Santa Praxedes (Saint Praxedis) - Felice Ficherelli

Santa Praxedes (Saint Praxedis) - Felice Ficherelli
Coleção privada
OST - 104x80 - 1640-1645

A Lição de Música Interrompida (Girl Interrupted at Her Music) - Johannes Vermeer

A Lição de Música Interrompida (Girl Interrupted at Her Music) - Johannes Vermeer
Frick Collection Nova York Estados Unidos
OST - 39x44 - 1658-1659

Girl Interrupted at Her Music is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It was painted in the baroque style, probably between the years 1658 and 1659, using oil on canvas. Since 1901 it has been in the Frick Collection in New York City.

In this painting, Vermeer depicts a young woman at her music with an older gentleman. This painting shows the typical courtship during the 17th century in Europe. It also focuses on the importance of music when it comes to love.

The room that they are shown in is one of higher class, most likely belonging to a person of haute bourgeoisie. The painting is very reminiscent of Vermeer’s other works.Music-making, a recurring subject in Vermeer’s interior scenes, was associated in the seventeenth century with courtship. In this painting of a duet or music lesson momentarily interrupted, the amorous theme is reinforced by the picture of Cupid with raised left arm dimly visible in the background; the motif is derived from a popular book on emblems of love published in 1608 and symbolizes fidelity to a single lover.

Mulher com Alaúde (Young Woman with a Lute / Woman with a Lute Near a Window) - Johannes Vermeer

Mulher com Alaúde (Young Woman with a Lute / Woman with a Lute Near a Window) - Johannes Vermeer
Metropolitan Museum of Arts Nova York Estados Unidos
OST - 51x45 - 1662-1663

Woman with a Lute, also known as Woman with a Lute Near a Window, is a painting created about 1662–1663 by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The painting depicts a young woman wearing an ermine-trimmed jacket and enormous pearl earrings as she eagerly looks out a window, presumably expecting a male visitor. "A musical courtship is suggested by the viola da gamba on the floor in the foreground and by the flow of songbooks across the tabletop and onto the floor," according to a web page about the work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art website. The tuning of a lute was recognized by contemporary viewers as a symbol of the virtue of temperance. The oil on canvas work is 20¼ inches high and 18 inches wide (51.4 × 45.7 cm). The painting's canvas was almost certainly cut from the same bolt as that used for Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid.

The work likely was painted shortly after Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, and it shares with that painting its framing of the figure within rectangular motifs. But the painting has more muted tones, reflecting a shift in that direction by Vermeer in the mid- to late 1660s. At this time, Vermeer began using shadows and soft contours to further evoke an atmosphere of intimacy. "The impression of spatial recession and atmosphere is somewhat diminished by darkening with age of the objects in the foreground and by abrasion of the paint surface, mostly in the same area," according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art web page.

The painting was given to the museum in 1900 by a bequest of railroad industrialist Collis P. Huntington.

A young woman sits at a window, tuning a lute. With her ear cocked toward the pegbox, she strums the instrument while fixing her gaze on the window and the street beyond. The light falling into the room through the panes of leaded glass picks out the glint of pearls at the woman’s ear and throat, as well as the polished brass studs in the chair beside her. Songbooks lie strewn on the table at which she sits. Another book has tumbled to the marble floor, where it lies next to a viola da gamba. At the rear of the room, a hand-colored map of Europe hangs against the otherwise bare white wall. Someone has pushed a chair with heavy carved finials away from the table.
This picture occupies a midpoint in Vermeer’s evolution as he step-by-step mastered the convincing depiction of architectural space. In his earliest paintings, devoted to biblical or mythological subjects, bulky figures jostle against the picture plane, the ground on which they stand appearing to tilt up toward the viewer. In the genre scenes that followed, Vermeer developed compositions based around the half-length figure, anchored in space by a table that juts out of the lower left-hand corner. In Young Woman with a Lute, the perspectival recession of chair and table offers a bridge into the painting, initiating the eye’s strong diagonal movement across the canvas. Taking in the picture at a glance, we focus on the musician herself as the radiant fulcrum between the chair and the map.
As in so many of Vermeer’s paintings, illumination here takes the form of a window on the left that suffuses the middle ground in soft light while leaving the foreground in relative darkness. With few means of artificial illumination at their disposal, seventeenth-century painters manipulated windows and shutters to control the fall of light in their studios. In the narrow row houses so typical of Dutch cities both in the seventeenth century and today, it was the voorhuis, or street-facing room, that enjoyed the best light. Martha Hollander has defined the voorhuis as “simultaneously public and private; it was a gateway to the deeper interior, the upstairs rooms, and the street.” Vermeer’s lute player, like most of his women, occupies this liminal space.
The artist heightened this liminality by focusing the lutenist’s gaze and the torsion of her body outward, toward the window and the street. The act of tuning her instrument and the viola da gamba on the floor have suggested to most commentators that this young woman anticipates a duet. But the scattered songbooks and nonchalant abandonment of the man’s instrument could equally suggest an encounter already completed. The woman may have her eyes on the back of a departing suitor, as her fingers restore the harmony that a recent performance has brought out of tune.
The musical scenes of Dutch art existed alongside a vibrant musical culture in daily life. Instrumental skill was an expected accomplishment of well-brought up young men and women. Within this culture of amateur performance, the lute occupied a privileged position as the vehicle of soloists and the instrument most often depicted in the visual arts. Lutes were themselves luxury items generally imported, at significant costs, from Italy or the German-speaking lands. The songbooks that the lutenist neglects in her reverie also held an important place in seventeenth-century Dutch culture. They ranged across a spectrum from cheap and disposable productions to luxurious creations of the finest artists and printmakers. Vermeer’s depiction of the songbooks in The Met's painting is not detailed enough to allow us to identify them with specific publications, but they do display the songbook’s typical oblong format, allowing multiple singers or instrumentalists to share the same score. Because of their association with duets and their frequently amorous content, songbooks often served as lovers’ gifts in seventeenth-century Holland. Even as they are ignored by Vermeer’s lutenist, the songbooks further serve to situate her in an atmosphere of erotic anticipation or recollection.

Young Woman with a Lute falls within the category of Vermeer’s so-called “pearl pictures,” a term first coined by Lawrence Gowing. This designation refers most obviously to the prominent inclusion of pearl necklaces and earrings, but also to a pearlescent coloration more generally. In these works, Vermeer shifted toward a smoother surface and away from the almost pointillist application of dots of paint to capture the effect of light. Within the generally somber palette of the darkened and abraded Met picture, the pearls at the lutenist’s ear and throat stand out, further establishing her as the cynosure of the painting. The artist reinforced the pearls’ luminosity with the visual rhyme of the gleaming brass studs in the chair on the left.

Dutch seventeenth-century paintings very frequently include Islamic or East Asian textiles, reminders of the networks that linked cities like Delft to centers of trade around the world. One such signpost to the outer world is the carpet draping the table at which the lute player sits. The textile in Young Woman with a Lute is unfortunately difficult to identify, as this portion of the painting is highly abraded and discolored, distorting its original appearance. The remaining traces of dark blue pigment suggest a pattern of horizontal stripes, while the stiff draping has caused the carpet specialist Walter Denny to speculate that it may represent a Persian or Indian carpet. More easily identified is the map that dominates the background of the picture, first printed around 1613 by Jodocus Hondius and subsequently reissued in 1659 by Joan Blaeu. The map adds a cosmopolitan note to Vermeer’s domestic scene. Like the window at which his lutenist stares, it gestures toward the world waiting outside the confines of the house.
Attempts have been made to identify The Met's picture with inventory and auction records describing Vermeer paintings of young female musicians. But the work first surfaces with certainty in the historical record when the American railroad tycoon Collis P. Huntington acquired it on the Paris art market in the late nineteenth century for two thousand francs, subsequently bequeathing it to The Met upon his death in 1900. (The work was formally accessioned, however, only following the death of his widow in 1924.) Young Woman with a Lute provided a highlight of the 1909 Hudson-Fulton exhibition, held at The Met to commemorate the tricentennial of Henry Hudson’s navigation of the river that now bears his name. A critic who saw the painting then described it as “that pearl of price, a perfect work…of the most perfect painter that ever lived.”

