A View beyond Delft: Johannes Vermeer’s Woman with a Lute and Its Relationship to Frans van Mieris
2016; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.16
ISSN2473-1404
Autores Tópico(s)Art History and Market Analysis
Resumonot been documented, they unquestionably knew each other personally-their respective residences, Delft and Leiden, were located merely twenty kilometers apart.Vermeer was three years older than van Mieris, but there is little doubt that he looked up to the latter's social and financial status. 1 The Delft artist, moreover, strongly admired his contemporary's work.Ever since Edouard Plietzsch suggested in 1939 that some of van Mieris's paintings served as an example to Vermeer, scholars have identified a number of connections between the Delft artist's works and those of his Leiden colleague. 2Inspired by a conversation I had with Walter shortly before his death, this article provides a critical overview of Vermeer's responses to van Mieris's work.It will then focus on a case of direct influence involving Woman with a Lute (fig. 1) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which seems to have been overlooked in the literature on Vermeer.Although Vermeer remained a resident of Delft throughout his life, his work is inextricably linked to that of contemporary painters living elsewhere.His early history and genre paintings suggest that he studied the work of, among others, Jacob van Loo ( 1614-1670) from Amsterdam, Gerrit van Honthorst (1592-1656) from Utrecht, Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693) from Dordrecht, Gerard ter Borch (1617-1681) from Deventer, and Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) from Leiden.Vermeer's admiration of Dou's work probably led him to the latter's star pupil, van Mieris.Around 1657 this precocious artist found a new niche in Dutch genre painting by combining his master's delicate brushwork with the genteel interactions of ter Borch's high-life scenes. 3The refined technique, description of textures, and illusionism in Dou's and van Mieris's work of the 1650s certainly strongly appealed to Vermeer.They reverberated in some of his early genre scenes of the late 1650s, including The Letter Reader (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen), Cavalier and Young Woman (New York, Frick Collection) and The Milkmaid (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). 4Van Mieris's work became of greater significance to Vermeer around 1660, when the latter began adopting subjects, objects, figure poses, and compositions from the former's paintings.The Delft artist was particularly fascinated by Man and a Woman with Two Dogs, known as "Teasing the Pet" (fig.2) and The Oyster Meal, dated 1660 and 1661 respectively.These companion pieces first helped Vermeer shape The Glass of Wine (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie).While the
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