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Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History
This book is not only a fascinating biography of one of the greatest painters of the seventeenth century but also a social history of the colorful extended family to which he belonged and of the town life of the period. It explores a series of distinct worlds: Delft's Small-Cattle Market, where Vermeer's paternal family settled early in the century; the milieu of shady businessmen in Amsterdam that recruited Vermeer's grandfather to counterfeit coins; the artists, military contractors, and Protestant burghers who frequented the inn of Vermeer's father in Delft's Great Market Square; and the quiet, distinguished "Papists Corner" in which Vermeer, after marrying into a high-born Catholic family, retired to practice his art, while retaining ties with wealthy Protestant patrons. The relationship of Vermeer to his principal patron is one of many original discoveries in the book.
472 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1989
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November 11, 2018In spite of all my efforts and of those who preceded me in combining through Delft's archives, less documentary evidence has survived regarding Vermeer himself than regarding his grandparents, his uncles and aunts, and especially his in-laws (p xv)
This book is a treasure hunt, yet for all the hunting around that Montias and his predecessors have done through Dutch archives, ultimately it is clear that the treasure is elsewhere, if not lost altogether . The news, good or bad depending on how you view it, is that Vermeer and his art remain elusive, except through the saving grace of playmobil, rendering it finally tangible.
I
One of the interesting things about reading this book, which journeys in slow progression round his grandparents, parents and in-laws, before reaching Vermeer, is the challenge to my own assumptions. Do I really imagine that the background and life of an artist effects their work, and if so - how? Are the bad loans of his grandmother, his counterfeiting Grandfather or the fact that his father was involved in a fight started by a pugnacious off-duty sea Captain significant in anyway to Vermeer's work?
Such things are perhaps too remote, so lets consider something more direct. Vermeer's wife was attacked by her brother, Vermeer's brother-in-law, while she was pregnant - a mirror image of an earlier attack upon Vermeer's mother-in-law by her estranged husband. Montias speculates that Vermeer's pictures of pregnant women are an artistic response to that attack, showing figures that are stately, unperturbed, and unthreatened. Perhaps. And yet I think the father of eleven children would not have been unfamiliar with the figure of his wife pregnant. Then again as a Catholic convert practising in a country unfriendly to Catholicism a pregnant woman reading a letter might be a subtle and contemporary rendition of the Annunciation. Then again, Rembrant also painted pictures of his wife pregnant without, as far as I am aware, having a violent brother-in-law. This epitomises the experience of reading this book, Montias' work in the archives held out the promise of getting closer to Vermeer, but the artist slips through the gaps between wills, debts, and sworn statements.
I want to know more, but this book is as close as we can get. I stand as before one of his pictures on a gallery. The life and the work, both open to interpretations. The life slowly revealed as elusive and unknowable than the paintings.
II
The other side of this book is the web of social history. Lets forget about Vermeer and instead notice at this time the traditional patronymic was giving way to something new to many Dutch people – the surname. These new names were used flexibly. Vermeer's father adopted the name Vermeer, or van der Meer, but he also called himself Vos (ie Fox) – his first Inn was called the Flying Fox, and whether he named himself after his hostelry or the hostelry after himself is still open to speculation.
Vermeer's ancestors seem to have been close, at least there are records of them helping each other out in times of trouble, which given their adventures in setting up lotteries, forging coins, and as jobbing builders for the army, were frequent enough. The in-laws, the Thins, were a well to-do-family who in contrast quarrelled and pointedly excluded each other from wills as far as possible.
The Thins were socially above the Vermeers, but also Catholic. While they had landed wealth, because of their faith they were excluded from much of public life. The Vermeers come across as a bunch of Micawbers, but were Protestant. Montias is careful to call Vermeer Johannes, rather than Jan, the latter he feels too folksy, mainstream, and Calvinist. In order to marry Vermeer had to convert to Catholicism. This limited the role he could play in public life - apparently heading the painter's guild in Delft which he did on a couple of occasions was as much as he could expect. He doesn't even figure as a signatory on the legal documents of the other Vermeers after his marriage.
III
Something else that Montias draws our attention to is the reuse of objects and settings in Vermeer's paintings, a fur lined jacket, a black and white tiled floor, a leaded window. These he speculates were parts of his mother-in-laws house or things belonging to the family. Perhaps an obvious point, but equally it might suggest how few clothes the family had and how little access to other places in which to paint he had, because the same elements are used over and over again. Then again it might suggest an obsessive interest: a desire to get the play of light through one window just right for instance, or to the contrary that reusing the same jacket in a half a dozen paintings was irrelevant to Vermeer - his intentions might have been focused on something else.