Moça com Chapéu Vermelho (Girl with a Red Hat) - Johannes Vermeer

Moça com Chapéu Vermelho (Girl with a Red Hat) - Johannes Vermeer
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Estados Unidos
Óleo sobre painel - 23x18 - 1665-1666




Girl with a Red Hat is a rather small painting, signed by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is seen as one of a number of Vermeer's tronies – depictions of models fancifully dressed that were not (as far as is known) intended to be portraits of specific, identifiable subjects. Others believe it is a portrait. Whether Vermeer chose family members as models or found them elsewhere in Delft is irrelevant to the appreciation of his paintings. Its attribution to Vermeer – as it is on a (recycled) wood panel and not on canvas – has been a matter of controversy with scholars on both sides of the argument.
The painting, supposed to be executed 1665–1666, may have been among those owned by Vermeer's patron, Pieter Claesz van Ruijven and possibly, through inheritance it may have been passed on to his wife, Maria de Knuijt who died 1681; her daughter, Magdalena van Ruijven; and Magdalena's husband, Jacob Abrahamsz Dissius. It is thought to have been sold on an auction in Amsterdam on May 16, 1696 (probably no. 38, 39 or 40).
It was bought at a sale at the Hôtel de Bouillon, in Paris on December 10, 1822 (no. 28.) by Baron Louis Marie Baptiste Atthalin for 200 French francs. After his death it came to his nephew and adopted son, Laurent Atthalin; by inheritance to Baron Gaston Laurent-Atthelin and by inheritance to his wife, Baroness Laurent-Atthelin. The painting was sold by M. Knoedler & Co., New York and London, in November 1925 to Andrew W. Mellon for $290.000, who deeded it on March 30, 1932 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust in Pittsburgh (a holding-place for Mellon's pictures while the National Gallery of Art was being established). The trust gave it to the NGA in 1937.
The painting is only known since a Paris sale of 1822, in which it was described as a work by Vermeer van Delft. It was sold for 200 French francs. Subsequently: collection Baron Atthalin, Colmar; collection Baron Laurent Atthalin; art gallery Knoedler, New York, 1925; collection Andrew W. Mellon, Washington. Since 1937, in the museum.
In this painting Vermeer repeated the posture of the arm in The Girl with a Flute, though she is seen from the other side, and is therefore leaning on her right arm, against the backrest of a chair decorated with lions' heads and rings. This picture was quite evidently painted with the aid of a camera obscura. That is indicated by his use of pointillism, bright dots of paint and occasional highlights on the folds. The light is falling at an angle from above onto her soft, feathery hat; on the top it is vermilion, and the lower shadowed part is a dark purple colour. The intensity of the light is such that the hat appears, at points, to be transparent. Its broad brim has the effect of casting a shadow over most of her face; only her left cheek, below her eye, is lit. The shading of her eyes, the centre of her face, is quite intentional; the principle of dissimulatio, a mysterious disguise, is being applied here, the intended effect being to heighten our curiosity.
It is assumed by some critics that this painting is not by Vermeer, but a later pasticcio. It, and the Girl with a Flute (in the same museum) are painted on wood, whereas all authentic Vermeer paintings are done on canvas. This work has been painted on an upside-down Rembrandtesque portrait of a man, and pigments considered to be older than the nineteenth century found in this painting come from the original and not from the modern pasticcio.
Girl with the Red Hat is one of Johannes Vermeer’s smallest works, and it is painted on panel rather than on his customary canvas. The girl has turned in her chair and interacts with the viewer through her direct gaze. Girl with the Red Hat is portrayed with unusual spontaneity and informality. The artist’s exquisite use of color is this painting’s most striking characteristic, for both its compositional and its psychological effects. Vermeer concentrated the two major colors in two distinct areas: a vibrant red for the hat and a sumptuous blue for the robe; he then used the intensity of the white cravat to unify the whole.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Vermeer also was an art dealer in Delft. There is no documentation of his artistic training or apprenticeship, but in 1653 he became a master in the Saint Luke’s Guild in Delft; he would serve as head of that guild four times in the 1660s and 1670s. Although he was well regarded in his lifetime, he was heavily in debt when he died in 1675. Only in the late nineteenth century did Vermeer achieve widespread fame for his intimate genre scenes and quiet cityscapes.

Senhora e a Empregada Doméstica (Mistress and Maid / Lady with Her Maidservant Holding a Letter / Vrouw en Dientbode Met Brief) - Johannes Vermeer

Senhora e a Empregada Doméstica (Mistress and Maid / Lady with Her Maidservant Holding a Letter / Vrouw en Dientbode Met Brief) - Johannes Vermeer
Frick Collection Nova York Estados Unidos
OST - 90x78 - 1666-1667

Mistress and Maid (c.1667) is a painting produced by Johannes Vermeer, now in the Frick Collection in New York City. The work of Johannes Vermeer, also known as Jan, is well known for many characteristics that are present in this painting. The use of yellow and blue, female models, and domestic scenes are all signatures of Vermeer. This oil on canvas portrays two women, a Mistress and her Maid, as they look over the Mistress' love letter.

Johannes Vermeer was born in 1632 in Delft, Holland. He worked and lived in Delft all his life, although it is possible that he may have done an apprenticeship in another town such as Amsterdam or Utrecht for six years. A major stepping point in Vermeer's career was in 1653 when he joined the Guild of Saint Luke as a master and professional painter. Vermeer painted at a somewhat leisure pace, producing two to three paintings a year and there are 35 known to exist today. Vermeer's work shows that he was most likely a fan of the camera obscura, as parts are in focus as others slightly blur. There is also an intensity to his colors that supports the use of the obscura. Vermeer died at a relatively young age, 43, in 1675. He suffered most likely from a stroke or stress-induced heart attack. The slow rate at which he produced paintings restricted Vermeer from becoming wealthy during his lifetime, and he died in debt.

Vermeer chose a large canvas for this composition, which presents two women pondering a newly arrived letter. Depicting an interior domestic scene like so many of Vermeer's images, the painting explores the relationship between mistresses and maids and the writing and receiving of letters, two popular themes in the art and literature of the period. It also demonstrates Vermeer's technical virtuosity: bravura strokes suggest the pleating of the yellow mantle; shorter, bold strokes signify the flickering light reflected on the glassware; and dots of impasto convey the shimmer of the pearls. An observed lack of modeling, especially in the mistress's profile and hands, is a feature that has caused some scholars to declare the painting unfinished. While the figures are not as highly finished as in earlier paintings by Vermeer's oeuvre, this assessment stems from a misunderstanding of the artist's stylistic evolution. The soft articulation of her form imbues the figure with a sense of movement−her mouth open and on the verge of speech, her hand rising to her chin in thought, her eye addressing the maid and at the same time gazing past her.  It has also been suggested that the painting's dark background meant that the work was incomplete at the time of Vermeer's death and the background filled in, by another hand, to make it saleable. Infrared reflectography (IRR) of the canvas, conducted in 2018, refutes this and reveals that Vermeer originally included a multi-figural pictorial element in the background, possibly meant to represent a tapestry, which he later painted out to better focus attention on the woman's interactions.

Senhora Escrevendo (A Lady Writing a Letter / A Lady Writing / Schrijvend Meisje) - Johannes Vermeer

Senhora Escrevendo (A Lady Writing a Letter / A Lady Writing / Schrijvend Meisje) - Johannes Vermeer
National Gallery of Art Washington D.C. Estados Unidos
OST - 45x39 - 1665

A Lady Writing a Letter (also known as A Lady Writing; Dutch: Schrijvend meisje) is an oil painting attributed to 17th century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is believed to have been completed around 1665. The Lady is seen to be writing a letter and has been interrupted, so gently turns her head to see what is happening. She wears twelve pearls (10 on the necklace and two earrings).

Many of the objects seen in the painting, such as the woman's coat, the cloth on the table, and the string of pearls, also appear in other Vermeer works. This has led to speculation that he or his family members owned the objects, and even that the subjects of the paintings are his relatives. It has often been suggested that in his paintings, Vermeer sought to grant to his models that which he could not endow to his wife and family: calm and affluence.

A Lady Writing a Letter was donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1962 by Harry Waldron Havemeyer and Horace Havemeyer. 

Moça Sentada ao Virginal (A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals) - Johannes Vermeer

Moça Sentada ao Virginal (A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals) - Johannes Vermeer
Leiden Collection, Nova York, Estados Unidos
OST - 25x20 - 1670-1672


