Twenty-eight Paintings by Johannes Vermeer are on display at the Rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is illuminated by twenty-eight paintings by Johannes Vermeer.

The paintings View of Delft and The Little Street, two outdoor oil paintings by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), welcome visitors to the largest retrospective ever held by the National Museum of Art and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. history The canvases are a gateway to a private universe full of symbols of an artist recognized in his time, then almost forgotten, rescued for fame in the 19th century by the French art critic Théophile Thoreau-Burger. The room brings together 28 paintings donated through June 4 by 14 museums and collections from seven countries. Woven fabrics. According to experts, with a total of 45 works and 37 attributed, Vermeer invites the viewer to see with his own eyes.

Under the name Vermeer alone, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Dutch gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague followed an exhibition organized between 1995 and 1996 exclusively dedicated to the painter. It’s a real balancing act between blockbuster—opening February 10 and already 200,000 tickets sold in advance—and artistic experience. For now, the Rijksmuseum has decided to extend its opening hours from Thursday to Saturday until 10:00 pm and hopes to manage the flow of visitors. “Even Vermeer couldn’t see his oil paintings together in his lifetime. Bringing them together is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. From now or forever,” says Dutch museum director Taco Dibbits, who happily walks through the rooms of the institution’s Philips Wing, where he exhibits the work.

Since artist-owned museums usually don’t give them away, the Frick Collection in New York, which is renovating its facilities, considers it a milestone to send three from its catalog: Lady with Maid and Letter, The Music Lesson Interrupted, and Soldier and Girl Laughing. His experts and those from the Rijksmuseum worked together to display this trio of aces, after which they added the four portraits the painter kept in the Dutch room.

They are equally famous: Milkmaid, The Little Street, The Love Letter and Woman Blue in Letter Reading. Then came three titles in the possession of the Mauritshuis Gallery: Delft and a Scene of Diana and Her Companions and the artist’s most famous Girl with a Pearl Earring. The latter returns to The Hague in April. They are already 10 canvases high and have sparked the enthusiasm of other museums and private collections in Europe, the United States and Japan, which have donated the rest of the paintings.

Vermeer is also known as Mystery, Enigma and the Sphinx of his hometown Delft. Peter Roelofs, head of the painting and sculpture department at the exhibition, said, “Although he did not leave behind self-portraits, we are now closer to him than ever. In the absence of the artist’s face, the smiling figure looking out at the viewer in La Alcahueta can be considered a kind of self-portrait. The canvas Gemaldegalerie Alte in Dresden (Germany) A ruddy-cheeked young woman has a drink in her hand, coming from Meister and receiving a few coins for her services. “We don’t have her face, but in a way, Weirmer’s face is in every one of her paintings. In the use of color and light. On his knowledge of perspective and optics. In spaces that open and close, because he plays with the limits of ours and his“, Roloffs continues.

Distributed chronologically, the works occupy a dozen rooms and trace the passage of religious scenes executed between 1654 and 1655, such as Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, National Gallery of Scotland and Santa Praxedes, National Arrival. Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, as well as the domain of the female figure. A woman goes about her business dressed in yellow or blue; With collected hair, cap or cap. Virginal (a kind of key or spinet) and busy with her letter before the window. Some see a painter like Lady in Yellow Writing from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Others do not take their attention away from his work, such as The Milkmaid, and research into the painting process has shown the changes he made as he developed.

“In Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, he first applied a layer of lapis lazuli to the jacket, then a first pass of light blue to the wall. Next, a second layer of blue on the cloth, and another, gray and last, on the wall. She left an open line around the dress to graduate the transition from one to the other, something others did not do in the 17th century. In addition, lapis lazuli appears in all the upper layers, from the protagonist’s face to the map and the shadows, so there is chromatic harmony,” says Ige Verslype, conservator and restorer of paintings at the Rijksmuseum. In The Milkmaid, the blue color is intense and stands out on the apron of the maid making the bread cake and on the table. . “The mood of the woman on the menu is calm, this single and working maid attracts attention with her powerful ultramarine color,” she adds. Studies conducted with the most sophisticated means have also been applied to La Calecita. According to him, the front on the right is seen. Children playing in front were added later, and the red shutter that now stands puts it at the end. A window is ajar, closed. He tells a story and ends it only when he is satisfied,” says Ra, who participated in the technical analysis of the paintings. says Anna Krekeler, curator at the Jijksmuseum.

With fewer than fifty produced, an average of two pieces per year, the aura of mystery surrounding Vermeer stems in part from the paucity of personal papers. There are no handwritten letters as in the case of Van Gogh, a prolific writer. Rembrandt, for his part, is very famous and has a list of 340 works attributed to him. Johannes Vermeer was exposed to art as a child, as his father ran an inn in Delft and was a picture dealer. He learned the trade from him with a teacher, otherwise he would not have become a member of the Guild of St. Luke in Delft. From a Protestant family, he married a young Catholic, Catalina Bolnes, and they had 15 children. His mother-in-law, Maria Thins, was wealthy and initially opposed the couple. As Gregor Weber, chief curator of fine arts at the Rijksmuseum, discovered, the Jesuits showed the artist the use of the camera obscura, an optical device that preceded photography. He believes that it inspired him, but he did not use it in his works, the outline of the dress shines and the bronze lights shine.

With the support of a Delft collector who bought him twenty paintings, the Franco-Dutch War cut short the artist’s life in 1672. Unable to sell paintings and support his family, he fell ill and breathed his last two days later. According to the funeral register of the Ode Kerk (Old Church) in Delft, at least fourteen bearers carried his bier and the bell rang once in his honor. It was an honorable end paid for by his mother-in-law. Later, the painter’s debts forced his wife Catalina into bankruptcy. He is almost forgotten, but his name is today associated with a stellar trio that forms with his compatriots Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Johannes Vermeer, who painted the first floor of his house, maintains intact the alluring power of the northern light entering through the window.