Painting: Phoenix by the Schie

It was a typical Dutch town — a canal, two town gates, a bridge and church steeples, a wide majestic sky, and over all a warm light dipping here and there to touch the waves, the boats and a little patch of yellow wall with a special brilliance. Jan Vermeer had painted Delft and the river Schie with all the sureness of one who had spent his entire life there. And even though his name was all but unknown, the painting was recognized as an “extraordinary” landscape (see color pages), purchased by The Hague in 1822, and hung next to a Rembrandt at the Mauritshuis. There, 20 years later, a young French critic named Thoré-Bürger was so struck by it that he decided to set about recovering Vermeer’s lost paintings and opening the eyes of the world to the forgotten master from Delft.

Last week Vermeer needed no intro duction. Commemorating the centenary of the publication of Thoré-Bürger’s monograph—still the source work on the artist—as well as the 150th jubilee of the Mauritshuis, The Hague has staged an exhibition titled “In the Light of Vermeer” (scheduled to open at the

Louvre later this month), probably the best art show to be seen in Europe this year. Of only 29 undisputedly authentic Vermeer paintings, Mauritshuis Director A. B. de Vries has managed to bring together eleven of the greatest, the largest such gathering since a 1696 Amsterdam auction. Setting them off is a complementary exhibition of masterpieces, ranging from Caravaggio to Cézanne, which echo Vermeer’s serenity of spirit and magical treatment of light.

Mistaken Identity. It was this quality of light that enabled Thoré-Bürger to bring recognition to Vermeer’s art where others had failed. Long a victim of mistaken identity, Vermeer had been confused with Jan van der Meer of Utrecht; moreover, his paintings had often been attributed to a better-known Delft artist, Pieter de Hooch, who also painted immaculate Dutch interiors. But in the late 19th century, the French impressionists, seeking to present light through color rather than a painted effect, were astonished to discover Vermeer’s virtuosity with the same technique two centuries before.

In The Astronomer, for instance, they noticed how Vermeer illuminated a dim interior with a brilliant shaft of light falling through a window. In View of Delft, his only known landscape, they discovered Vermeer’s use of pointillé—tiny dabs of pigment that look like crystals of light. In portraits, his delicate lighting seemed to illuminate the very soul of his subjects. The age of Manet was understandably dazzled.

Geometry & Optics. Once Vermeer’s genius was recognized, it was difficult to understand how it could have been so long shrouded in obscurity. His serenity, harmony and purity of execution stand out from the raucous reality of his contemporaries like a vision from a nightmare. Yet Vermeer was very much a man of his time. Geometry was the cornerstone of 17th century scientific investigation; well aware of it, Vermeer laid out his paintings in a wizardly arrangement of planes, lines, cubes and cones. He also used the camera obscura, a forerunner of photography. In all probability, he was introduced to it by his fellow townsman Anton van Leeuwenhoek, inventor of a microscope, pioneer in optical research, and thought by some critics to be the young scholar portrayed in The Astronomer.

Delft, today best known for its china, was then the home of many other important painters—notably Jan Steen, who recorded a lustier side of Dutch life, and Carel Fabritius, one of Rembrandt’s pupils who may have been Vermeer’s teacher. In fact, a local bard, on the occasion of Fabritius’ early death, portrays Vermeer, then only 22, as the phoenix who would rise to greatness in his place.

Most Memorable. Other documents regarding Vermeer’s life are scarce, testifying mainly to his baptism in 1632, his financial straits, and the fact that when he died in 1675, at 43, he left his widow and eleven children a bread bill of 617 guilders, for which two paintings were given in payment. For all that, it seems Vermeer enjoyed some celebrity while he lived: a French nobleman recorded in his diary in 1663 that he had made a special trip from The Hague to Delft just to visit Vermeer’s studio. No self-portrait of Vermeer as such exists, although scholars believe that the figure at the easel in Allegory of Painting very likely represents the Delft master himself.

It was, at any rate, an uncharacteristic portrayal, for it is Vermeer’s pensive, passive women that viewers have always found most memorable. None has caused more speculation than the portrait of a girl in a lemon yellow jacket and porcelain blue turban—Vermeer’s favorite colors—with the inimitable pearl at her ear (opposite). Shy, sad, ingenuous yet intelligent, imbued with an air of mystery that has brought comparisons with the Mona Lisa and of devotion that matches a Bellini Madonna, she elicited Vermeer’s greatest powers of portrayal—and through all the years kept the secret of her identity.