A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals is a painting generally attributed to Johannes Vermeer, though this was for a long time widely questioned. A series of technical examinations from 1993 onwards confirmed the attribution. It is thought to date from c.1670 and is now in part of the Leiden Collection in New York. It should not be confused with Young Woman Seated at a Virginal in the National Gallery, London, also by Vermeer.
The painting's early provenance is unclear, though possibly it was owned in Vermeer's lifetime by Pieter van Ruijven and later inherited by Jacob Dissius. By 1904 it was one of two Vermeers owned by Alfred Beit, the other being Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid. It remained in the Beit family until sold to Baron Rolin in 1960. The painting was not widely known until described in the catalogue of the Beit collection published in 1904. In the first decades following 1904 it was widely accepted as a Vermeer. Then in the mid-twentieth century, as some "Vermeers" were discovered to be forgeries by Han van Meegeren and doubt was cast on others, it fell from favour.
In 1993 Baron Rolin asked Sotheby's to conduct research into the painting. A series of technical examinations followed, which have convinced most experts that it is a Vermeer, though probably one that was reworked in parts after the painter's death. Rolin's heirs sold the painting through Sotheby's in 2004 to Steve Wynn for $30 million. It was later purchased for the Leiden Collection owned by Thomas Kaplan. It has appeared in several Vermeer exhibitions in recent years, in the United States, Britain, Japan, Italy and France.
The painting originally had the same dimensions as Vermeer's Lacemaker. Tentative evidence that the canvas was cut from the same bolt as the Lacemaker, which was gathered in the 1990s, was strengthened by a later, more sophisticated study. The ground appears identical to that used for the two Vermeers owned by London's National Gallery. X-ray examination has revealed evidence of a pin-hole at the vanishing point, as habitually used by Vermeer in conjunction with a thread to achieve correct perspective in his paintings. Pigments are used in the painting in a way typical of Vermeer, most notably the expensive ultramarine as a component in the background wall. The use of green earth in shadows is also distinctive. The use of lead-tin-yellow suggests that the painting cannot be a nineteenth- or twentieth-century fake or imitation. Examination of the cloak, often cited as the crudest part of the painting, shows that it was painted over another garment after some time had elapsed. It is not known how long this gap was, or if Vermeer was responsible for the repainting.
The hairstyle can be dated to c.1670, and matches the hairstyle in the Lacemaker, which on other grounds is also often dated to the same period. It is not clear if the painting was completed before or after the similar but more ambitious Young Woman Seated at a Virginal in the National Gallery, London. The painting is unsigned.
Walter Liedtke has described the painting as a "minor late work" by Vermeer. The colour scheme is typical of Vermeer's mature work. The "luminosity and finely modelled passages" of the young woman's skirt recall the Lady Standing at a Virginal and are often cited as the painting's best feature, contrasting with the less skillfully painted cloak which may be the work of a later artist. The blurring of objects in the foreground, the quality of the light and the attention paid to the texture of the wall are typical of Vermeer, while the handling of the pearls in the woman's hair recalls the threads spilling from the cushion in the Lacemaker.
Descrição da pintura pela Sotheby’s:
This picture was painted by Johannes Vermeer in about 1670. It is the last original composition by Vermeer left in private hands, the first to be offered at auction since 1921, and the first to be sold by any means since 1955. Inaccessible to scholars except through old photographs, the picture was for many years either dismissed or ignored completely, but, following recent extensive examination and analysis and also some light cleaning and restoration, its authenticity is now no longer disputed by any of the leading scholars of Vermeer, nor by any of a wide circle of scholars of 17th-century Dutch painting who have had the opportunity to study it at first hand.
Ever since his rediscovery in the 1860s by the French art historian Thoré-Bürger, Vermeer has had a unique and somewhat mysterious position in the history of 17th-century Dutch art. Unquestionably a genius, with a gift for the creation of contemplative mood and serene atmosphere that few if any have equalled, his works and style nonetheless had relatively little influence on his contemporaries. Although some of his paintings always retained their correct attributions, others did not, as his name became more or less entirely forgotten not long after his death.
Part of the reason for the lack of any lasting influence must have been that Vermeer, as has been so well described in recent scholarly and popular literature, worked in a very personal way, and seems to have had no pupils to whom these methods could have been passed on. While another artist could, perhaps, have imitated Vermeer’s general approach to composition without actually training with him, the specific effects of colour and lighting that ultimately define his style and his genius were largely the result of the precise mixtures and combinations of pigments and grounds that the artist applied to his canvases, allied with a particular gift for infinitely subtle modulations in tone. Maybe these techniques could never have been passed on to others, but in any case such a thing could only ever have been possible through a traditional, direct apprenticeship in Vermeer’s studio. It has, however, been agreed since the earliest days of Vermeer scholarship that he had no such apprentices or pupils: not only is there no documentary record of any such arrangement (apprenticeships had to be registered with the local painters’ guild), but there is also no body of surviving work, painted using Vermeer’s techniques and pigment combinations, but not actually by him, which would be the necessary result of his having had pupils.
A second factor contributing to Vermeer’s eclipse in the 18th- and earlier 19th-century literature of art must surely have been the sheer rarity of his works. Most modern scholars agree that there exist a mere 36 surviving works by Vermeer, and that while he must have painted a few other pictures that are now lost, the paintings that are known today nonetheless constitute the great majority of his entire output as an artist. Already by the 18th century, these 36 paintings were dispersed through Germany, France, Italy and England as well as Holland, so there were simply too few works by the artist available to earlier scholars of Dutch art for them to form a view of his style.
Once Thoré-Bürger had identified and defined Vermeer’s style in his ground-breaking publications in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts of 1866, the corpus of the artist’s paintings did, however, very rapidly coalesce, and although the early works continued to be debated even after the Second World War, by the early 20th century all the characteristic, original works of Vermeer’s maturity that are known today had already entered the literature. No previously unknown work of this type by Vermeer has been discovered in the past century, and it is therefore all the more significant that following a programme of research lasting more than 10 years, a panel of leading international scholars and conservators has now concluded that the present painting of A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals is indeed an autograph work by Vermeer, dating from around 1670. Although this painting has been long recorded in the literature, the confirmation of its previously disputed attribution represents an immensely important addition to the oeuvre of the mysterious Delft master.
The painting represents a musical theme familiar from several of Vermeer’s larger paintings, in particular the two in the National Gallery, London. It shows a young woman, three-quarters length, seated on a chair of rich blue velvet, her hands extended towards the keyboard of the virginals, a variant of the same instrument shown in one of the National Gallery’s paintings. She is dressed in a yellow woollen shawl above a white satin dress or skirt, with pearls around her neck and an arrangement of red and white ribbons in her hair. As in Vermeer’s other small canvases, the figure and instrument are set against a plain wall, without any other compositional elements such as windows, curtains or background paintings; yet despite this, the artist has created a highly convincing and atmospheric impression of space and depth, thanks to the depiction of minute irregularities and holes in the plaster of the wall, and the presence of a delicate, unified light, which comes, as in most of Vermeer’s interiors, from the top left of the composition.
Very few paintings by Vermeer have been seen on the market since the 19th century, when the great majority of the artist’s known works were acquired either by the museums where they now reside, or by the collectors who subsequently gave them to those museums. During the last century, only one has ever been offered at auction (The Little Street, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, in 1921), and even including sales through dealers hardly a dozen works by Vermeer have been sold in that time. No other characteristic painting by the artist has changed hands since the 1950s, and A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals is the only such work that still remains in private hands.
It is possible, though far from certain, that this was one of the group of 21 pictures by Vermeer owned by the Delft bookseller and printer Jacob Dissius, who had inherited them from his father-in-law, Pieter van Ruijven, the man who seems to have been Vermeer’s most important patron. Dissius’ paintings were sold in Amsterdam on 16 May 1696. Unfortunately, the catalogue of this sale does not give the dimensions of the pictures, only a brief description of the subject of each, but in many cases this is still enough to identify the pictures that are known today, and some useful information can, therefore, be deduced from the prices realised by each painting. These ranged from the 200 guilders paid for the famous View of Delft (The Hague, Mauritshuis) down to 17 guilders paid for each of two unidentifiable “tronies” (a term used in the 17th century for a small painting of a single figure, shown head-and-shoulders, in an exotic or historical costume). After the View of Delft, the next two most expensive pictures were the Milkmaid (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) which made 175 guilders, and the Woman Weighing Gold (National Gallery of Art, Washington, 155 guilders). In the middle range of prices were pictures such as The Music Lesson (London, The Royal Collection, 80 guilders), the Concert (currently missing from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), which made 73 guilders, and the Woman writing a letter (Washington, National Gallery of Art, 63 guilders). One picture, lot 37 in the catalogue, is described as Een Speelende Juffrouw op de Clavecimbael (A Woman playing the Virginals). In terms of subject, this could either have been the picture now under discussion or one of the two now in the National Gallery, London, and the price it fetched, 42 guilders and 10 stuivers, does not help in clarifying which it actually was, since this seems a very low price for a major work such as one of the London pictures, but also perhaps rather high for a picture as small as this one.
Another early sale reference can be linked with rather more certainty to the present picture. Lot 93 in the Amsterdam sale of the collection of Wessel Ryers, on 21 September 1814, was described as a painting on panel by Vermeer of a young woman playing a clavichord, 10 inches by 8 inches. Other errors in the description of supports in this catalogue suggest that the fact the picture is described as being on panel rather than canvas should not be taken too seriously, and the dimensions given suggest very strongly that the picture sold must have been the present work, rather than one of the National Gallery pictures or a further, lost representation of the same subject.
The whereabouts of the present picture has, however, been securely documented since 1904, when it was published in the preliminary catalogue by Dr. Wilhelm Bode of the collection of Alfred Beit, a South African-born diamond magnate who was one of the few European-based collectors to rival the great early 20th-century art acquisitions of Americans such as Frick and Mellon. Beit, the majority of whose collections were eventually given to the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, owned many great Dutch pictures of the 17th century, including another Vermeer, the Lady Writing a Letter, though when and where he acquired either of his Vermeers is not now known. When Beit died, the picture passed to his brother, Otto Beit, and then the latter’s son, Sir Alfred Beit, who eventually, in 1960, placed the picture on consignment with a London dealer. There it was seen by Baron Frédéric Rolin of Brussels, at the time a dealer in tribal art, who was also an occasional collector of Old Masters. Rolin fell in love with the picture, and even though he was aware that the attribution to Vermeer had by then been questioned, he acquired the little painting, in the time-honoured fashion of collectors who fall in love with a work of art, by giving in exchange four others from his collection, paintings by Klee, Signac, Bonnard and Riopelle. Baron Rolin died in 2002, and the painting is now offered for sale by his heirs.
During the initial decades following its first publication in 1904, the picture was universally accepted and published as an autograph work by Vermeer. In the period before and during the Second World War, it was unanimously recognised by scholars, including Wilhelm Bode, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A.B. de Vries, Eduard Plietzsch and Ludwig Goldscheider. Then, following the dramatic events of the affair of the Van Meegeren forgeries of Vermeer, De Vries, the Director of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the recognised leading scholar on Vermeer, expressed doubts about the authenticity of the picture, doubts which he published in 1948, in the second edition of his book. Despite the fact that not long after this De Vries changed his mind again, in favour of the painting, and wrote several letters saying that if his book were to go into a third edition he would unequivocally rehabilitate the picture, the seeds of doubt were sown. In the event, no third edition of De Vries’ book was published, and the relative inaccessibility of the picture, particularly after its sale from the Beit collection in 1960, meant that subsequent scholars of Vermeer were inclined to relegate it to the margins of the artist’s work. A few, including Lawrence Gowing (1970) and Christopher Wright (1976) continued to accept it, but others, for the most part basing their assessments on poor old photographs, dismissed it, in an increasingly perfunctory way. Only during the last decade, since the picture was brought back into contact with the scholarly community, has it been examined seriously, and in the light of modern research and technology.
In 1993, Sotheby's was approached by Baron Rolin, with a request to undertake new research on the painting. It was agreed that a useful first step would be to compare the painting with the two larger representations of similar subjects in the National Gallery, London. The National Gallery generously agreed to remove their pictures from display and take them to the conservation laboratory, to enable the pictures to be compared under microscopes. Opinions on that day were divided: the conservators present (including David Bomford and Ashok Roy) unanimously felt that the three pictures they were looking at under the microscopes were all by the same hand, but the art-historians were less positive, saying that the stylistic and compositional differences between the pictures left the attribution of the small Rolin painting far from confirmed.
After this mixed reception, it was eventually decided that no further clarification would be achieved without a detailed scientific analysis of the painting, to establish once and for all its physical composition: was it or was it not a genuine 17th-century painting, and if so, precisely what materials and techniques had been used in its making? To this end, a complete scientific study was begun in 1995 by Libby Sheldon of University College London, in collaboration with her colleague Catherine Hassall, and in 1997 Nicola Costaras of the Victoria and Albert Museum joined this team, bringing with her a considerable technical knowledge of Vermeer’s work. This investigation demonstrated not only that the picture was unquestionably 17th-century, but also that its technical composition was entirely consistent with Vermeer’s known working methods. In particular, the composition of the ground layers was found to be entirely comparable with other works by the artist, and the pigments used were also appropriate.
In terms of determining the authenticity of the picture, the most significant pigments found during the scientific analysis were lead-tin yellow, green earth and ultramarine.
Lead-tin yellow, which is here used throughout the yellow shawl, was very widely employed from the Middle Ages until the end of the 17th century, but became obsolete thereafter, and was replaced by other yellows such as yellow ochre and Naples yellow. Indeed, knowledge of this pigment was rapidly forgotten, and it was not until 1941 that a scientist discovered that there was a tin component in this typical 17th-century yellow which distinguished it from other, later lead-based yellows. The fact that lead-tin yellow was the pigment used for the yellows in this picture immediately proves that it is at the very least a 17th-century painting and not, as some have suggested, a later imitation of Vermeer’s style.
The pigment green earth was also found in the picture, used in the flesh tones. This pigment seems to have been used only very rarely by 17th-century Dutch artists, but is regularly found in the flesh tones in Vermeer’s works. Otherwise, the use of green earth seems to have been limited to the Utrecht school. It is interesting to note in this context that Vermeer’s mother-in-law, Maria Thins, was in fact distantly related to Abraham Bloemaert, and herself possessed a significant collection of paintings by various Utrecht artists.
Libby Sheldon’s most important discovery as regards the pigments used in this painting relates, however, to by far the most expensive pigment available to a 17th-century Dutch artist, namely ultramarine. Made from ground lapis lazuli, this pigment was used to create blues of remarkable richness and depth, but on account of its great cost was only rarely used by artists of the period, and then only very sparingly, and in a very conspicuous way. Vermeer, however, used this pigment very extensively, not only for the small areas of rich deep blue that are so characteristic of his paintings, but also incorporating it, invisibly, in the creamy tones of his background walls. The subliminal enriching effect of this invisible use of the pigment is hard to quantify, but clearly Vermeer believed it was necessary to achieve the effects he desired; and this specific extravagance is something that has never yet been found outside the work of Vermeer. In the present picture, ultramarine is used in precisely this way, not only in the blue velvet chair back, but also, invisibly to the naked eye, throughout the background wall.
An immediately striking feature of the canvas used in this painting is that, although it is small in size, the weave of the fabric is relatively coarse; usually, when 17th-century artists made small canvas paintings, they used canvases made of much finer fabric, with a much higher thread-count per centimetre. The relatively rough canvas seen here is, however, exactly the same as that used by Vermeer in his only other canvas painting on this scale, the Lacemaker, in the Louvre. The similarities between the canvases of these two paintings do not stop there. Normally, canvases of this period show a significant difference in the thread count in each direction, creating a clear distinction between the “warp” and the “weft”, but in both these paintings the thread count in each direction is almost identical (12 threads per centimetre in each direction), which is extremely unusual in 17th-century Dutch painting. Furthermore, the minor irregularities in the weave of the fabric, which are always present in canvases and can be clearly seen on X-rays, show such similarities in pattern that it is almost certain that both canvases were cut from the very same bolt of cloth. What is more, the priming layers in each painting are also remarkably similar. Although many Dutch grounds, and particularly Delft grounds, appear similar in colour and texture to the naked eye, they do in fact vary significantly when cross-sections are analysed under the microscope, in terms both of the combinations of pigments that are present, and also of the microscopic sizes of the particles of each pigment, which are the result of the process of grinding the pigments in the artist’s or canvas-merchant’s workshop. The ground in this picture contains precisely the same combination of pigments as do those of several of Vermeer’s other paintings (notably the two National Gallery London paintings, and the Lacemaker), and the particle sizes are absolutely the same as in the Lacemaker, which means that both canvases must have been grounded at exactly the same time.
Sheldon’s study also revealed other significant facts, most importantly the presence in the picture of the characteristic pin-hole that is found in many of Vermeer’s pictures, at the vanishing-point of his perspectival scheme. She also found evidence, visible in the X-rays, of compositional changes that had been made to the picture, most notably in the yellow shawl. Originally it seems that the artist planned that the skirt would extend rather higher than it now does, and that the shawl would be consequently shorter; there is evidence that the initial blocking in of the folds of the skirt extend under the lower part of the present yellow shawl. In this lower area of the shawl, Sheldon also found two different layers of the same lead-tin yellow pigment, distinct, but with so little separation between them that they must have been applied within at the most a very few years of each other. The twin questions of whether the reworkings and revisions in the yellow shawl were made by the artist of the rest of the picture, and whether these changes were made as artistic revisions or to correct technical or condition problems could not be answered by this type of technical analysis, but Sheldon’s description of the physical construction of this part of the painting is highly important, because this lower section of the yellow shawl is the area that has been the focus of much of the negative criticism of the picture’s overall appearance. Although it should be noted that the yellow areas in Vermeer’s other paintings are often those in which there are the greatest problems as regards condition, there is no question that this is the most problematic part of the present painting. The structure of folds and shadows in the lower areas of the yellow shawl is not handled in a manner typical of Vermeer, and although careful study of the draperies in the artist’s other paintings does reveal a fairly wide range of different techniques, it seems possible that this part of the painting was to some extent reworked by another hand, either because the original glazes that defined the shadows in the drapery were damaged, or because this area remained to some extent unfinished. Lastly, Sheldon’s study also revealed that although the great majority of the picture surface was in fact very well preserved, there were nonetheless many tiny later retouchings, perhaps 19th-century in origin, which clearly had a significant effect on the painting’s overall visual appearance.
