Johannes Vermeer
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting
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The Lacemaker (1669). Johannes Vermeer
Oil on canvas. 23.9 cm x 20.5 cm
Musée du Louvre. Paris, France
Vermeer is one of the most admired geniuses of the Baroque, although his works do not necessarily seem to be painted in that period.
This is a typical painting within his work: it portrays an ordinary protagonist in the intimacy of her home performing a domestic task, isolated in her world, in peace.
In opposition to the intimate, calm and silent climates Vermeer creates, Baroque is all about spectacularity, stridency and drama, movement, tension, theatricality.
Vermeer is timeless artist: his style is sober, and his works are not overloaded with ornaments. All is softness. Maybe his greatest skill is the way he captures the light bathing his figures, achieving excellent textures. He rarely uses the chiaroscuro, a technique of strong contrasts between lights and shadows typical at the time.
He was not recognized in life. And his work was forgotten until it was “rediscovered” in the middle of the 19th century. Other artists started to value him. Impressionists admired him for the optical effects he achieved with light. Renoir considered that this work was one of the most beautiful paintings in the world. Later, Van Gogh was fascinated with this small painting, mainly due to the unique combination of colors, typical in Vermeer’s paintings: lemon yellow and pale blue and pearl gray. Finally, Dalí compared it to the Sistine Chapel and painted his version in its honor called Paranoiac Critical Study of Vermeer’s Lacemaker (with Dali’s style, with rhinoceros).
In a time of huge contrasts and turbulences, Vermeer used his talent to show us that maybe the most spectacular and extraordinary lies in the ordinary moments.
Recommended links:
Dutch Golden Age (Dutch Baroque).
Characteristic Elements of Baroque Painting.
Artistic Movements I: from Classical Antiquity to Rococo.
Vermeer and the Camera Obscura.
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