An image from Robert A diCurcio's discussion of The Allegory of Painting at Vermeer's Riddle Revealed
This morning while checking the site stats for this blog, I saw that someone from Argentina found us via a Google search for "Baroque Painting Blog." That would be (partly) us, of course, so I went there as well to, yes, see how highly we rank (nicely, by the way, thanks for asking), but also to see if there are other like-minded blogs out there and link to them.
Anyway, that search also turned up an article from January of this year, "Stop the code conspiracies" by Martin Kemp. The title is a plea; as the article makes clear, no evidence has yet emerged that Renaissance and Baroque painters encoded secret messages into their works. We have, of course, The Da Vinci Code to thank for the recent uptick in this sort of thing; it also reminds me of Michael Drosnin's 1998 Holy-Writ-as-Seek-n-Find book, The Bible Code. This blog has also linked a couple of times to Robert A diCurcio's Vermeer's Riddle Revealed, which argues that Vermeer was a member of a Masonic guild and thus encoded grail geometry into many of his paintings.
My opinion on all this is that, even if these geometries are compositional elements in the paintings, what of it? What do they signify?
Not much, apparently.
Before going on, I will confess that Mr. diCurcio has obviously spent much more time on this than I will spend in offering friendly criticism of it, and I don't wish to be understood as saying that his efforts are entirely for naught. My real question is this: apart from speculation that is at the very least unprovable and certainly in part unfounded, what does all this reveal to us about the paintings and the man who painted them, apart from his, likely, fanatical attention to their composition?
At his website, diCurcio offers no explanation as to how he became interested in applying grail geometry to Vermeer, but it's fair to say that he doesn't appear to have stumbled onto his subject by chance. Consider, for example, this parenthetical aside in his discussion of The Allegory of Painting as he describes his search for a line that will lead to his finding what he calls the Tilted Triangle:(If you're wondering how I know to do this right away -- let me say right away -- that I spent weeks doing trial-and-error lines before arriving at STEP 2 as I shall present it -- sparing you from going through all that!)
Well, thank you. But this--and, indeed, the tone of most of his site, is that of someone who, given a theory and the tools for applying it, goes off in search of a likely candidate to try them out on, and who better than someone mysterious like Vermeer? I will grant diCurcio this: his discussion of Lady Standing at a Virginal does indeed appear to have its origin in a peculiar feature of the painting--Cupid's bow appearing to grow out of the Lady's head. But once past a point like that, the theory and the geometry take over; the painting becomes something other than (as opposed to something besides) what it depicts.
Or, it just leads us, pretty much, to what is the pretty standard reading of the painting, as with this passage from diCurcio's discussion of The Allegory of Painting:The intersection point of the diagonals A--N and M--O is the objective of the whole exercise. It is hard to say exactly what symbolism Vermeer had in mind for the 'X Marks the Spot' , which falls on the open book on the table. Since experts contend that the female model represents Clio, the Muse of History, and since Vermeer painted Clio looking down at that open book, we may speculate that his message is that the artist was making history by painting masterpieces that would bring credit to his native land -- and fame for himself. Note that he is shown at work on the crown of laurel leaves, symbolic of victory and fame. Holland at the time had emerged victorious in a struggle with Spain. This could well have been in Vermeer's mind -- and satisfactory it must have been to him, even though this and many other of his riddles would have to wait for centuries to be revealed. (emphases in the original)
Well, okay. But it seems that, apart from the reference to the Netherlands' defeat of Spain, all that is already available in the painting, without the projection of the lines and triangles and squares and such.
Like most of us, I'd also like to know more about Vermeer's life, and it would be interesting to know if he was a Mason. Interesting, but not vital. DiCurcio's study of the paintings leads him to make the claim that Vermeer was "most likely" a member of the Priory of Sion; as to how likely that is, read for yourself.
None of this is to say that diCurcio is mistaken about Vermeer's reliance on grail geometry. In fact, I'd be surprised to learn that Vermeer hadn't employed something like it as a compositional aid. Nor do I claim that secrets don't remain about Vermeer or other painters that are somehow revealed through their art. Personally, I've wondered about the level of Vermeer's commitment to Catholicism and whether that can be discerned through thinking about his paintings. Questions like that, though, will get answered, if they can be answered, through a combination of reading the historical record and looking at the paintings.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Grail geometry and Baroque painting: Is there any "there" there?
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Two views of Delft, optical devices, and "art"
Over at this blog's Facebook group page (which, by the way, all of you with Facebook accounts are welcome to join), the matter of the camera obscura has risen in a couple of discussion threads; it is the topic of one, in fact. I figured, then, that via this week's Two Paintings post we could initiate a discussion of the implications the use of such devices may or may not have on the nature of the art that results.
As always, click on the images to enlarge them.
Carel Fabritius, View of Delft with a Musical Instrument Dealer, 1652
Vermeer, View of Delft, c. 1660-1661
I hope visitors will begin the discussion in the comments section.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Women reading letters--two paintings
Dutch Baroque painters were drawn to the theme of letter-writing and letter-reading. Their evocation of intimate communication between sender and recipient makes the viewer simultaneously curious and, perhaps, a bit like an intruder as s/he enters the painting's space. Despite the sense of intimacy, though, the theme of letters also paradoxically expands the space depicted: in each of the paintings below, for example, the letters we see have writers, unseen by us but certainly seen in the respective minds' eyes of the recipients. The viewer, then, has not merely entered a room; s/he has entered an entire world as configured, oriented, by the envisioned writer or recipient of a letter.
As with the other pairings, I hope that passers-by will feel welcome to comment and, if the muse speaks especially strongly, even to write a post--just let me know, and I'll set things up for you.
Gerard ter Borch, Peasant Girl Reflecting on a Letter, 1650-1660
Johannes Vermeer, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, c. 1662-1665
Friday, May 4, 2007
Christ in the House of Mary and Martha--two paintings
As with last week's pairing, the intent here is to invite commentary and, if you are so inclined, a full-blown post on these paintings (which I will be more than happy to post here), their similarities and differences.
Here is Luke's account of the scene depicted.
by Velázquez, 1618
by Vermeer, 1654-1656
Saturday, April 14, 2007
"Art to See Before You Die"
Jones includes a Vermeer on his list, but my personal addition would be the one you see here, The Milkmaid. Long, long ago, I blogged about this painting, if you're curious, here and here in an attempt to get at why it may be my favorite Vermeer and one of my very favorite paintings, period.
Honestly, though, I'd have to think a bit before I add some others. I mean, we all have our personal favorites, but do we feel so strongly about them that we would have the temerity to insist to total strangers that they will be lesser human beings if they do not make time to see them in person? I'm pretty sure I can say that about The Milkmaid.
How about you? Jones is soliciting suggestions at his post, but you're welcome to comment here or, even better, take a hint from this post's title.
Below the fold, a slideshow and list of Jones's selections.
slideshow (Be warned that the order here doesn't correspond to that of the list below.)
Jan van Eyck, The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, c.1435, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Caravaggio, The Burial of St. Lucy (1608), Museo di Palazzo Bellomo, Syracuse, Sicily
Rembrandt, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1654), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
San Rock Art, South African National Museum, Cape Town
Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire from Les Lauves (1904 - 6), Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
Michelangelo, Moses (installed 1545), Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome
Leonardo da Vinci, The Adoration of the Magi, (c. 1481), Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Mark Rothko, The Rothko Chapel (paintings 1965-66; chapel opened 1971), Houston, Texas
Vermeer, View of Delft (c.1660-61), Mauritshuis, The Hague
Matthias Grünewald, The Isenheim Altarpiece (c.1509-15), Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France
Hans Holbein, The Dead Christ, (1521-2), Kunstmuseum, Basel
Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656), Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Funerary Mask of Tutankhamun (1333-1323BC), Egyptian Museum, Cairo
Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Masaccio, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (c.1427), Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.
Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937), Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid
Titian, Danaë (c. 1544-6), Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
Raphael, The School of Athens (1510-11), Stanza della Signatura, Vatican Palace, Rome
Parthenon Sculptures ("Elgin Marbles"), c. 444 BC, British Museum, London
Henri Matisse, The Dance (1910), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
UPDATE: Here is the list of Jones's readers' Top 50 works.
A quick visit with Las Meninas
Context, context. Sorry. But way DOES lead on to way.
This morning I came across her most recent post, in which she describes the circumstances surrounding the accompanying picture. I'll not rehash all that; go read the whole thing, as we say here on the Internets. But what follows is most of my comment that I left there.I'll believe that you didn't plan it. The thing about Art, though, is that when the artist sees something in his/her work that wasn't planned but it improves the composition, s/he has the good sense to leave it in. It's harder to say this about Las Meninas (or painting in general) because of the medium, but it occurs to me now that the same rule applies--and that Velázquez is even commenting on it in his painting. On the left, the painter himself, palette and brush in hand, gazing at us with his critical, calculating painter's eye at the no-doubt-stiffly-sitting King and Queen . . . balanced on the far right by the little girl doing something I'm pretty sure she's NOT been asked to do.
There's more to say, of course, about the geometric connotations of that word "calculating," and some have done so to such an extent that I don't feel the need to. Besides: I'm more the "oh, look at the pretty picture!!" sort of viewer, anyway. So I'll just conclude this not-terribly-profound post by saying something else equally-lacking in profundity: Sure: Velázquez probably used grail geometry as a way of arranging the figures in this painting; so also, probably, did Vermeer. But, you know, so also, probably, did any number of Baroque-era painters, along with any number of poets of the time, along with Shakespeare and Donne and others you could find in your friendly neighborhood Norton Anthology, who wrote sonnets. To which I can only say, those features, those calculating frames are not why we keep looking at/reading certain people's work. There is something else, another sort of calculating, that exists beyond angles and rhyme schemes, the sort of sensibility that can see, in real life, a little girl's casual act of stepping on a dog and say, "That's going into a painting"--and then make it feel in Art like the casual act it originally was.
Doorsien, and why Vermeer doesn't employ it
I should alert you from the beginning that what follows probably isn't going to set the art history world ablaze. It's just one of those "ah-ha!" moments that, for me at least, gives me a handle on thinking about a painter whose works I love and, as long-time readers know, have posted about before.
Doorsien is a Dutch word that literally means "plunge through." Here is a description of how doorsien works, from Karel van Mander's 1604 book, The Painter's Book:Our composition should enjoy a fine quality, for the delight of our sense, if we there allow a view [insien] or vista [doorsien] with small background figures and a distant landscape, into which the eyes can plunge. We should take care sometimes to place our figures in the middle of the foreground, and let one see over them for many miles. (quoted in Hollander, An Entrance for the Eyes: Space and Meaning in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art, 8
In my Humanities class on Wednesday, I spent a little time talking about doorsien in relation to this painting
More below the fold.
You can clearly see doorsien at work in this painting: the views through the windows and door allow the viewer's eye a passage through the foregrounded space out into, depending on our route, the larger world or into the neighbor's house across the street. As I was discussing it in class, I found myself remembering my first real in-person exposure to Dutch painting, this 2001 exhibition in New York, and being struck by how different the Vermeers looked from the paintings of his contemporaries. Everyone was there to see the Vermeers and I was too, but I hadn't seen many of them before, just a few of them, and that trip would serve as my introduction to the other painters. Many of the other paintings exhibited the same technical mastery that the Vermeers showed, and the subject matter was the same or very similar in each (the galleries were arranged thematically, the Vermeers not set apart from the others). But the Vermeers were easily identifiable, even from across the room. I had assumed before going that they would all look pretty much alike, but they could not be more different. What differed was Vermeer's treatment of these scenes, specifically his rendering of interior space. To be specific, Vermeer's contemporaries, more often than not, employed doorsien; Vermeer didn't.
Vermeer comes closest to employing doorsien in this painting, 
What's the effect of this? The space depicted in de Hooch's painting has a fluidity to it--for me, anyway, that space is so fluid that I find myself looking through the door and window as much as I do at the women and the small boy (yes--a boy, according to what I've read). For the viewer, the boundaries between interior and exterior are exceedingly blurred here. We note these people, find them pleasant enough, but that's about as far as it goes. In Vermeer's painting, all is interior. The eye isn't allowed to roam; we see, through the door, that there's not much to see except, via the mirror, that room and the room the maid is in, and so we don't worry about it anymore. So, we are compelled to contemplate the maid. And more: we wonder at her weariness, at her life. I find myself wondering just what the quality of her sleep is. I don't wonder at the quality of wakefulness of de Hooch's figures. Vermeer's maid's solitariness, the fact that the outside world is Outside, creates in this painting an intensity and, above all, an overwhelming sense of intimacy and privacy that the de Hooch just doesn't have. We are quiet; we don't want to disturb; we will tiptoe away quietly as soon as we're through contemplating. But that might not be for a while.
Somewhere in some online reading on doorsien a while back, someone wrote that it is such a prominent feature in Dutch painting because distinctions between public and private space were still very much in flux. Perhaps. But I personally don't think one has to look at too many of them before one realizes that Vermeer, at least, understood those distinctions very well.
(Originally posted at Blog Meridian)
UPDATE (May 3, 2007): Jonathan Janson of the most-excellent Essential Vermeer offers an extended reading of A Maid Asleep here.
Money quote:The premonitory quality of the painting might be supported by various iconographic and symbolic interpretations. The young girl's pose indicates that she is either asleep, in a state of drunkenness or afflicted by what was referred to in the seventeenth-century as melancholia. Artistic intuition has long been perceived as being feminine in nature, the nine muses of the arts are in fact, female. Melancholia, drunkenness and sleep have often represented the temporary suspension of the conscious mind which favors artistic creativity. Thus, the young girl who sleeps might be considered as the artist's creative unconscious whose power is alone capable of "opening the door" to newer and profounder artistic means of expression. A rather common dream in which the dreamer slowly passes from one room to others with which he is not yet familiar with, is usually interpreted by modern psychoanalysis as a becoming aware of ones latent and hitherto unexplored unconscious resources. The dimly lit dream-like atmosphere of the painting tends to confirm, on an esthetic plane, this symbolic interpretation.
