Transart Institute
June 10, 2006
Studying Vermeer’s, A Maid Asleep: Reading a Seventeenth-Century Painting
We are entering the gallery for seventeenth-century Dutch masters in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s massive painting collection. The pictures on the walls are primarily large and dark (as one tends to generalize old masters) with the fully lit visages of Dutch people in period dress. We peruse the impressive portraits of Rembrandt and the frolicking figures of Frans Hals, until we see a row of three smaller works in the farthest corner. On first approaching we are struck by the scale of these three works, and our need to peer in on their intimate interior settings. The center painting is ample and invites closer inspection. At 34 x 30 inches, it is dwarfed by the surrounding masters in the gallery, yet it is larger than its two neighbors. The impression is large in feeling—generous. We may be taken in by the warmth of coloration in its umbers, golden ochre, reds and pale yellow—the color rich and sparkling. Focusing, we recognize a mysterious light on a familiar subject. Central is the still figure of a woman at a table in a darkened room, her eyes closed as crescents, and there behind, the luminous glow of a room beyond. The latter suggests possibilities, as yet undetermined. The style of the work is a naturalistic realism, “photographic” almost, lending the painting an immediacy and recognition that traverses the centuries and connects to our own time. There are no bravura brushstrokes, (as in the Hals or Rembrandt) that insist on the mediation of the painter. Rather, the absence of the artist’s hand registers patient observation, again as a camera, recording light through color as it defines form. This lends both distance and intimacy, oddly—as if the more carefully rendered, the more resonant the object—beyond verisimilitude if it is possible. The mood of melancholy pervades in this highly psychological space. The figure sits in a domestic setting, conveying a place of familiarity, again, bringing it into our present. We look at the wall label: Vermeer, A Maid Asleep.
After the First Encounter: An initial reading
The female is subtly lit in a darkened room, her head with closed eyes leaning on her hand. The shape of the bodice in her rich red burgundy satin dress with its cleft and punctuating curved white collar, is reminiscent of a heart. This is echoed by the shape of her face with its double-lobed forehead formed by the descending peak of her cap. Brushing by her we are drawn to the light of the “empty” room behind; the progression of door frames lead us in. There, a square dark mirror is the only discernable furnishing (on its distant wall) and a table below it. This space attracts so strongly, we have to back up to return to the setting around her. We may abruptly notice the strange protrusion of the Turkish rug (that so often covers seventeenth-century tables) and its fine detail at the fore of the table. It is in an inexplicable triangle pointing up, almost pressing up against the picture plane. This both obstructs our linear progression toward the woman, and simultaneously points us in. The still life to its left on the table is an amalgam of objects and material, most discernable a jug and a plate of fruit. On closer inspection we make out a wine glass, almost invisible, positioned before the woman. Closer looking yet reveals an overturned amber glass flask before the jug as well as a walking stick or cane. All is a jumble. The back rest of a chair faces us obliquely, with lion-head finials acting as sentinels.1 It too hinders our ability to get too close to the woman. Above her head in the shadows is the corner of a painting—we make out Cupid’s leg and a fallen mask. To the right of the painting hangs a cloak, and the suspended dowel of presumably a map to the right of the doorway.
This painting has light written all over it; the control of the dimmed room in the foreground and the unexplained light source softly illuminating the woman’s beautiful sweet face in the darkened corner. (What are these shadows?) There is the welcoming brightness of the far room, the thin vertical highlights glancing off the two doorframes that, again, form steps into it. Our contemplation suggests a scenario, but also begs questions concerning love, alcohol and the loneliness of a woman in this darkened space. The mood of melancholia prevails. The heart and Cupid referred to, the conspicuous absence of a “lover.” Has he just left? And more questions: How does her being a “maid” fit into the scenario? Is she simply drunk or has the artist intended that she is dreaming? Why the luminous room behind?
Investigation and Research
What can we say about the painting based on what we know of Vermeer and his work? So little is documented about Vermeer’s life, his early art training, and his associations, that he has been called the “Sphinx of Delft.” Most is left to speculation on what little evidence we have. It has been suggested that he had the support of a buyer who owned the larger portion of his production, a bookdealer named Jacobus Abrahamsz Dissius2. With only thirty-six works extant, this becomes significant. Vermeer worked slowly and methodically--very deliberately, as evidenced by his thoughtful compositions. With a documented eleven children to feed, the support of a buyer was key to finance his artistic inquiries and investigations into light.
In relation to his contemporaries in the proximity of Delft, it is probable in this painting of 1657, that Vermeer was inspired by Pieter de Hooch, a painter three years his senior and already a mature artist painting figures set in domestic interiors bathed in sunlight.3 De Hooch was also an innovator in the use of perspective and spatial illusions. The use of a second “mysteriously lit” room in The Maid Asleep is a motif borrowed from artists in the circle of Carel Fabritius called “doorkijkje,” and is often used to provide relief. (Seemingly not so in this Vermeer.) It is suggested that Fabritius, the most talented student of Rembrandt may have trained Vermeer.4 This would have given the latter a direct link to the master of expressing profound human character as well as a great manipulator of light. It is known that Vermeer was introduced to Gerard ter Borch in 1653, an artist who also captured psychological depth and emotional ambiguity and was most prominently known for his depiction of light on satin.5 Ter Borch in his exquisitely rendered compositions, astutely recognized the power of leaving out and concealing something of meaning. He tantalizes the viewer with an intriguing narrative without giving away its conclusion, or even the subject of his pictures at times. This pulls the viewer in, sparks the imagination, and invites participation. For example, in his models’ gestures, he tilts heads slightly, or he views the central character from behind. Things are implicitly suggested, but then left unsaid. Vermeer was undoubtedly impressed.
It cannot be overlooked that Vermeer was also influenced early in his development by the Caravaggists of Utrecht, as reflected most prominently in his first genre painting The Procuress, 1656. In addition to using dramatic lighting, Caravaggio heightens the presence of his figures by cropping them at the waist and placing the viewer immediately in the midst of the narrative action, coming in close—offering no identifiable setting. Unlike De Hooch’s vision of complete figures viewed at a distance in a spacious architectural setting, Vermeer remembers Caravaggio’s lesson and confines the field of vision here to an intimate corner of a room. Figures and objects become large and seemingly near to the viewer, much more akin to real experience (and incidentally, like many photographs), lending a feel of immediacy and the contemporary. This strategy also provides the spatial impediments that both make tension on the picture’s surface with its in and out (close and far) intervals, creating rhythms across the surface, and serves as psychological tropes for feelings: for example, a figure might loom (as the officer in Cavalier and Young Woman, 1657 in the Frick Collection), or an object might become a hurdle in reaching the distant, receded subject.6
With so few paintings, looking at the chronology of Vermeer’s oeuvre in overview yields some informative observations.7 After three large scale historical paintings that bear little resemblance to his mature work, and one genre painting (The Procuress, as previously mentioned), A Maid Asleep is Vermeer’s first work with a solitary female in the architectural framework of a domestic space, the subject for which he is best known. This painting predates but hints at Vermeer’s subsequent motif of depicting his characters in shimmering light from a left window. (Note the light of the two door frames in the rear as vertical stripes of light and the emanation from the room beyond.) The artist uses a nearly square rectangle as a format throughout his oeuvre. (The proportions are more varied in, for example de Hooch’s work.) This and the visual effect of the extended horizontal and vertical lines of his compositions, lend stability and balance to his themes, offering a surface read of serenity against which to launch subtle disruptions, such as the toppled wine flask. Further, as did many genre painters of the period, the artist shuffles and repeats props such as a chair with lion-head finials (used nine times in his paintings between 1657 and 1666).8 He frequently uses a table and hangs a rectangle behind, be it a map of the Netherlands or a thematic painting. This device with, again, its horizontal and vertical lines, further anchors the composition and lends a slate for allegorical content.
It would appear that Vermeer had two modes of demeanor in his women when it comes to the expression of the eyes: seventeen of his paintings have women with downcast eyes and fourteen of his women look up or out. Surprisingly, nine of those in the latter category look out at us the viewer, directly. The effect, upon examining all the paintings in a serial overview, is that these moments of the woman peering out are poignant. She sparks and hooks us. Taking a closer look at one of the “outward gaze” paintings such as A Lady Writing, 1665, it becomes apparent that the direct contact in stopping us, also makes entering the picture secondary—requiring a willful effort. We begin to see clearly here the push and pull, the ambiguity of Vermeer’s tactics. While the woman is available, she also arrests us from entry into her space. And the recognition of the content of the painting seems instantaneous, yet difficult to maneuver. By contrast, the downcast eyes draw us in empathetically and leave us to wander about the surrounding environment in search of clues for her withdrawal. As in A Maid Asleep, the inaccessibility of the woman with her closed eyes expands the potential for a psychological reading.
