Widely acknowledged as “the retrospective of the century,” the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, from February 10 to June 4, 2023, gave an insight into how strong an artist’s impact on our society can still be. In the Netherlands, Vermeer is a painter who can attract masses on a par with Leonardo in Italy. The media coverage of the event meant that the public response – more than 650,000 visitors[1] – exceeded the ability of this public museum to cope, forcing it to completely change its usual arrangements.
It required considerable effort to find the humble painter from Delft behind a commercial event that was also a geopolitical operation, since heads of state visited the exhibition. Other aspects of the initiative reached historic highs. These included the cost of insurance policies, as assembling and displaying this invaluable heritage brought unprecedented risks.
If galleries are increasingly aware that, in order to enhance a work of art, it is necessary to highlight the artistic ambience that constitutes it, the Amsterdam exhibition, which simply presented 28 paintings by Vermeer, would seem somewhat lacking. However, we cannot but praise the organizers who allowed the general public to see Vermeer’s uniqueness. His paintings “are too perfect for the scenes depicted to be anything but a starting point. With him, the very distinction between history painting and everyday painting, portrait, landscape and still life, loses all importance. The intention of these paintings is neither psychological nor moral. It is not bound to the world of human relations; it is pictorial,”[2] as Tzvetan Todorov remarked. Moreover, the exhibition was carefully prepared as a scholarly study.[3] There was a need for a systematic return to art historian John Michael Montias’ analysis from the 1980s, which has influenced all subsequent studies of the painter.
Pieter Roelofs’ two introductory essays in the exhibition catalog, through a careful reading of the sources, open up new perspectives. In the first he points out that, while the influence of the Jesuits can be recognized in Vermeer’s early works, the later shift to genre painting was due to a specific request from a patron, Maria de Knuijt, whom the painter had known as a young man. The fact that Vermeer had responded to the request of an upper-class woman adds value to his early interior paintings. The second essay, taking its cue from the latest research, indicates where the painter had stayed in Delft, probably not always with his wealthy mother-in-law Maria Thins, as was usually believed, but in a more modest house, the so-called “Trapmolen house.”
The exhibition suggests new dates for some paintings[4] and offers decisive arguments for dating those hitherto uncertain.[5] An interesting discussion proposed by Roelofs concerns the attribution to Vermeer of Girl with a Flute (ca. 1664-67), in the National Gallery of Art in Washington which had been removed from the painter’s autographed corpus by the latest research on the painting. Indeed, the cards that accompanied the painting in the exhibition prudently specified that the painting belongs to “Vermeer’s circle.” Today, attributing a work to an artist or rejecting such an attribution is something that relies almost exclusively on the corroboration of technical data. In this case, we were drawn to Roelofs’ case for authenticity. There are works of art in such a precarious state of preservation, with numerous retouches and afterthoughts by the actual painter that it is not possible to reach indisputable conclusions even on the basis of chemical analysis.[6] Roelofs’ argument in favor of attributing the work to Vermeer agrees with this judgment by art historian Federico Zeri: “I don’t believe much in these chemical, radiographic examinations. In my opinion, what counts is the eye of the connoisseur.”[7]
More interesting is Roelofs’ conjecture that he sees in this painting, which is confirmed in the exhibition as a whole as “of exceptional skill,” and found as well as in the same museum’s Maiden in a Red Hat (ca. 1664-67), certain experiments in Vermeer’s study for future portraits. The scholar also advances the view that the artist had a workshop with assistants, who would have put copies of his works into circulation. On this point, Roelofs informs us that research is being carried out at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the results of which are still awaited.
Beyond flattening
The tight-knit world of Vermeer’s paintings, where only the essential artistic focus operates, forcefully draws us in, as if we still need to come to terms with unexplored aspects of meaning. To follow the trajectory of a faint beam of light in a dark room, to grasp the power of a gaze that turns away from the painter, to establish a visual relationship with a few simple details of decoration, makes us realize that Vermeer continues to be an artist of great significance, even though only 37 of his paintings have come down to us.