IV
The wealth of details in the paintings leads us to the question of the negative element in Vermeer's choice of subjects (p 199). Montias points out that he had eleven children, but children only appear in one of his paintings . There is violence, financial wheeling and dealing, upward and downward social mobility in his background but we see none of this in his work.
We might raise the same point about the negative element of choice about the author too. Professionally he was an economist yet there is very little here about patronage, the art market, the economics of Vermeer's work generally.
From what there is, we learn that Vermeer's output was subsidised by his mother-in-law. She owned the family house in which she, Vermeer, his wife, and their many children lived. She had the steady rental income from agricultural land. Vermeer's pictures, when sold, earned reasonable sums, but his reputation really developed in later centuries. And with his apparently slow output the family would never have been able to make ends meet from his painting alone. The final blow to Vermeer was the invasion of the Netherlands by Louis XIV and the breaching of the dykes by the Dutch to break up his advance – not so much it appears because this disrupted the art market but because the Thins' tenants fell into arrears .
V
There is a final element of this book which, stealing a concept from a review by Kalliope, I can imagine an entire book spiralling out of this one. And that is one focused on influences. Using a few black and white reproductions at the back of the book Montias looks for similarities between paintings and draws possible influences upon Vermeer, of subject, how the figures are grouped, technique. Unfortunately this approach as well is speculative. The date of painting is in many cases unknown so it is a guess, or a question of taste, that determines which of two paintings is considered the older. Nor from the documentary evidence can we know which artists Vermeer may have visited, who he studied with and learnt from, who he admired and emulated. This too is another maddening, frustrating, and ultimately beautiful aspect of Montias' book.
We read everything that years of research into Vermeer and his family circles has produced and still the pictures that we have have to stand on their own. Montias can give us no definitive answers, only definite questions. Finally our focus is brought back round to The Art of Painting.
This book is a treasure hunt, yet for all the hunting around that Montias and his predecessors have done through Dutch archives, ultimately it is clear that the treasure is elsewhere, if not lost altogether . The news, good or bad depending on how you view it, is that Vermeer and his art remain elusive, except through the saving grace of playmobil, rendering it finally tangible.
I
One of the interesting things about reading this book, which journeys in slow progression round his grandparents, parents and in-laws, before reaching Vermeer, is the challenge to my own assumptions. Do I really imagine that the background and life of an artist effects their work, and if so - how? Are the bad loans of his grandmother, his counterfeiting Grandfather or the fact that his father was involved in a fight started by a pugnacious off-duty sea Captain significant in anyway to Vermeer's work?
Such things are perhaps too remote, so lets consider something more direct. Vermeer's wife was attacked by her brother, Vermeer's brother-in-law, while she was pregnant - a mirror image of an earlier attack upon Vermeer's mother-in-law by her estranged husband. Montias speculates that Vermeer's pictures of pregnant women are an artistic response to that attack, showing figures that are stately, unperturbed, and unthreatened. Perhaps. And yet I think the father of eleven children would not have been unfamiliar with the figure of his wife pregnant. Then again as a Catholic convert practising in a country unfriendly to Catholicism a pregnant woman reading a letter might be a subtle and contemporary rendition of the Annunciation. Then again, Rembrant also painted pictures of his wife pregnant without, as far as I am aware, having a violent brother-in-law. This epitomises the experience of reading this book, Montias' work in the archives held out the promise of getting closer to Vermeer, but the artist slips through the gaps between wills, debts, and sworn statements.
I want to know more, but this book is as close as we can get. I stand as before one of his pictures on a gallery. The life and the work, both open to interpretations. The life slowly revealed as elusive and unknowable than the paintings.
II
The other side of this book is the web of social history. Lets forget about Vermeer and instead notice at this time the traditional patronymic was giving way to something new to many Dutch people – the surname. These new names were used flexibly. Vermeer's father adopted the name Vermeer, or van der Meer, but he also called himself Vos (ie Fox) – his first Inn was called the Flying Fox, and whether he named himself after his hostelry or the hostelry after himself is still open to speculation.
Vermeer's ancestors seem to have been close, at least there are records of them helping each other out in times of trouble, which given their adventures in setting up lotteries, forging coins, and as jobbing builders for the army, were frequent enough. The in-laws, the Thins, were a well to-do-family who in contrast quarrelled and pointedly excluded each other from wills as far as possible.