Following the initial confirmation that on a technical level the painting was completely consistent with Vermeer’s work, other side-by-side comparisons were made in New York in late 2000, after which Walter Liedtke requested the loan of the painting as a last-minute, ex-catalogue addition to his exhibition, Vermeer and the Delft School, which was due to open in New York a couple of months later, in March 2001. There, and subsequently also at the National Gallery, London, the picture was hung together with the National Gallery paintings and others, and the question of its attribution and authenticity was once again much discussed. The general conclusion from this debate was that the condition of the yellow shawl and the presence of the various later retouchings were together affecting the overall visual impression given by the picture to the extent that no firm conclusions about its attribution could be reached. It was therefore decided that a careful cleaning and restoration, coupled with further research and investigation, should be undertaken, and to this end an ad hoc committee was formed to oversee the whole project.
The committee members were:
Martin Bijl (former Head of Paintings Conservation, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
Frits Duparc (Director, Mauritshuis, The Hague)
Gregory Rubinstein (Sotheby’s)
Libby Sheldon (University College London Paintings Analysis)
Jørgen Wadum (Head of Paintings Conservation, Mauritshuis, The Hague)
Arie Wallert (Head of Paintings Conservation, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
Ernst van der Wetering (Head of Rembrandt Research Project)
Marieke de Winkel (Costume Expert, Rembrandt Research Project)
Under the guidance of this committee, the painting was lightly cleaned and restored by Martin Bijl in 2002-3; the results of this restoration and the findings of the further research conducted by the committee members as part of the project are to be published in a collective group of articles in Oud Holland in the near future. Without pre-empting totally the contents of this forthcoming publication, the following are some of the main conclusions reached by the committee:
Many of the reservations that have been voiced about the picture over the years have resulted from the negative visual effects of later restorations, which though seemingly minor, had far-reaching visual effects. Following the removal of these restorations, it has been possible to see much more clearly the artist’s original construction of space and lighting, and this has led the committee members to conclude unanimously that the artist in question was Vermeer.
After detailed comparison with draperies in all Vermeer’s other pictures, it was agreed that the handling of folds and shadows in the lower part of the yellow shawl is untypical of the artist. Given that there are also two distinct layers of lead-tin yellow in this area, it must be concluded that this part of the picture was brought to completion after the rest of the composition, perhaps as much as a few years later. The committee members were, however, not able to conclude unanimously whether this later finishing within the yellow shawl was the result of damage in that area or because it had simply remained unfinished, or whether the final surface of this part of the yellow shawl was in fact painted by Vermeer himself at the end of his life, or by another hand.
The Rolin painting can be linked much more closely than was previously understood to the Lacemaker in the Louvre, a painting that is precisely the same size as this, and is the artist’s only other canvas painting on this small a scale. Much more than this, the research of the committee has revealed that the canvas on which these two pictures were painted, which has a highly distinctive pattern of threads, almost certainly originated from the very same bolt of cloth, and that the two canvases were grounded using precisely the same combination of pigments.
In terms of dating the picture, Marieke de Winkel has concluded that on the grounds of costume and hairstyle, the picture must date from within a year either side of 1670, from the same time as the Louvre Lacemaker, and from slightly before the paintings in the National Gallery, London.
Martin Bijl’s restoration of the picture in fact involved relatively little physical intervention. His chief tasks were the removal of the later retouchings, and a small amount of almost microscopic retouching of losses. Yet the transformation that this very minor intervention has brought to the overall appearance of the picture has been striking, and all those who have seen it both before and after restoration have agreed that it is only now that the picture conveys in a powerful and convincing way the sense of the figure’s presence in a three-dimensional space, set in front of a tangible background wall from which she is convincingly separated. The cool, serene lighting so typical of Vermeer has also only now fully reappeared; for those who have now seen the painting again, the re-emergence of this characteristic work by the most atmospheric and distinctive master of 17th-century Holland is a most astonishing and moving event.
Clearly, the subject of this painting suggests a relationship with the two Vermeer paintings of women playing similar instruments, in the National Gallery, London, which are generally dated around 1673-5. Indeed, the instrument seen here may well be the very same one as in the London Young Woman Seated at the Virginals. The conception of the picture is, however, rather different, in that the space within which the figure and instrument are placed is far less specifically defined, without the floors, curtains, background pictures and windows seen in the London paintings. The National Gallery paintings are, however, both very much larger in scale than this, and the setting of a single figure against only a plain background wall is entirely characteristic of Vermeer’s approach to a small, single-figure composition, as is clear not only from the Louvre Lacemaker but also from earlier paintings such as the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring in the Mauritshuis, The Hague. In Vermeer’s other works on this scale the figure is usually larger in relation to the picture space and placed closer to the picture plane than here, but this unique compositional approach cannot be used as an argument to contest the attribution as at least half a dozen of the artist’s 36 surviving paintings have no obvious compositional parallels in his other works.
As regards the dating of the picture, the most significant information is that provided by Marieke de Winkel, costume expert for the Rembrandt Research Project, who has established, on the basis of research using a wide range of sources including contemporary letters, prints, paintings and doll’s houses, that the hair-style and arrangement of hair-ribbons seen in this picture were fashionable only for a couple of years at the most, around 1670. The combination of hair pulled back into a bun with ringlets hanging down on each side and a mix of thin red and white ribbons in the hair soon gave way in popular fashion to the style seen in the two London paintings, where the hair is still drawn back into a bun, but with numerous small decorative curls around the hairline and no ringlets or other embellishments. The Louvre Lacemaker, which is generally dated around 1670 on stylistic grounds, shows very much the same hairstyle as that seen here, and this, together with the technical evidence linking the two pictures, suggests very strongly that the present painting of A Young Woman seated at the Virginals should also be dated to around 1670, making it Vermeer’s first exploration of the theme that was to provide the subject for his two famous paintings in the National Gallery.
This proposed chronology also seems plausible in relation to another painting by Vermeer with a musical subject, the Guitar Player, in the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London. Rather more animated in mood than the three very contemplative pictures of women at the keyboards, the Kenwood painting, which is generally dated circa 1672, shows a young woman with a hairstyle similar to that seen in both the Rolin picture and the Lacemaker, but rather looser and less formal and without any decorative ribbons, which seems to have been the route taken by fashions of the day immediately before the emergence of the style seen in the two National Gallery paintings. There are also striking similarities between the features of the sitters in the Rolin and Kenwood pictures, and the fact that the latter clearly shows a slightly older girl suggests that Vermeer may well have used the same model for both paintings. The extent to which Vermeer based his female figures on members of his own household and the specific identities of the various people depicted have not been widely discussed in the art-historical literature, but there has been much speculation elsewhere that the artist’s daughters were the models for a number of paintings. Tracy Chevalier, Simon Jenkins and others have argued that the girl seen in the two National Gallery paintings was Vermeer’s eldest daughter, Maria, while the Kenwood picture and the present work, and possibly also the Louvre Lacemaker (though the features in that painting are hidden) show her younger sister, Elizabeth. Any such identification remains, of course, speculative, but our understanding of Vermeer’s laborious working method does make it likely that he would have used his children as his models, and the facial similarities between the young women in certain pictures lend much credence to these theories.
Whether or not this painting of a Young Woman Seated at the Virginals depicts one of the artist’s own daughters, the fact that it is now, after half a century, once again accepted as an autograph work by Vermeer represents an extremely important addition to our understanding of his artistic development. Like the Lacemaker, this is a strikingly intimate and direct representation of a domestic activity, in which the picture space is defined not by walls or by background details, but by light alone. But it is also the painting in which Vermeer explored for the first time a subject that was to provide him with the inspiration for two of the greatest productions of his final years.
Nota do blog: Foi vendida por 16,245,600 GBP.