Upon his marriage to Catharina Bolnes in 1653, he converted from Protestantism to Catholicism and an intense spiritual life opened up creative possibilities for the artist. Vermeer’s active religious engagement partly compensated for his static life because, unlike some of his contemporaries, he never felt the need to leave Delft to try to establish himself in Amsterdam or The Hague, dedicated as he was to his wife and their 11 children. His income declined sharply in the latter stages of his life because of Louis XIV’s invasion of the Netherlands, and at his death – unlike the painter Caspar Netscher, who left his family a considerable inheritance of 8,000 guilders – he left his wife and children little money and numerous debts. His death came suddenly at the age of 43. His wife writes of the last stages of his life “Because of the great burden of raising children, and having no means of his own, he had plunged into such ruin and decadence, and had suffered so much from it that he fell into a delirium, so that within a day, a day and a half, he had passed from being a healthy man to his death.”[8]
Vermeer can be counted among the most innovative of painters because in genre scenes he was able to capture more of the complex web of interpersonal relationships and the individual with his or her surroundings.[9] Analyzing some of the painter’s works, German art historian Eduard Plietzsch asserted that they originated from what he called a “pictorial experience,” an overview in which not only graphic details are important, but also distance has its own significance, and everything seems to take place within a stereoscope.[10] For Wilhelm von Bode, on the other hand, the genre scene originates from a series of experiments that initially involved compositions – such as Rembrandt’s The Night Watch – that gradually became more and more expansive, with a tendency toward strong colorism.[11] However, any effort to find an origin of genre scenes in earlier painting comes to a halt in the face of this observation: it is necessary to envisage an entirely new type of picture and to implement certain mechanisms concerning the reading of reality, with economy of means.
Light reveals true nature
Regarding the representation of light, we can see here a connection between the artist and the spirituality of the Jesuits found in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The recent exhibition in Amsterdam highlighted this, in the wake of a work written years ago by Dutch Jesuits,[12] and this is continued in the current exhibition catalog by Pieter Roelofs, Christian Tico Seifert and Gregor J. M. Weber.[13] In relation to the spirituality of St. Ignatius, it should be noted that the concept of a God who reveals himself in the darkness[14] is circumscribed and subordinate to the direct experience of light: it is no coincidence that St. Ignatius himself was accused by the Inquisition of belonging to the Alumbrados movement. The very “mysticism” of the Jesuits may be viewed as linked to the particular experience of illumination, such as the one Ignatius himself experienced by the River Cardoner, an experience not only spiritual, but also intellectual. The Jesuits’ tendency to depict angels as creatures in supernatural light in their churches indicates an imprint of this spirituality on art.
The problem of light in Vermeer refers to a particular view of reality and opens up the question of a “transcendent principle” in his paintings.[15] If the Venetians were masters in the art of immortalizing reflections of light and able to create, from them, an atmosphere, Vermeer is more inclined to lead the viewer toward what is substantially left in the manifestation of light. In interiors, this is depicted in a continuous oscillation between subtle depowering and stunning intensity. Usually the Dutch painter favors that precise point at which it manages to distort the usual perception of form. For Arasse, what characterizes Vermeer is his “indifference to the linear legitimization of form.”[16] It is precisely through the representation of light that the painter succeeds in drawing the viewer to what is represented by the object, even the most mundane. Unlike Gerard ter Borch, who paints shimmering surfaces that absorb light or reflect it instantaneously, for Vermeer the physicality of light removes fundamental traits of their object-state from objects, thus making them spiritual entities.
The dialectic of light in Vermeer is not only a matter of optics, but also an important conceptual elaboration. In the Allegory of Faith another painting is contained – as in other examples – inside the scene: in this case the painting of the crucifixion by Jacob Jordaens. The Allegory depicts the setting of the sun at the death of Jesus: an ambience shrouded in darkness. On the other side is a female figure, with a globe under her foot. This image, according to iconologist Cesare Ripa (ca. 1555-1622), represents faith. However, it is known that at that time the globe was used not only to identify territories, but also to indicate the height of the sun at noon. If in the painting the crucifixion reveals a God in darkness, the reflections of light in the globe hanging from the ceiling and the figure of the illuminated woman refer to faith as an experience of illumination.
A dialectic of the complementary
As part of the focus on Dutch Golden Age art, the Jacob Vrel exhibition, at the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague from February 16 to May 29, 2023, was able to shed new light on Vermeer’s work. If Vrel – to whom one could add Gabriel Metsu and Frans van Mieris the Elder – often captivates the eye with intimate atmospheres and the tenderness of the motifs depicted, a morose restraint predominates in Vermeer. With the exception of a few early paintings, anecdote never particularly attracted him. Unlike Rembrandt, Metsu or others, he painted no prodigal son. His universe is never caught up with the painting of the life of ordinary men and women characteristic of Adriaen van Ostade; and in contrast with Jan Steen’s psychological introspection and humor, he remains restrained, indebted to an austere conception of life.
Behind his paintings there certainly lies a melancholy understanding of reality. Did not Marcel Proust notice that the color in Vermeer’s canvases is found in languid hues in a composition like The View of Delft? And do we not know that Woman Holding a Balance, which has in its background a scene from the Last Judgment, is not merely an aestheticizing vision, but an icon that crosses the threshold of drama? To the feeling of prosperity the artist often contrasts that of anxiety, of waiting for liberation. If already in Carel Fabritius his paintings convey a feeling of abandonment,[17] in Vrel and Vermeer this feeling becomes a source of artistic inspiration. Weber describes it very well: “It is as if the inhabitants could exist in their domestic world on their own account and for themselves.”[18] Some of Vermeer’s figures have an almost ritualistic aspect and benefit from geometric treatment; just look at Woman with a Pitcher of Water or The Milkmaid.
If one were to look for a particular area where the painter is deeply indebted to Dutch art, it can only be in his extraordinary ability to create for his paintings a structure elastic enough to contain a multiplicity of aspects, even the most contradictory. Vermeer establishes a true dialectic between the substantive and the complementary, and as a result the illusionistic space does not end, as in any perspective construction, at a point: in fact the painting envelops the observer, in a kind of “inverted perspective.” One of Vermeer’s revolutions involves dispensing with the effect of depth, an aspect that can also be seen in other painters of his generation, such as Willem Buytewech or Dirck Hals.[19] In offering a very low viewpoint, almost always “below the height of the figures depicted,” the artist achieves the effect of “keeping the observer at a distance.”[20]
The ideal setting of an almost identical structure for his interiors was followed by his renunciation of the animated anecdote: the women with wine glasses and music lessons animated by stray glances disappear. Vermeer’s new purpose is not to distract the viewer from the purely painterly and formal essence of his works. A similar approach can be seen in the painter Pieter Janssens Elinga (1623-82).[21]
Great art works based on inaccuracies
One might be tempted to see in Vermeer’s work a “herbarium of life,” as Roberto Longhi characterizes Nordic painting.[22] However, in recent times it has been acknowledged that even in Vermeer’s cityscapes the View of Delft (1660-61) and the Street (ca. 1658-59) he does not seek “an actual representation of reality but rather a convincing interpretation of it.”[23]
A number of disruptions have attracted the attention of experts. The Dutch art historian Albert Blankert, analyzing Vermeer’s paintings of music lessons or women at the virginal, noted that his characters are often only half-involved in what they are doing, and exclaimed in surprise, “Once again Vermeer leaves the viewer uncertain as to the intention of the musician’s gaze!”[24] Often the musical instruments are resting on the floor or are precariously balanced on a chair. In the Rijksmuseum’s Love Letter (ca. 1669-70) pieces of paper or shoes are scattered on the floor in disarray, and usually the colorful carpets contrast clearly with the grayish walls of the background and with the paintings hanging on the walls, which often echo the experiences of the characters depicted, sometimes not without a hint of irony. These contrasts, however, are not the sign of a neurotic disorder, but of a “beautiful disorder,” identical to that in the Allegory of Painting in Vienna (ca. 1666-67), where it can be recognized that Vermeer “is the director, present behind each detail whose arrangement he has decided upon.”[25]
One of the most complex questions addressed by the artist concerns the conventionality of the signs and structures that constitute our human universe. For example, Roelofs questions whether the handstand that the artist used while painting, and which is depicted in the Allegory of Painting, is not the same walking stick that the painter used to move around the city of Delft.[26] Vermeer’s modernity emerges from his ability to often overturn our ordinary perceptions, and some of his devices already have the anticipatory flavor of Marcel Duchamp and Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
Unlike Italian art, Dutch art is not interested in the object itself, as understood in Brunelleschi’s sense as structure. Every object is important insofar as it enables an experience of meaning: even a mask left on the table or hidden in a painting reveals to us the complex issue of the “opacity of the sign,” having no other purpose than to show the “effects of such materiality on the imagination, one’s sensibility, the pleasure of seeing or hearing” (Louis Marin).[27] One could go even further and address the dilemma posed by Arasse: “Is there [something] hidden within what is shown?”[28] Vermeer is not, however, a “master of deception,” his purpose is not to distract the viewers, but to accompany them to a world in which meanings are never unambiguous and where disorder can become, under the artist’s inspiration, “a beautiful disorder.”
The artist is aware of his ability to make structures fluid and is more interested in the elasticity of such structures than in their symmetry. In addition, the often fragmentary character of paintings within paintings, or of maps, conveys the feeling of wandering and fugitive elements, with which one associates what Gregor Weber calls a “walking retina.”[29] Vermeer is the first to play on the elasticity of such structures, capable of incorporating contrasting elements: order and disorder, fragment and wholeness. The frame is no longer meant to create the limits of a coherent space, but becomes superfluous in itself. In relation to the frame, it does not circumscribe, but simply allows the breadth of a viewpoint to manifest itself in its entirety.
Vermeer and Italy
We should note that from the outset Vermeer’s art is a continuation of Renaissance art in its focus on the artist’s ability to accompany the viewer in a staging in which the realistic element is continually denied and then reaffirmed in a play of meanings. Vermeer’s work integrates universal values to such an extent that his figures push beyond any moralistic position, even to the point of suggesting that his paintings were executed by one of the circle of Piero della Francesca.[30] The atmosphere of the canvases is always enveloped in a unique sonority, and in some ways, as Max J. Friedländer observed, the artist narrates “with restraint and in a low voice,”[31] similar to the introspective Perugino or Lorenzo Lotto.
If in the works of a painter like Jacob Ochtervelt, also from the Golden Age of Dutch painting, the influence of Italian art is evident, it is less so in Vermeer. However, the 2013 Roman exhibition, which was the first of its kind, remains very important.[32] It is also known that the painting depicting Santa Prassede (1655) is a copy of Felice Ficherelli’s painting (ca. 1640-50). In addition, Vermeer was known as an expert on Italian art. In 1672 he also carried out appraisals of 12 copies of Italian paintings, rejecting some paintings previously attributed to major Italian painters such as Michelangelo or Titian: “Not only are they unexceptional Italian paintings, but, on the contrary, great filthy stuff and bad paintings, which are not worth the tenth part of the above-mentioned proposed prices.”[33]
Vermeer’s interest in art produced in Italy attracted the attention of Longhi, who as early as 1934 argued that The Study of a Painter by Michiel Sweerts (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) had been painted in Rome: “It may have suggested to Vermeer himself the first idea for the famous painting in Vienna.”[34] Here the painter is shown with his back turned; in the model he is turned in the same direction. Similarly, the Sleeping Young Woman (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) may initially have been a genre scene in the Caravaggio style, probably modeled after a Carnival Scherzo by Nicolas Régnier or Valentin de Boulogne.[35] At the last moment, Vermeer erased the male figure facing the door, to leave only the sleeping woman. Another element that pushes us toward this interpretation is the presence of a mask.[36]
Those faces with their Raphaelesque roundness, which art historian Sandrina Bandera observed in some paintings, for example, the portrait of the servant girl in Woman Writing a Letter in the Presence of her Maid (ca. 1670-71), for Vermeer are not ingenious devices intended to conceal repulsive physical traits, as in the case of the Raphaelesque painting of Tommaso Inghirami, but precise choices, searches in Italian art for angular looks conveying psychological intensity. Moreover, as has been observed recently, the greens that Vermeer employs, differentiating himself from other artists, are more reminiscent of Italy than Holland.[37] If one were to look in Italian art for an age where one could ideally place Vermeer, it might be in that of the classicism of the Carraccis, where Vermeer’s Milkmaid recalls the portrait of the servant girl in Scarsellino’s Birth of the Virgin (Ippolito Scarsella, ca. 1550-1620), a painting preserved in the Este Gallery in Modena.
In a manner similar to the great masters of Italian art, Vermeer paints with great detachment, achieved through the careful direction of light, tone and spatial construction. The Dutch painter never hesitated to offer identical still life fragments or the same figures, and the constant repetition of motifs raises a question about the meaning of such choices. It is here instead that one should read the invitation to “deconstruct Vermeer.” The gilded frame of a painting, the shoulder of a chair on which a thin ray of light rests invites the viewer to discover the artist’s thinking. Added to this, the ability to descend into the depths of intimacy ideally places the Dutch painter in close proximity to great art, in an eternal Gothic flourish, the soil which nourishes every rebirth of art.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32009/22072446.0823.9
[1]. L. Crinò, “Vermeer da record. In 650mila alla mostra di Amsterdam”, in la Repubblica, June 5, 2023.
[2]. T. Todorov, Elogio del quotidiano. Saggio sulla pittura olandese del Seicento, Rome, Apeiron, 2000, 100.
[3]. Cf. P. Roelofs – G. J. M. Weber (eds), Vermeer. Exhibition catalog, London, Thames & Hudson, 2023.
[4]. For example, for the painting in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig, Maiden with Glass of Wine, he suggests as a date the early 1660s, and not earlier, as was sometimes thought; and he also proposes a backdating of the Young Woman standing at a Virginal, in the National Gallery in London, dated ca. 1670-72, considered the pendant of the Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, dated to the same period. Similarly, a closer look allows for new hypotheses about the chronology of Vermeer’s last paintings, to the point of establishing that the Young Woman seated at a Spinet in the Leiden Collection in New York, dated ca. 1670-72, was probably the artist’s last painting. Cf. B. Cornelis, “Music Appeal”, in P. Roelofs – G. J. M. Weber (eds), Vermeer, op. cit., 225f.
[5]. In connection with the transition from extrovert to introvert paintings, Roelofs dates The Interrupted Concert in the Frick Collection, New York, to the years 1659-61. Cf. P. Roelofs, “Vermeer’s Tronies. An Outward Gaze of Connection”, in P. Roelofs – G. J. M. Weber (eds), Vermeer, op. cit., 208f.
[6]. Ibid., 209f; 213f.
[7]. M. Bona Castellotti (ed), Federico Zeri. Cos’è un falso e altre conversazioni sull’arte, Milan, Longanesi, 2011, 155.
[8]. J. M. Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989, 212.
[9]. See J. Rosenberg – S. Slive, “Genre Painting”, in J. Rosenberg – S. Slive – E. H. ter Kuile, Dutch Art and Architecture: 1600-1800, London, Penguin, 1966, 101. For the two authors, the meaning of the term is ambiguous. Diderot, in the Essai sur la peinture (1796), questioned the “rightness of the definition,” and in 1846 Franz Kugler, author of one of the first important books on Dutch art, judged the term “inadequate.” In any case, if one considers the English variants of the term droleries, or some contemporary references to these paintings seen as geselschapje (“merry company”) or beeldeken (“picture with small figures”), one is closer to the original meaning of the term. In any case, this statement by Rosenberg and Silve remains fundamental: “In the beginning there was the image, not the word.”
[10]. Cf. E. Plietzsch, Holländische und flämische Maler des XVII Jahr, Leipzig, E. A. Seemann, 1960, 39.
[11]. Cf. W. von Bode, Die Meister der holländischen und flämischen Malerschulen, Leipzig, E. A. Seemann, 1917, 79. Cf. A. Riegl, Das holländische Gruppenporträt, Wien, Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1931.
[12]. Cf. D. van den Akker – P. Begheyn, Johannes Vermeer en de jezuïeten in Delft, Baarn, Adveniat, 2023 (bilingual edition: Dutch and English). We would like to thank here the Jesuits in Amsterdam for their help with the research.
[13]. Cf. G. J. M. Weber, Johannes Vermeer. Geloof, licht en reflectie, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 2023.
[14]. Cf. Id., “Paths to Inner Values”, in P. Roelofs – G. J. M. Weber (eds), Vermeer, op. cit., 256.
[15]. Cf. A. Blankert, “Tradizione e temi moderni in Vermeer”, in B. Broos et al, Johannes Vermeer. Exhibition Catalog, Zwolle, Waanders, 1995, 42. As art historian Daniel Arasse points out, such approaches are not exceptions; one can also recall scholars who recognize in Vermeer’s light that of “revelation,” with the intent of “communicating a Christian truth.” According to Arasse, “it should not be forgotten that the idea of light as the ‘form’ and ‘symbol’ of the divine was traditional in European thought, and was closely associated with the supposed realism that Dutch painting would display in the 15th century” (D. Arasse, L’ambizione di Vermeer, Rome, Carocci, 2019, 103f, note 20).
[16]. Ibid., 91.
[17]. “With what insight is expressed the abandonment and silence, but also the petrifying boredom of a feast day in a small village” (E. Plietzsch, Holländische und flämische Maler des XVII Jahr, op. cit., 48).
[18]. G. J. M. Weber, “Windows between Outer and Inner Worlds”, in P. Roelofs – G. J. M. Weber (eds), Vermeer, op. cit., 162.
[19]. Cf. E. Plietzsch, Holländische und flämische Maler des XVII Jahr, op. cit., 25f.
[20]. J. Wadum, “Vermeer in prospettiva”, in B. Broos et Al, Johannes Vermeer, op. cit., 72.
[21]. This is also an essential element to keep in mind when researching who was Vermeer’s real master. Cf. E. Plietzsch, Holländische und flämische Maler des XVII Jahr, op. cit., 69.
[22]. R. Longhi, “Keine Malerei. Arte boreale?”, in Id., Il palazzo non finito. Saggi inediti 1910-1926, Milan, Electa, 1995, 81.
[23]. P. Roelofs, “Venturing into Town”, in P. Roelofs – G. J. M. Weber (eds), Vermeer, op. cit., 143.
[24]. A. Blankert, “Tradizione e temi moderni in Vermeer”, op. cit., 38.
[25]. P. Georgel – A.-M. Lecoq, La pittura nella pittura, Milan, Mondadori, 1987, 166.
[26]. Cf. P. Roelofs, “Closer to Vermeer. A Look Inside the Family Home of the Delft Painter”, in P. Roelofs – G. J. M. Weber (eds), Vermeer, op. cit., 80.
[27]. L. Marin, “Projet d’enseignement ‘Arts et langage’. Théorie et histoire de la représentation à l’époque moderne”, in A. Cantillon – P.-A. Fabre – B. Rougé (eds), À force de signes. Travailler avec Louis Marin, Paris, EHESS, 2018, 481.
[28]. D. Arassa, L’ambizione di Vermeer, op. cit., 90.
[29]. G. J. M. Weber, “Vermeer’s Pictorial World”, in P. Roelofs – G. J. M. Weber (eds), Vermeer, op. cit., 104.
[30]. Cf. W. Liedtke, “Stile e osservazione nell’arte di Vermeer”, in S. Bandera – W. Liedtke – A. K. Wheelock Jr. (eds), Vermeer. Il secolo d’oro dell’arte olandese. Exhibition catalog, Geneva – Milan, Skira, 2012, 44.
[31]. M. Friedländer, Il conoscitore dell’arte, Turin, Einaudi, 1955, 72.
[32]. Further insights have been made by Edwin Bujisen and concern the artist’s youth, especially the painting Diana and the Nymphs (ca. 1655-56).
[33]. J. M. Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History, op. cit., 208.
[34]. R. Longhi, “La ‘Santa Margherita’ del Poussin nella pinacoteca di Torino”, in Id., Me pinxit e quesisti caravaggeschi, Florence, Sansoni, 1968, 180.
[35]. Cf. A. Lemoine, “Questioni di iconografia caravaggesca. La scena di genere, tra ‘ludicrum’ moralizzato e riflessione metafisica”, in L. Spezzaferro, Caravaggio e l’Europa. L’artista, la storia, la tecnica e la sua eredità, Milan, Silvana, 2009, 187-196.
[36]. Also note the Allegory of Painting (ca. 1666-68) and Girl Reading a Letter in Front of the Window (ca. 1657-58): through the depiction of masks, the painter wants to take us into a world of fiction. As in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, the masks mostly look expressionless; in any case, they are conceived almost without a grimace. Cf. E. Leuschner, “Cesare Ripa et les masques de l’Imitation”, in F. Viatte – D. Cordellier – V. Jeammet (eds), Masques, mascarades, mascarons. Exhibition catalog, Paris – Milan, Louvre éditions – Officina Libraria, 2014, 171.
[37]. Cf. P. Roelofs, “Vermeer’s Tronies. An Outward Gaze of Connection”, op. cit., 209; G. J. M. Weber, “Vermeer’s Pictorial World”, op. cit., 116. Tronies are faces painted full of life.