The Thins were socially above the Vermeers, but also Catholic. While they had landed wealth, because of their faith they were excluded from much of public life. The Vermeers come across as a bunch of Micawbers, but were Protestant. Montias is careful to call Vermeer Johannes, rather than Jan, the latter he feels too folksy, mainstream, and Calvinist. In order to marry Vermeer had to convert to Catholicism. This limited the role he could play in public life - apparently heading the painter's guild in Delft which he did on a couple of occasions was as much as he could expect. He doesn't even figure as a signatory on the legal documents of the other Vermeers after his marriage.
III
Something else that Montias draws our attention to is the reuse of objects and settings in Vermeer's paintings, a fur lined jacket, a black and white tiled floor, a leaded window. These he speculates were parts of his mother-in-laws house or things belonging to the family. Perhaps an obvious point, but equally it might suggest how few clothes the family had and how little access to other places in which to paint he had, because the same elements are used over and over again. Then again it might suggest an obsessive interest: a desire to get the play of light through one window just right for instance, or to the contrary that reusing the same jacket in a half a dozen paintings was irrelevant to Vermeer - his intentions might have been focused on something else.
IV
The wealth of details in the paintings leads us to the question of the negative element in Vermeer's choice of subjects (p 199). Montias points out that he had eleven children, but children only appear in one of his paintings . There is violence, financial wheeling and dealing, upward and downward social mobility in his background but we see none of this in his work.
We might raise the same point about the negative element of choice about the author too. Professionally he was an economist yet there is very little here about patronage, the art market, the economics of Vermeer's work generally.
From what there is, we learn that Vermeer's output was subsidised by his mother-in-law. She owned the family house in which she, Vermeer, his wife, and their many children lived. She had the steady rental income from agricultural land. Vermeer's pictures, when sold, earned reasonable sums, but his reputation really developed in later centuries. And with his apparently slow output the family would never have been able to make ends meet from his painting alone. The final blow to Vermeer was the invasion of the Netherlands by Louis XIV and the breaching of the dykes by the Dutch to break up his advance – not so much it appears because this disrupted the art market but because the Thins' tenants fell into arrears .
V
There is a final element of this book which, stealing a concept from a review by Kalliope, I can imagine an entire book spiralling out of this one. And that is one focused on influences. Using a few black and white reproductions at the back of the book Montias looks for similarities between paintings and draws possible influences upon Vermeer, of subject, how the figures are grouped, technique. Unfortunately this approach as well is speculative. The date of painting is in many cases unknown so it is a guess, or a question of taste, that determines which of two paintings is considered the older. Nor from the documentary evidence can we know which artists Vermeer may have visited, who he studied with and learnt from, who he admired and emulated. This too is another maddening, frustrating, and ultimately beautiful aspect of Montias' book.
We read everything that years of research into Vermeer and his family circles has produced and still the pictures that we have have to stand on their own. Montias can give us no definitive answers, only definite questions. Finally our focus is brought back round to The Art of Painting.
May 2, 2015
Over het leven van Vermeer is weinig bekend. We kunnen dus alleen maar blij zijn dat Montias alle mogelijke notariële paperassen heeft uitgeplozen. Niet alleen die waar Vermeer zelf in vermeld wordt, maar evengoed die van zijn talloze verwanten (de stambomen achteraan in het boek zijn behoorlijk ingewikkeld), en meteen ook van zijn potentiële klanten en relaties, (waaronder zijn bakker), ... Werkelijk geen enkel spoor is onbenut gebleven. Het maakt het boek bij momenten onleesbaar - en eerlijk gezegd is het resultaat wat ontgoochelend. Zo veel meer komen we niet te weten over de figuur van Vermeer. Over zijn omgeving des te meer, en wie daar in geïnteresseerd is moet dit boek maar eens lezen. Enige kennis van notariëel en juridisch vakjargon is daarbij aangewezen. De titel van het boek was misschien beter geweest : Het milieu van Vermeer voor klerken.
March 5, 2023
Heavy stuff, full of rather irrelevant details. But of course, this is THE Vermeer-Bible
Want to Read
January 14, 2010A very through and interesting book about the life of Vermeer and his family as compiled through public and personal records. I am excited to read this Christmas present :)
to-buy
May 18, 2018‘A truly remarkable work ‘ Andrew Dixon says in his Caravaggio
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews