Gemäldegalerie Berlim Alemanha
OST - 65x77 - 1658-1661
The Wine Glass (also The
Glass of Wine or Lady and Gentleman Drinking Wine, Dutch: Het glas wijn) is a 1660 painting by Johannes Vermeer now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. It
portrays a seated woman and a standing man drinking in an interior setting. The
work contains the conventions of genre painting of the Delft School developed
by Pieter de Hooch in
the late 1650s. It contains figures situated in a brightly lit and spacious
interior, while its architectural space is highly defined. The figures are set
in the middle ground, rather than positioned in the foreground.
Vermeer was
about 27 when he painted The Glass of Wine, and according to the critic
Walter Liedtke, "No analysis of artistic conventions can suggest the sheer
beauty and extraordinary refinement of a painting like The Glass of Wine, which
may be considered one of Vermeer's first fully mature works".
The concept of
figures drinking around a table, and the portrayal of a woman drinking from a
glass are taken directly from De Hooch's A Dutch Courtyard. However, Vermeer's work breaks away from
the prototypes of De Hooch in that the interior is rendered in a far more
elegant and higher-class setting than the older master's works. The clothes of
the figures, the patterned tablecloth, the gilded picture frame hanging on the
back wall, and the coat of arms in the stained window glass all suggest a
wealthier setting.
The scene
likely represents some type of courtship, but the roles being played by the two
figures are not clear. The woman has just drained the glass of wine and the man
seems impatient to pour her more, almost as if he is trying to get her drunk. A
musical instrument, the cittern, lies on the chair with musical
notebooks. But the figure of Temperance is depicted in the stained glass
window, adding to the tension in the scene.
Compared to
his earlier paintings, Vermeer's brushwork in The Wine Glass is
subdued, while the faces and clothes of the figures are depicted with wide
smooth outlines. Only in the tapestry of the tablecloth and the window glass
did the artist apply finely detailed, linear brush strokes. At the time Vermeer
was not the only Dutch artist attempting to develop the ideas of De Hooch;
contemporary paintings from Jan Steen, Gerard Ter Borch, and Frans van Mieris the Elder also
display a refined technique.
The painting
shares elements with other Vermeer works. The Girl with the Wine Glass (1659–1660)
portrays two men, but in common with The Wine Glass it has a woman
seated at a table with a glass of wine, and the tiled floors and stained-glass
windows in both are very similar. The same wine pitcher appears in an
earlier Vermeer, A Girl Asleep (1657).
The Wine Glass is
a transitional work, and as such, is not commonly viewed as one of Vermeer's
finest. According to art critic Lawrence Gowing, comparing the work with Gabriel Metsu's The Duet, it "lacks the sociable
fluency, the ingratiating inventiveness".
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário