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Dear Friends,
It is for me a great pleasure to present the work of
Jan (or Johannes) Vermeer,
also called Vermeer Van Delft
(1632 - 1675), the extraordinary Dutch painter of the
Baroque Era
whose
use of masterly contrasts of light in his oil paintings,
together with a rare, exquisite perfection in their composition
and execution, would reach unheard-of heights in
his time.
Very little is known about
Vermeer's life - in fact, he only came out of anonymity with his
marriage in 1653, a year he also was admitted into the Delft
Gilt of Painters. However, it was not until 1656 that he
achieved a certain renown with
The Procuress, a work with
which he seems to have found at last his own style.
It appears that Vermeer' life
was hazardous, though at the same time he seems to have been
appreciated by his co-nationals, as suggested by the fact that he was two times elected the
Dean of the Gild of Painters in his city. Nevertheless, he is
known to have died in almost absolute poverty.
While I am truly confident that my
choice of
the featured masterpiece below,
Girl with a Pearl Earring,
will meet your approval, I do expect it to be especially welcomed
mainly by those who watched
the film
of the same name,
said to
have fantastically
recreated the
17th
century Netherlands.
However, I consider it to be a mere legend that it was the girl
herself who asked Vermeer to wear her mistress' pearls (those of
Vermeer's own wife!) for the portrait.
NOTE: To view a larger image of the painting, you may click
HERE
or directly on the picture below.
Other magnificent masterworks by Vermeer include (in
chronological order)
Officer with a Laughing Girl (c. 1657),
The
Milkmaid (c. 1658),
View of
Delft (1659-60),
The
Art of Painting (1665-07),
Girl
with a Red Hat (1668?),
The
Astronomer (c. 1668),
The
Geographer (c. 1668),
The
Lacemaker (1669-70), and
The
Guitar Player (1672).
As always, your good feedback will be treasured.
Thank you,
Luis Miguel Goitizolo
GREAT MASTERS OF
PAINTING
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A Girl with a Pearl
Earring
(1)
by
Jan (Johaness) Vermeer
born 1632, Delft (Netherlands),
died 1675, Delft
Profile
(2)
Relatively little is known about
Vermeer's life. He seems to have been exclusively devoted to his
art, living out his life in the city of Delft. The only sources
of information are some registers, a few official documents and
comments by other artists; it was for this reason that Thoré
Bürger named him "The Sphinx of Delft".
Johannes, Jan or Johan
Vermeer (baptized in
Delft
on 31 October 1632 as Johannis, and buried in the same
city under the name Jan on 16 December 1675) was a
Dutch
Baroque
painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes
of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful
provincial
genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been
particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at
his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.
Vermeer worked slowly and with great care,
using bright colours, sometimes expensive
pigments, with a preference for
cornflower blue
and yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly
treatment and use of light in his work.
Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and
The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after
his death; he was barely mentioned in
Arnold Houbraken's
major source book on 17th century Dutch painting (Grand
Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus
omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two
centuries. In the 19th century Vermeer was rediscovered by
Gustav Friedrich Waagen and
Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing
sixty-six pictures to him, although only thirty-five paintings
are firmly attributed to him today. Since that time Vermeer's
reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the
greatest
painters of the Dutch Golden Age.
Technical data
(3)
Girl with a pearl earring
Oil on canvas
c1665-c1667
Mauritshuis (The Hague, Netherlands)
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_-_The_Girl_With_The_Pearl_Earring_(1665).jpg){kind=link}
