dignitaries like Frans Hals, was trying a completely new direction to attract the attention of more than one patron?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Certainly other paintings are pushed into a completely implausible theological straitjacket. How can \u2018View of Delft\u2019 be considered a vision of the life to come, like John Bunyan\u2019s heavenly city? Women caught in happy moments \u2013 one falling asleep after drinking, others evidently reading love letters with pleasure and excitement \u2013 are repeatedly claimed by Graham-Dixon to be contemplating their religious redemption.\u00a0 This seems anachronistic,and somehow puts Vermeer\u2019s works on the level of such Pre-Raphaelite classics as William Holman Hunt\u2019s \u2018The Awakening Conscience\u2019.<\/p>\n
Also, there is no evidence that they were ever interpreted in such an unusual way at the time. A French Jesuit-educated traveller, Balthasar de Monconys, did manage to see a Vermeer, which must have been the \u2018Young Woman with a Water Pitcher\u2019 now in the Metropolitan in New York. He asked what it was worth, and it is true that the absurd figure he was told may have indicated that Vermeer did not want to sell the painting to a Jesuit zealot. However, if, as Graham-Dixon argues, this work is actually a portrayal of the Woman of Samaria in the Bible, is it not likely that a highly intelligent and devout connoisseur of art such as Monconys would have made some acknowledgement in describing it? Or did he just see, like most of us, a beautiful domestic image of a servant that he liked enough to consider buying?<\/p>\n
Nor is this a case of the religious meaning being concealed. A later visitor to Vermeer\u2019s atelier, the art collector Pieter Teding van Berkhout, a co-religionist, greatly admired what he was shown, but only as \u2018curiosities\u2019 and marvels of \u2018perspective\u2019. There is no indication that he saw any of what Graham-Dixon insists on. But, we are told, \u2018he probably had far more detailed and interesting thoughts about the artist\u2019s paintings that he simply never wrote down\u2019. With respect, that is a pretty weak submission.<\/p>\n
Even when one follows the trail of supposed evidence, the thesis fails to convince. Graham-Dixon claims that the \u2018Girl with a Pearl Earring\u2019 is in fact a portrayal of Mary Magdalene. He says that the model is aged 12 or 13 and must be a girl whom Vermeer knew well. The painting is known to have been executed at a time when the van Ruijvens\u2019 daughter Magdalena was also 12 years old, ergo\u2026 But there is an established iconography of Mary Magdalene. She often looks harrowed and anguished; most consistently, she wears her hair loose. In painters of an iconographic bent, she carries a jar of ointment. None of this is the case in the Vermeer. Pearls are frequently associated with purity and virginity \u2013 not very appropriate in the case of the Magdalene. But most damagingly, Vermeer\u2019s figure certainly doesn\u2019t look 12. The determination to identify her as Magdalena van Ruijven has overcome plausible observation. The elegant headdress and above all the socking great pearl are not those of a child incongruously dressing up. This is a grown woman on the verge of marriage.<\/p>\n
Graham-Dixon is an experienced and diligent writer on art, and the book contains much absorbing factual information about Vermeer\u2019s mysterious life and his circle, with sound deductions about his family. But there is a surprising lack of judgment when it comes to talking about the paintings and their presentation as puzzles which have at last been solved.<\/p>\n
The fact is that Vermeer is terribly diminished if you insist on explaining him as a purveyor of allegory. Not only that, but the whole art of painting suffers from the suggestion that a picture becomes greater if it has some philosophical significance. Some wonderful works no doubt do have nobility of meaning; but some may be perfectly idiotic \u2013 the Tiepolos in W\u00fcrzburg aren\u2019t any less magnificent for portraying what they apparently believe about life on four continents. Other masterpieces are about nothing much \u2013 the greatest Stubbs, Watteaus, Manets and Matisses are really just renderings of substance, flesh and pleasure. And perhaps Vermeer\u2019s first French critics were right, and there is in him no more than that.<\/p>\n
In any case I feel that a critic who dwells (perhaps wrongly) on the inexplicable rapture one feels in front of \u2018View of Delft\u2019 gets closer to the heart of things than one who insists (perhaps rightly) that we are being shown a particular theological understanding of the afterlife. If anything rises off Vermeer it is humility; and the humble admission that the magic before his own eyes can only be rendered, not explained, is one that we can only share in a quiet shrug.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSpeaker Series: An evening with Bernard Cornwell<\/p>\n