A Brief Historical Framework: Society and Science
The religious and social mores of the seventeenth-century Dutch as depicted in Simon Schama’s, An Embarrassment of Riches, brings to life the interesting problem of an affluent society under the sway of Calvinist morality.9 That he was able to engagingly fill a nearly seven-hundred page tome on the subject, attests to breadth of obsessive control and conflict it created at every level of life. In contrast to most genre painters of his day who painted antidotal narratives, Vermeer’s work hints at the prevalent moral issues in his themes without becoming didactic or moralizing. He opens the subject and leaves it to interpretation without commenting. Therefore, The Maid Asleep refers to, for example, the subject of relationship and love, yet makes no judgment or defining statement on the matter. This has been remarkably beneficial to the painting’s popular longevity, leaving each generation to its own reading.
In the area of science, the invention and pioneering of lens usage played a vital role in the vision of the seventeenth-century northern painting. The century was alive with learning from observing a previously unavailable world as seen through magnifying lens. This was equated with new knowledge.10 Advocates for Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura, a lens that focuses rays of light to project an image the artist would like to paint, argue for his usage. They point most prominently to Vermeer’s later work that show the ‘halo’ effects of unfocused highlights—dabs of color that precisely positioned, congeal at a distance from the painting to form a naturalistic image. For example, little dots of white on finials, jugs, and even bread, show up throughout Vermeer’s oeuvre. In support of this proposition, it is a well known fact that Vermeer was familiar with the inventor of microscopes and lens-maker, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, who lived in Delft and was executor of Vermeer’s will.11 In A Maid Asleep we might look to the remarkable detail of the elaborate Turkish rug that emulates even the weave of the wool, to conjure the possibility of the use of a lens. What is evident is that as with all his borrowings and deployment of devices, Vermeer subjected them to his own incisive vision and goal of conveying human experience.
The Art Historical Divide: Reading Dutch Baroque realism, as related to Vermeer
In recent art historical debate, two opposing positions can be represented by two camps. On the one side, Svetlana Alpers, maintains that all seventeenth-century Dutch painting is primarily an art of description influenced by the developing science of optics and mapmaking, and aimed at delighting its audience. She believes meaning is found on the surface. She buys little stock in Vermeer’s pictures for their psychological depth, viewing Vermeer’s most prominent contribution as simply to have painted “distinctive representations of solitary women in the household.” She suggests this removes the women from representations of tension as depicted by other artists (naming Ter Borch).12
The opposing view is represented by Eddy De Jongh. Traditionalists, he says, by contrast look to iconography (as in Italian art), and seek to find meaning somewhere behind the surface of Dutch art through text and emblems.13 He would be likely to agree, for example, that the pose of the woman in A Maid Asleep, seems to refer to another iconographic tradition, the image of Melancholia with her head in hand. We would thereby deduce the woman is not asleep, but rather depressed, “love-sick,” or self-absorbed.14
Today, due to the complexity of Vermeer’s work and the development of art historical scholarship in the area of the Dutch Baroque, scholars would tend not to rely on any one approach as a key, but would take each work on its own ground of interpretive problems and solutions. Particularly since Vermeer’s work tends to lie open, it defies easy categorization, and its ephemeral meaning seems to only be sublimated by attempts to explain it through rigid constructs.15
Investigative Clues: Hidden knowledge
Recent technology, X-radiographs of A Woman Asleep reproduced and discussed in Arthur Wheelock’s book, Vermeer & the Art of Painting, show that a man with a hat originally stood in space of the mysteriously “empty” room beyond, as well as a dog posed looking up at him from the entry. In addition, prominently, grape leaves first lay over the still life (now removed). The wine glass was entered later, presumably in their place.16 This is Vermeer speaking: Apply subtlety and create tension by removing the male presence; Be explicit and build narrative by placing a wine glass before the woman. Due to its transparency, in yet another duality (subtlety/explicitly) the glass of alcohol is barely visible. These changes are truly the strongest evidence that Vermeer faced both a challenge in his transition from history painting to this new more intimate genre, and made tactical decisions to move from a conventional more literal narrative towards a “looser” symbolism, open to associations and intuitive thinking.
Also hidden from view, is the need to ask the question, what is in a name? Text supplemental to an image unless specifically known to be given by the artist, may serve as much to hinder as help in a reading of a work of art. The use of the title, A Maid Asleep seems only to be used by its current holder, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The preferred title in art historical references is A Woman Asleep. This revision relieves the onus of a class-based identity in the case of the protagonist. Given the visible qualities of the woman’s clothing and pearl earrings, then contrasting these with those of the woman in Vermeer’s later painting, The Milkmaid, it is highly unlikely our woman “asleep” is a maid. The milkmaid is ‘rough’ and simple in dress, by comparison. Her title of “Milkmaid” sticks. In the interpretation of paintings, Alison McNeil Kettering tells us that present day titles may be nothing more than a descriptive phrases introduced in the eighteenth or nineteenth century for marketing. Such additions of text are both leading and misleading.17 And for our uses, Simon Schama’s research shows that Girl Asleep at the Table (his title) was sold in Amsterdam, 1696 under the title, A Drunken, Sleeping Maid at a Table. This would group it with a popular theme of the time, the drunken sleeper, portraying sloth.18 Such discoveries through a little research clearly indicate the argument for a purely intuitive approach to reading paintings is not so straight forward. Informed research contributes.
Revisiting the Painting: a structural reading
Now knowing a bit of the social dynamics at play in the seventeenth century as well as some of the strategies of genre painters during the period, a second approach can be made to the painting. Vermeer surely employs Ter Borch’s manipulation of a work’s psychology. He expands his use of natural light, selectively illuminates his subject or darkens the space for heightened psychological effect. The shadow above the girl falls across the top of the room, associating the Cupid painting with darkness. Further Vermeer was a quick read on the potential for linear perspective, which leads the eye. Here the alignment of objects along a converging line similarly directs the eye. For example, a simple glance at the work reveals a main vector in the negative space, forming a triangle between the upright chair and frontal clump of the carpet. A profusion of fabric seems to be descending into this vector as if it were a vacuum. The left line of the angle runs up the protruding carpet, through the woman’s hand on the table, rapidly along her right side and face, straight through Cupid’s outstretched leg. Even more apparent, the second line follows a path from the left line of the chair-back, through the middle leg of the table in the room beyond, directly to the darkened mirror. Even the cane lying on the table, unannounced, (another article left behind?) points like an arrow to the space behind.
Dream-State: Towards a psychological reading
Grant that the woman has fallen asleep. Her passive face would allow this—the picture is of this realm. The figure in the far darkened corner is an object of desire. She has certainly been painted as such. A young woman, unresisting, irresistible, a perfect age, her angelic face (Madonna-like) radiates the freshness of a peach, even slightly plump and unblemished (yet blushing), as lovely as the fruit on the table before her. See, she even glistens with her pearl earrings and halos of light. Ripe for picking. Her judgment is off. She has even upset the wine flask, some blurred spatial perception, a loss of motor control—disorder in this orderly world as made more apparent by the Spartan room beyond. (It glows brightly.) Her modesty is not in check. The bleached (pure) white collar that should be tightly latched has been loosened, and dangles casually about her bodice, framing her cleavage, made all the more prominent by the rippled gathers of her satin sheen burgundy garment. The color of desire: smoldering red, not the brightness of flame, but the after-burn of golden embers peeking through the cover of dark. Or the turbulence under the stasis of water at the waterfall’s edge, small indicators of the current’s power as eddies swirl so subtly on the placid surface, the roar of its descent just beyond. Further, we feel her desire. It’s the loneliness and longing that radiates from a small solitary figure of any darkened room. Yet, backing up here a moment, not only is she in a remote corner, she’s been barricaded in. The eruption of a carpet and the jumble of a still life prove to be so many obstacles, there is no readily available path, and even the lion-head finials stare sternly enough to growl at any forward motion. Is this “look but don’t touch?” In this dream-state, her eyes closed, shut from the world, she is inaccessibly removed. We cannot make contact. The vector between the chair and the table sucks the melting fabric into its hole, threatening to pull down the still life and all its articles with it. And there the half-empty wine glass stands. So follow the path of least resistance; that line that runs quickly and travels deeply to the farthest place. That which is luminous comes easily. Follow it to, ultimately, a darkened mirror—the viewer is stopped and returned to herself—a reflection. As if to say, “do you see yourself?” Awaken.
Bibliography
Alpers, Svetlana. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. University of Chicago Press, 1983.
----------. “Picturing Dutch Culture.” Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered. Ed. Wayne Franits. Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 57-67.
----------.New York Studio School lecture, New York. 8 March, 2006.
De Jongh, Eddy. “The Iconological Approach to Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting.” The Golden Age of Dutch Painting in Historical Perspective. Ed. Grijzenhout, Frans and Heck van Veen. Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 200-23.
Hockney, David. Secret Knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters. New York: Viking Studio, 2001.
Kersten, Micheal. Delft Masters, Vermeer’s Contemporaries. Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 1996.
Kettering, Alison McNeil. “Ter Borch’s Ladies in Satin.” Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered. Ed. Wayne Franits. Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 98-115.
Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches: an Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New York: Knopf, 1987.
Snow, Edward. A Study of Vermeer. Berkley: University of California Press, 1994.
Sutton, Peter C. Pieter de Hooch, 1629-1684. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1998.
Weschler, Lawrence. Vermeer In Bosnia. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003.
Westermann, Mariet. “After Iconography and Iconoclasm: current research in Netherlandish art, 1566-1700." Art Bulletin 84, no.2 (June, 2002), pp. 351-67.
Wheelock, Arthur K. Jr. Vermeer and the Art of Painting. Yale University Press, 1995.
----------. Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists Around 1650. New York: Garland Publishing, 1977.
Jayne Holsinger
Two Pages Connecting Research to Work Project
My research of Dutch genre painting this semester has had an immediate impact on my work. As I have stated many times, I have been largely an intuitive painter more informed by observation and verbal exchanges, than by reading and scholarship. Taking an in-depth look at Vermeer and the scholarship surrounding his work has brought some startling realizations.
Just as my paper makes a journey from an initial intuitive reading to a more informed one based on scholarly research, so have my discoveries informed my painting which I will list. First, there is the knowledge surrounding the phenomenon of Northern Renaissance painting, which I had never given much thought to—the cultural, geographic, religious and scientific elements that conspired to make this unique genre what it was, as distinct and different from that of Italian Renaissance painting. How it came to be. Having a visual inventory of art historical images (paintings) as I have, is vastly different than knowing their context and the how they relate to one another. Visual inventory is limited. It readily identifies works of art by author, date and region. It might also take paintings on their own terms; how they work compositionally and aesthetically, and with what spirit and energy a painter works. Research has brought a deeper appreciation for the work, which in turn can only better inform my own painting.
Second, by spending more time with the work of a painter I admire and share approaches with (specifically, Vermeer’s naturalistic realism and his bent for perfection) I have somehow managed to see the subtle workings of my own vision. I often choose images to paint by unconscious motives. Stepping back, and hearing a wordsmith such as Edward Snow take apart a Vermeer—investing each gesture of the model or placement of an article with psychological meaning, no slack—gives me the overview to look at my own work more critically, and suggests roads to take. Likewise, I found a lot of the verbalization of ideas confirming of my own perceptions. Currently I am of the mind—look at how much I’ve accomplished unconsciously. Imagine what I might accomplish more consciously.
Third, by way of researching this subject, I have familiarized myself more thoroughly with the job and role art historians play in this world, and how organic, challenging and changing the field is. Knowledge is in some ways political, and who’s agenda gets heard rests largely on who can provide the most convincing argument. Reading the scholarship of Svetlana Alpers, then to going hear her talk, provided a fuller picture of her vision, and put a face on the writing. Somehow, a deeper appreciation of this and the flexibility of knowledge, gives me more elbow room in the studio.
Fourth, I came across a couple of startling assertions and findings in my reading. The scholar Arthur Wheelock, claimed Vermeer “must not have painted very frequently.” He premised this on the small body of work the painter created over a given period of time and the fact that no other industry of prints or drawings exist by the artist that would suggest other motifs, themes, investigations or undertakings. Whether or not this conjecture is true, the thought challenges my conception of the work habits that constitute a productive and substantial artist. Another piece of information that particularly struck me while reading, was that of the method for execution Vermeer and his contemporaries used in painting. They moved from one article to the next, bringing one item up to near total completion before moving to a different area. This was due to the labor intensity of grinding pigments, the day’s supply made for a limited palette. Therefore it was more economical to complete item by item. I have been ingrained with the idea that fundamentally it is desirable to work “all over” a painting for unity, and I have never seen tangible evidence to argue otherwise. Of course, I do whatever works for me, but now I feel less subversive. This will serve in teaching others painting.
Lastly, but most importantly--as I work in the studio now, I am experiencing the benefit of mental space that has been opened through research. Whether it is picking up the Dutch Baroque floral still life to place next to my Mennonite woman, or transporting a French Arabesque floral wallpaper to her modest kitchen walls, I am experiencing a fluidity that previously didn’t exist. If the research is not connected to the work project, I don’t know how else to explain it.