Diana e Suas Companheiras (Diana and Her Companions / Diana en Haar Nimfen) - Johannes Vermeer

Diana e Suas Companheiras (Diana and Her Companions / Diana en Haar Nimfen) - Johannes Vermeer
Museu Mauritshuis, Haia, Holanda
OST - 98x105 - 1653-1654



Diana and Her Companions is a painting by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer completed in the early to mid-1650s, now at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. Although the exact year is unknown, the work may be the earliest painting of the artist still extant, with some art historians placing it before Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and some after.
The painting's solemn mood is unusual for a scene depicting the goddess Diana, and the nymph washing the central figure's feet has captured the attention of critics and historians, both for her activity and contemporary clothing. Rather than directly illustrating one of the dramatic moments in well-known episodes from myths about Diana, the scene shows a woman and her attendants quietly at her toilette. The theme of a woman in a private, reflective moment would grow stronger in Vermeer's paintings as his career progressed.
Nothing of the work's history before the mid-19th century is known, and the painting was not widely accepted as one of Vermeer's until the early 20th century, when its similarities with Mary and Martha were noticed. About one ninth of the painting's width has been removed from the right side, and it was not discovered until 1999 or 2000 was that the sky in the upper right-hand corner had been added in the 19th century.
The painting depicts the Greek and Roman goddess Diana ("Artemis" in Ancient Greece) with four of her companions. She wears a loose fitting, yellow dress with an animal-skin sash and, on her head, a diadem with a symbol of the crescent moon. As she sits on a rock, a nymph washes her left foot. Another, behind Diana, sits with her partially bare back to the viewer (the most skin Vermeer shows on a figure in any of his extant paintings), a third nymph, sitting at Diana's left, holds her own left foot with her right hand. A fourth stands in the rear, somewhat apart from the rest of the group and facing them and the viewer at an angle, her eyes cast down, her fists in front of her. A dog sits in the lower left-hand corner near Diana, its back to the viewer as it faces the goddess, her attendants and, immediately in front of it, a thistle.
Except for the woman whose face is completely turned away from the viewer, all of the other faces in the painting are to one degree or another in shadow, including that of the dog. None of the women look at each other, each seemingly absorbed in their own thoughts, a fact which contributes to the solemn mood of the piece.
In 1999-2000, when the painting underwent restoration work and was cleaned, it was discovered that an area of blue sky in the upper right corner had been added in the 19th century. Numerous reproductions up to that time had included the blue sky. Restorers covered over the patch with foliage to approximate the original image. The canvas had also been trimmed, particularly on the right, where about 15 cm was removed. Descriptions of the scene being in a "woodland glade" or "near the edge of a wood" may rely heavily on the patch of sky erroneously thought to be original to the painting, although light without shadows does fall on the scene from above and to the left, with short shadows forming to the viewer's right. The observation that the scene appeared to be taking place in "the gathering dusk" may have been influenced by the lighter, but darkening patch of sky contrasted sharply with the dark mass of foliage in the background of the painting, together with the shadows on all the visible faces.
The painting is signed on the lower left, on the rock between the thistle and the dog.
The canvas is a plain weave linen with a thread count of 14.3 by 10 per square centimeter. Vermeer first outlined the composition with dark brown brushwork (some of which shows through as pentimenti in the skirt of the woman washing Diana's foot. Hairs on the dog's ear were scratched in with the handle of the artist's brush. Paint has been lost in vertical lines left of the painting's center.
According to Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., the painting "has no visual precedent". As a depiction of Diana, the painting is notable in part for what it does not depict—neither Actaeon catching sight of Diana and her nymphs bathing nor the actual moment when Callisto's pregnancy is revealed, both popular themes in mannerist painting in the early 17th century. Nor does the artist show Diana's hot temper or her harsh reactions to those episodes. The goddess's ability as a huntress is not signalled by dead game or bows and arrows. Even the dog is depicted as a gentle animal, not like the fast hounds normally seen in paintings of Diana.
Nor does the painting use Diana as an allegorical portrait, a tradition for which had developed by the mid-17th century, with identifiable women depicted as the goddess, who was also a symbol of chastity. An example of this tradition is Diana and Her Nymphs, painted by Jacob van Loo in Amsterdam around 1648, about seven or eight years before Vermeer's work. (Vermeer's Diana has frequently been compared to van Loo's. In van Loo's painting, Diana also sits in a forest clearing with a small group of companions, but the mood is very different.
The similarities between Vermeer's painting and Rembrandt's style are close enough that the work was attributed to Rembrandt's student, Nicolaes Maes when auctioned in 1876. Vermeer's signature on the painting had been altered, making it look like Maes'. During a restoration the original signature of J. v. Meer was faintly discernible, though this was ascribed to the Utrecht artist Johannes van der Meet.
Vermeer is known to have incorporated other artists' ideas, techniques and the poses in which they depict subjects. Some features of Diana share the effects and techniques of Rembrandt. Diana's stout figure is much like those in Rembrandt's work, and Vermeer used thick impasto brushwork following the lines of the folds of her clothing, as Rembrandt did. Also like Rembrandt, Vermeer cast the faces of the group in shadows, which gives a more expressive, moodier cast to the scene. Vermeer's painting is very similar in feeling to Rembrandt's Bathsheba, painted in 1654, a work Vermeer very likely saw firsthand, according to Wheelock. The poses of the woman whose feet is washed and the one doing the washing are similar. It is possible that Rembrandt's former pupil, Carel Fabritius (in Delft from 1650 until his death in late 1654), may have made Vermeer familiar with Rembrandt's work.
Doubts about the attribution of the painting remained until about 1901, the year Abraham Bredius and Willem Martin, deputy director of the Mauritshuis, discovered its similarities in coloring and technique with Martha and Mary, which was signed by Vermeer, and in colors with The Procuress, another very early Vermeer work.
The painting has an "overwhelming sense of solemnity more associated with Christian than with mythological traditions", according to Wheelock. The work may combine the Christian symbolism of foot-washing as purification with the allusions to chastity and purity invoked by Diana's modest dress and the white cloth and brass basin at her feet. The companion holding her own foot strongly resembles the ancient Spinario statue, a figure in a nearly identical pose, who is removing a thorn from the bottom of his foot. The thorn is a Christian symbol of the grief and trials of Jesus or of the suffering in this world.
Foot washing is also a Christian symbol of humility and the nearness of death, and "the dignity with which Diana's companion performs her service recalls mary Magdalene washing Christ's feet with her tears", according to Wheelock. (Christ also kneeled before his disciples and washed their feet at the Last Supper.) Selena Cant believes Vermeer's contemporaries would have immediately drawn the association of foot-washing with the idea of Jesus washing feet. "[T]his maidservant steals the scene", according to Cant, who points out the "unusual brown-bronze bodice" worn by the servant.
According to Wheelock, the painting "has [...] no obvious literary source". As a depiction of Diana, the painting is notable in part for what it does not depict—neither Actaeon catching sight of Diana and her nymphs bathing nor the actual moment when Callisto's pregnancy is revealed, both popular themes in mannerist painting in the early 17th century. Nor does the artist show Diana's hot temper or her harsh reactions to those episodes. The goddess's ability as a huntress is not signalled by dead game or bows and arrows. Even the dog is depicted as a gentle animal, not like the fast hounds normally seen in paintings of Diana.
Ovid's Metamorphoses mentions that just before discovering Callisto's pregnancy, Diana washed her feet and then she and her attendants disrobed. Walter Liedtke points out that the nymph standing somewhat apart from the group, with her hands clenched in front of her abdomen, perhaps in contrast with the nymph showing devotion and fidelity by washing feet, may be Callisto. This scene would then illustrate part of that myth narrative, Liedtke asserts, although Wheelock states that the episode seems unrelated to the mood of the painting.
The painting, according to Liedtke, "shows the artist already addressing his usual theme, women in private moments, and the complications of desire" as well as "the ability to sympathetically describe the private lives of women," and, while not as "profound" as Rembrandt's Bathsheba, Vermeer's work is "remarkable for its tenderness and sincerity", Liedtke believes. He notes that the painting shows the artist's aptitude for learning from the example of other artists and for observing light and color.
The painting was created at about the time (or within a few years after) Vermeer joined the painters' guild in Delft on December 29, 1653, at the age of 21, the same year he converted to Catholicism and married Catharina Bolnes. Leidtke speculates that the ideas of purity and fidelity symbolized in the painting were connected to Vermeer's marriage, and that perhaps the work was created in tribute to his new wife.
With its less assured brushwork and cautious arrangement of elements, Diana is less mature in its technique and positioning of the figures than Martha and Mary, which may indicate the other work was painted afterward, as Vermeer's experience grew, according to Liedtke.
Neville Davison Goldsmid of The Hague owned the painting from 1866-1875, before it passed into the hands of his widow, Eliza Garey of The Hague and Paris. She sold it with other works at the Goldsmid sale on May 4, 1876, when Victor de Stuers bought it for the collection of the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen Mauritshuis, the Hague.
The painting is in relatively poor condition. It has been cleaned and restored on a number of occasions and has depreciated as a result. Several areas of the canvas differ significantly from the original work.

Santa Praxedes (Saint Praxedis) - Johannes Vermeer

Santa Praxedes (Saint Praxedis) - Johannes Vermeer
Coleção privada, atualmente emprestada ao Museu Nacional de Arte Ocidental, Tóquio, Japão
OST - 101x82 - 1665

Saint Praxedis is an oil painting attributed to Johannes Vermeer. This attribution has often been questioned. However, in 2014 the auction house Christie's announced the results of new investigations which in their opinion demonstrate conclusively that it is a Vermeer. The painting is a copy of a work by Felice Ficherelli, and depicts the early Roman martyr, Saint Praxedis or Praxedes. It may be Vermeer's earliest surviving work, dating from 1655.

The painting shows the saint squeezing a martyr's blood from a sponge into an ornate vessel. It is closely related to a work by Ficherelli from 1640–45, now in the Collection Fergnani in Ferrara, and is generally assumed to be a copy of it (though see below for an alternative interpretation). The most obvious difference between the two is that there is no crucifix in the Ferrara work. It is Vermeer's only known close copy of another work.

