A Blockbuster Vermeer Exhibition Worth A Trip To Amsterdam
Forbes - Thursday, February 9, 2023, 11:38 a.m. EST
It’s the largest-ever gathering of luminous masterpieces by the 17th century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer and the acclaim is as loud as the exhibition at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum is memorable.
A once-in-a-lifetime treat that’s well worth the trip.
“There will never be another Vermeer show as great as this one,” exclaims the Washington Post, calling it “an international act of veneration,” and “the show of a lifetime,” for Vermeer admirers.
“It’s Now or Never: The Rijksmuseum’s Hotly Anticipated Blockbuster Vermeer Show Is Finally Here—and It’s Unmissable,” Artnet enthuses.
“This is an exhibition to die for – or even in, like the character in Proust who expires in front of Vermeer’s ‘View of Delft,’” writes The Guardian. “Proust was once so excited to see a Vermeer show that he collapsed. So take it easy if you get to see this gathering of practically all his masterpieces....This is more than an exhibition. It’s a miracle.”
“The effect is momentous, almost dizzying,” writes the Financial Times.
The town, the house, the voyeur
Born in 1632 and died in 1675, Vermeer is considered the most enigmatic of the Dutch masters because, aside from his known canvases, there’s nothing of him to offer even clues: no portraits, letters, writings or diary.
Vermeer lived and worked in Delft. His father was an art dealer and he was raised a Calvinist reformed Protestant. Upon his marriage, he became member of a Catholic family. He had 15 children, 11 of whom survived beyond childhood. In addition to his painting, he was an art dealer and the head of an artists guild.
The Rijksmuseum exhibition of 28 of the only 37 paintings Vermeer produced over 20 years of his life between 1654 and 1674 are displayed in 10 rooms and on view from February 10 until June 4, 2023.
The exhibit opens with two morning scenes, the only two landscapes the Dutch master painted and an apt introduction to his art:
View of Delft, the early-morning rendering of the place where he lived and painted all his life, a peaceful 17th century village alongside its dark reflection on the Schie river.
Nearby, in the same room — as if you crossed the river and entered the town — hangs The Little Street, a closer view of a Delft setting with typical Dutch brick houses and open doors that invite the viewer into tranquil interiors and their “introverted domestic scenes” for which Vermeer is universally known.
The Little Street, believed to be the Voldersgracht, is a narrow road where the painter could have been born and located next to a canal in the center of Delft. Despite its realistic appearance, though, it actually could be a fictional representation that unites architectural elements typical of his time and that Vermeer assembled in his studio.
Like the inviting open doors in The Little Street, the painting is the perfect entry to the rest of the exhibition and its “persuasive illusionism,” as described in the catalogue to the show.
The universal impact of “just a few paintings”
“Vermeer was a master of the intimate, absorbing moment – and this sublime show frees his glorious vision,” The Guardian writes.
This is not only the largest ever show of Vermeer’s work, with paintings from museums and collections from seven countries, but the first retrospective exhibition of his masterpieces in the history of the Rijksmuseum.
The official presentation of the exhibition, which is a collaboration between the Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, explains that “with loans from around the world, this promises to be the largest Vermeer exhibition to date.”
The Rijksmuseum owns the world-famous Milkmaid and Little Street.
The show includes masterpieces such as Girl with a Pearl Earring (Mauritshuis, The Hague), The Geographer (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main), Letter Writer and Maid (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) and Woman Holding a Balance (National Gallery of Art, Washington), along with works that have never before been accessible to visitors in the Netherlands, such as the recently-restored Woman reading a letter at the open window from the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden.
“Vermeer did not produce many paintings,” said Taco Dibbits, General Director of the Rijksmuseum, who hosted a private viewing for the national and international press earlier this week. “Their impact, however, is unforgettable. In a world making constant demands upon us, the calm and intimacy of his work brings time to a standstill. We are grateful to all the museums and private collections for their generosity and for making this extraordinary exhibition possible.”
Looking from the doorway
A girl reading or writing a letter, a hardworking lacemaker concentrated on her difficult job, a milkmaid pouring milk from a ceramic jar, all in the intimacy of a room, surrounded by familiar objets; some unaware of spectators, others looking at us, interrupted in their task, as if wondering why we’re there, in the doorway, “like guests infringing on a private moment,” as described by The Guardian, “hearing the sound of the pouring milk and smelling the granular crust of the bread and its tufts of crumb.”
“Vermeer’s art is full of such details and complexity, whether it is the light crossing a wall, a dancing reflection in a wine glass, the tiniest sliver of a view at the edge of a window, a human drama played out in front of us. There is nothing trivial here. He also directs us to things we can never know: people are always concentrating on unreadable letters, or looking beyond the picture’s edges or through windows at things we can’t see.”
Vermeer's women: the realism of the unreal
Despite the realism of those beautifully detailed scenes, we learn that Vermeer was not a realist. His paintings, like The Little Street, are constructions. Like a photographer in his studio, Vermeer many times uses the same props in different takes.
Our voyeurism, then, is innocuous because Vermeer’s women are imagined composites as are their pearl earrings and necklaces, their blouses adorned with ermine, their modern hats and fascinators, their maids, brooms, musical instruments and letters.
His paintings are meticulously-crafted fiction.
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The cult of Vermeer
“The cult of Vermeer, which had been practiced decorously by connoisseurs for at least a century — Marcel Proust and Edith Wharton were acolytes — became an international, ever-growing, pop-culture phenomenon, the stuff of novels, movies, popular documentaries and branded onto clothing, housewares and tchotchkes,” according to the Washington Post.
Like the image of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, or Van Gogh’s Starry Night, his Girl with a Pearl Earring, is an icon of our times.
More than 200,000 tickets have already been sold ahead of the show's opening on February 10 - a record for the Rijksmuseum.