This is one of only four dated Vermeer paintings, the others being The Procuress (1656), The Astronomer (1668) and The Geographer (1669). Vermeer's two early history paintings, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and Diana and Her Companions, are dated by almost all art historians to 1654-6, although opinions differ as to which is earlier.

The painting's provenance before the mid-twentieth century is unknown. The collector Jacob Reder bought it at a minor auction house in New York in 1943. It first received significant attention as a possible Vermeer when being shown as a part of an exhibition of Florentine Baroque art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1969. The exhibition catalogue drew attention to the signature "Meer 1655" and Michael Kitson, reviewing the exhibition, suggested it could be a genuine Vermeer on the basis of stylistic similarities to Diana and Her Companions. Following Reder's death (also in 1969) it was bought by the art dealer Spencer A. Samuels, who also believed it to be a Vermeer. The Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection Foundation bought it from Spencer in 1987. The leading Vermeer scholar Arthur Wheelock subsequently argued the case for the attribution to Vermeer in an article devoted to it in 1986.

The painting was not included in the exhibition "The Young Vermeer" held in The Hague, Dresden and Edinburgh in 2010-11. However it was included in an exhibition of Vermeer's work held in Rome in 2012–13, curated by Wheelock, Liedtke and Sandrina Bandera.

It was sold at Christie's in London on 8 July 2014 on behalf of the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection Foundation. It sold to an unknown buyer for £6,242,500 (US$10,687,160), at the lower end of the estimated price range of £6-£8 million. Some art market commentators speculated that doubt about the attribution to Vermeer may have contributed to the relatively low price. From March 2015 it has been on display in the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, labelled as "attributed to Johannes Vermeer". This appears to be a long-term loan to the museum from a private collector.

The painting may have two signatures. The more obvious of the two reads "Meer 1655", while the second appears as "Meer N R o o". It is possible that this second signature originally read "Meer naar Riposo", or "Vermeer after Riposo": Riposo was Ficherelli's nickname. The Doerner Institute's examination of the signatures concluded that both signatures were original and composed of pigments typical of the painting. Wheelock's examination also led him to conclude that both signatures were original, and recent technical examination has demonstrated that the clearer signature is likely to have been added at, or close to, the date the painting was created. However these new investigations agreed with the earlier opinion of the conservator Jørgen Wadum that the possible second signature is too indistinct to be deciphered.

Analysis of the lead white, performed by the Rijksmuseum, in association with the Free University, Amsterdam used in the painting demonstrates a Dutch or Flemish origin, with a strong possibility that the pigment came from the same batch used for Vermeer's Diana and Her Companions. The use of a chalk ground is also typically Dutch, and there is an unusually extensive use of ultramarine, typical of Vermeer's later work, though not of Diana and Her Companions or Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. Wheelock identifies stylistic similarities with two history paintings which are universally attributed to Vermeer. He also notes similarities between the depiction of the saint's face and the figure in Vermeer's A Girl Asleep and argues that the painter's conversion to Catholicism would have given him an interest in the subject matter. Although it is thought unlikely that the Ferrara painting ever left Italy, or that Vermeer visited Italy, Wheelock points out that he had a reputation as an authority on Italian art. It is possible that another version or copy of the Ferrara painting was the model for Vermeer's work.

In 1998, Wadum argued that the painting was not a copy of the work in Ferrara, or indeed of any other work, because the background elements were painted before the foreground, as is typical of an original work rather than a copy. In 2014 Christie's put forward the argument that this could be explained as experimentation by Vermeer, the young artist trying to recreate and adapt the technique used to create the original.

Descrição do lote no leilão da Christie’s:

An image of concentrated devotion and meditative poise, this famous painting of Saint Praxedis is here offered for sale at auction for the first time in its brief documented history. First considered to be by Vermeer in 1969, the picture has been the subject of scholarly discussion ever since, largely on account of its unusual subject matter in the context of Vermeer and of Dutch painting in general. Saint Praxedis was firmly brought into the oeuvre of Vermeer in 1986, and in 1995 featured in the seminal monographic exhibition on the artist at the National Gallery of Art, Washington and Mauritshuis, The Hague, as his earliest known painting. At the time it was the only work by Vermeer, from an established corpus of 36 paintings, to remain in private hands. Since then, the ex-Beit/Rolin Lady at the Virginals, a picture that was for a long time dismissed as being by a follower of Vermeer, has been re-accepted into the oeuvre further to its sale at auction in 2004 for £16,425 million (Sotheby's, London, 7 July 2004, lot 8) and is also now in private ownership.

The painting is here presented, as Arthur Wheelock has always maintained, as Vermeer's earliest dated work, an exploratory painting by a young artist who had recently converted to the Catholic faith and who had a proven interest in contemporary Italian art. Moreover, as a technical exercise by an artist who had a profound understanding of the raw materials of painting, of pigments, colour and methods of application.
These assertions are not new, but they are restated here in the light of new evidence yielded from a fresh technical analysis of the picture conducted in the first half of 2014 at the Rijksmuseum. This has provided a compelling endorsement of the Vermeer attribution. It has established: first – that there is no reason to suggest that the signature and date is not integral to the painting. Second - that the paint materials are entirely characteristic of Dutch painting of the period and the lead white pigment is incontrovertibly not Italian. Finally, that analysis of lead white samples taken from both Saint Praxedis and from Diana and her Companions an established picture by Vermeer from the same period, have provided a precise match. The match is so identical s to suggest that the same batch of pigment could have been used for both paintings.
Vermeer’s formative years as an artist are still shrouded in mystery. He joined the painter’s guild in Delft in December 1653 but there is no record of him having served a formal apprenticeship in Delft or elsewhere. Suggestions that he might have trained in Utrecht or Amsterdam, or in Delft under the distinguished Carel Fabritius have not found general support among art historians. The consensus of opinion instead suggests that Vermeer was much more likely to have been self-taught. Walter Liedtke takes this view on the basis of the sheer variety of the artist’s early output: “During the 1650s Vermeer surveyed a range of artistic ideas and combined and modified them with an extraordinary degree of independence. His early development is one example of an uncommon but hardly unknown phenomenon in the history of European art: a great artist who essentially teaches himself” (W. Liedtke, Vermeer – The Complete Paintings, Bruges, 2008, p. 21).
At the outset of his career, it seems that Vermeer set out to be a history painter. The two earliest pictures that are now universally accepted as by Vermeer are the Diana and her Companions (Mauritshuis, The Hague) and Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). Neither is dated, but scholars are unanimous in placing them in the years between 1654 and 1656, although not necessarily in the same order. A definite terminus ante quem of 1656 is established
for both pictures by the dated Procuress (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden) which adopts a contemporary subject and truly anticipates the mature ‘modern’ style for which Vermeer is famed. It is in the context of these two early history paintings that Saint Praxedis has to be judged.
The composition of Saint Praxedis is borrowed directly from a work by the Florentine artist Felice Ficherelli (1607-1660). Indeed the picture first came to light as a Ficherelli itself when it was lent to an exhibition on Florentine Baroque painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1969. It was then that the Vermeer signature was first noted by the conservation department at the museum, leading Michael Kitson, who reviewed the exhibition, to first consider the possibility that the Delft artist might have made a copy after Ficherelli (op. cit.) The signature is clearly of fundamental importance to the Johnson Saint Praxedis, which without it, would almost certainly never have been considered to be by Vermeer. Arthur Wheelock emphasized the point when he first published the picture in 1986, further to scientific examination of the painting conducted by a variety of conservators including Dr Hemann Kühn (Doerner Institute, Munich), Professor Rees Jones (Courtauld Institute, London) and Barbara Miller (National Gallery of Art, Washington). They all found no serious reason to doubt the originality of the signature and date, a view that has recently been endorsed by the Rijksmuseum. The signature has been submitted to further testing in London by Libby Sheldon. Her observations can be cited in full: 'Although no firm conclusion about its [the signature's] exact date could be reached, the stability of the paint, when tested, suggested it had been on the painting for a long time. The black paint which forms the inscription ‘Meer 1655’ has not been noticeably reinforced. This black had a very similar appearance to that of the nearby original black shadow paint and its condition – the ways in which it has been broken up with age - supports the proposition that the inscription is old'. It must also be asked in what conceivable circumstances would a Vermeer signature have been added to a picture apparently so unlikely for the artist.
Wheelock also raised the possibility of a second, hardly discernible signature, painted thinly in light ochre in the right corner. He accepted Egbert Havercamp-Begeman’s suggestion that it might have originally read: ‘Meer naar Riposo’ (Riposo being the Italian nickname for Ficherelli; op. cit., 1986, pp. 74-75). This signature is so indistinct that recent examination of it failed to yield any meaningful interpretation.
When the signatures were previously examined at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the paint materials were examined at the same time to determine whether or not they were consistent with seventeenth century practices. Conservators confirmed that they were, and found that the use of a chalk ground and the distribution of elements in the lead white were characteristic of Dutch as opposed to Italian painting techniques. This question of the origins of the paint materials takes on special significance in the case of Saint Praxedis since debate about the picture has centered on the key issue as to whether it was painted in Italy or in Holland. Several eminent scholars have taken the view first put forward by Wadum in 1998 that the picture is Italian, if not by Ficherelli himself, and on that basis they have chosen to disregard it altogether from the Vermeer or the wider Dutch context.
In order to address this underlying issue, the recent technical analysis conducted by the Rijksmuseum has focused on the lead white pigment used throughout the painting of Saint Praxedis. Lead white was one of the most commonly used pigments by European artists working in oils in the 17th century. It was produced on a large scale, it was relatively inexpensive and widely available locally to artists of all schools. As a result, artists did not travel with lead white, a fact born out by extensive studies of the pigment used by itinerant artists such as Van Dyck, Sweerts and Rubens who were active both to the south and north of the Alps. The significance of lead white from an art historical perspective is that isotope analysis is able to trace the origins of the lead and distinguish between cisalpine and transalpine lead ores, the primary raw material of metallic lead. “Like a fingerprint, the data can be traced back from the pigment to its
raw form of metallic lead and to the lead ore. For example it can be determined if a lead white sample originates from a northern or southern source” (see D. Fabian and G. Fortunato, ‘Tracing White: A study of Lead White Pigments found in Seventeenth-Century Paintings using High Precision Lead Isotope Abundance Ratios’, in Trade in Artist’s Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700, ed. by J. Kirby, S. Nash, and J. Canon, London 2010.)
Particles of lead taken from samples of lead white pigment used in Saint Praxedis were submitted for high precision lead isotope ratio analysis at the Free University, Amsterdam. The results placed the lead white squarely in the Dutch/Flemish cluster of samples, establishing with certainty that its origin is north European and entirely consistent with mid-seventeenth century painting in Holland. Two separate samples from the picture have been tested to certify this result. This provides incontrovertible scientific proof that the picture was not painted in Italy. Furthermore, a lead white sample taken from Diana and her Companions was tested in the same manner to allow for comparison between Saint Praxedis and a work from the same approximate date that is universally accepted as by Vermeer. The outcome of this was extraordinary, providing an almost identical match of isotope abundance values between the two samples. They relate so precisely as to even suggest that the exact same batch of paint could have been used for both pictures. The technical report and the data from this analysis is available separately on request.
In the 2012/13 Rome exhibition, Saint Praxedis was hung alongside the picture by Ficherelli which is now widely considered to be the prototype for it. The comparison perhaps posed more questions than it answered, not least as to whether another version or a copy of the Ficherelli might have served as the actual model for the Johnson picture. Rather than endorse the primacy of the Ficherelli, notwithstanding its somewhat abraded state, the comparison rather emphasized the expressive power and intensity of the Johnson painting. Indeed the exercise underlined one of the most disconcerting aspects about the Johnson painting in that this does not have the character of a formulaic replica. This was first noted by Wadum who made the point that the paint has been applied, not from the front to the back in the way that a copy was usually made, but built up, layer upon layer, in the manner of a prime picture. For instance, the ewer was not blocked out in the red dress before it was painted, the red extends underneath the left corner and under the handles. As Wadum rightly asserts: ‘One would not expect to find these phenomena, appearing like pentimenti, in an almost literal copy’ (op. cit., p. 217).
It could be argued that the vibrant, original character of Saint Praxedis supports rather than negates the argument for Vermeer's authorship. While it would be natural for a self-taught artist in his formative years to make experimental copies - the eclectic range of Vermeer's early output has been widely noted - would one expect an artist of Vermeer's technical ability and curiosity to make a plain, disinterested copy of the Florentine picture? Perhaps more likely, Vermeer would have striven to get to the essence of Ficherelli's technique; to have adapted his style to that of his model while at the same time attempted to invigorate the composition with his own bravura interpretation. The most obvious compositional difference between the two pictures is the addition of the crucifix in the Johnson picture, which, as the x-ray suggests, was probably added late on in the execution, serving to emphasise the religiosity of the image. The artist also seems to have applied the paint more densely and heightened the colour scheme, which lends the figure a more intense physical presence. The use of the ultramarine in the sky is significant on two counts. First, it was one of the most expensive pigments available to an artist and therefore was highly unlikely to be used as abundantly as this in the production of a regular copy. More importantly, ultramarine is a pigment that is strongly associated with Vermeer. He used it throughout his career and whereas he applied it sparingly in the two other early history paintings, here it is used profusely and in a highly unusual manner, by any standards. The other principal difference between the two pictures is the attitude of Praxedis's head, here elongated slightly and painted with layers of small brushstrokes and softened contours. The result is an image of great meditative poise and reflective contemplation which has resounding echoes with other female protagonists in Vermeer's later paintings. Wheelock has noted the striking similarity between the downcast faces of Saint Praxedis and the Maid Asleep, painted about two years later, which are almost mirror images of each other (Metropolitan Museum, New York; op. cit., 1986, p. 85).
A strict comparison between the Saint Praxedis and the other two early paintings by Vermeer is made difficult by the extent to which the artist will have adapted his style to imitate Ficherelli’s. The painting techniques used in each of the three early works also
varies considerably. Nonetheless, a number of striking connections, both in composition and technique do exist. Most obviously, all three are large-scale, figurative compositions executed using unusually vivid colour combinations. In terms of technique, although the unusual, swirling brushwork used to render Praxedis's red dress does allude to Ficherelli's, it is also reminiscent of the thick and fluid application of paint employed in the Edinburgh picture. In both works the artist uses sharp contours with thick impasted paint to delineate the folds in the draperies. Wheelock also compares the flickering brushstrokes used to render Saint Praxedis's left sleeve with the sleeve of the nymph kneeling before Diana in the Mauritshuis painting. (Johannes Vermeer, exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London, 1995, p. 88).
All three paintings reveal an artist who was drawing on an eclectic range of visual sources far removed from his native Delft. For the Christ in the House of Martha and Mary it is generally thought that Vermeer had been looking closely at contemporary painting in Antwerp, to the historical subjects of Van Dyck and his circle. As several scholars have remarked, the composition is actually closely related to a picture of the same subject, datable to circa 1645, by Erasmus Quellinus II (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes), which lends weight to the idea that Vermeer might have travelled south to Flanders at some stage around 1650. The Diana and her Companions has been widely linked with a picture on the same theme of circa 1650 by Jacob van Loo (Museum Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick), indicating that Vermeer was also familiar with cross-currents in Amsterdam. Both these pictures also reveal stylistic affinities with works found in Utrecht by the likes of Abraham Bloemaert and Hendrick Tebrugghen, making it seem likely that Vermeer also visited Utrecht. Some scholars have suggested he may have even trained there.
Assuming that Vermeer did not travel to Italy, and Wheelock does not rule out the possibility, the artist’s first-hand experience of Italian art would have been confined to the limited number of Italian pictures that he could have had access to in and around Delft. From a document of 1672 revealing that he was asked to adjudicate in a dispute over some Italian paintings, we do know that Vermeer was recognised as an expert in this field. Although they were relatively scarce in Delft in the mid-seventeenth century, plenty of Italian pictures were circulating in the Dutch art market in Amsterdam and elsewhere, and Vermeer may very easily have encountered the prototype for Saint Praxedis on his travels in Holland, if not in Delft itself. Wadum proposed that another contemporary Italian picture may have provided the inspiration for one of Vermeer's great masterpieces - The Milkmaid (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), whose pose is closely connected to a painting of Artemisia by the Genoese artist Domenico Fiasella (1589-1669). Being the son of an art dealer one can imagine Vermeer coming into contact with other dealers and an unusually diverse range of material. For instance, the Amsterdam and Delft art dealer Johannes de Renialme, lists ten Italian pictures in a 1657 inventory along with a painting by Vermeer, which implies that they were probably acquainted (see J.M. Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A socio-economic Study of the Seventeenth Century, Princeton, 1982, pp. 249-250).
The impact Ficherelli’s Saint Praxedis may have exerted on the young Vermeer is not hard to imagine. The subject was rarely treated by Italian artists and Vermeer could well have admired it not just on artistic grounds but also on account of its highly unusual and devotional character. Praxedis was an obscure Christian Saint from the second century, revered for having cared for the bodies of Christians who died under religious persecution. She is shown here in an image of devout contemplation squeezing the blood from a sponge with which she had tended to a decapitated martyr who lies on the ground beside her. Born a protestant, Vermeer converted to Catholicism shortly before his marriage to Catherina Bolnes on 20 April 1653 and evidence suggests that he adopted his wife's faith with conviction. The fact that he named his two younger sons Francis and Ignatius after the two great saints of the Jesuit order attests to this. In light of this, as Wheelock has always maintained, Saint Praxedis would have acted as an unequivocal statement of Vermeer's commitment to the Catholic faith.