The Devotion of Johannes Vermeer

  Do you remember the film Girl with a Pearl Earring with young Scarlett Johansen as a quiet but alluring servant girl in the household of the 17th century painter Johannes Vermeer, played by Colin Firth? There was a lot of repressed passion as the servant becomes the model for what is perhaps the artist's most famous painting -- not a lot of his work survives. This speculative storyline makes for an okay movie but not a great one. 

A new book titled Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found by British art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon  paints a very different picture (please forgive me) of this painting and the life of Vermeer. Graham-Dixon draws on the extensive research of American economist John Michael Montias, who in the 1980s introduced economics into the study of Golden Age Dutch painting,

The premise is that Vermeer was a devout Christian and that most of his paintings can be traced to the patronage of one family who belonged to a small Christian sect. 

Kate Taylor interviewed Graham Dixon for the Globe and Mail a few weeks ago and here are a few paragraphs from her article (my apologies for the cut and paste):

 “Once you realize that all the paintings were painted for one house, owned by these profoundly idealistic, highly meditative Christian people, the pictures just make so much sense in that context,” Graham-Dixon said in an interview during a recent visit to Toronto. “In 20 years, everyone will be thinking that this is essentially the truth about Vermeer.” 

The first crucial piece of information was that the family owned two-thirds of Vermeer’s output and, at Pieter and Maria’s death, that art was inherited by their daughter, Magdalena. She died prematurely aged 26 – perhaps in childbirth – and her husband inherited the art. In turn, it was passed to his father, who finally auctioned it, scattering it to the winds about 20 years after Vermeer’s death in 1675 at age 43. 

Graham-Dixon speculates that Vermeer's The Music Lesson shows a religious gathering.

The Remonstrants were a pacifist group who objected to the Calvinist notion of predestination, believed in good works and freedom of worship, and argued that Catholics and Protestants, who had just fought the bloody 30 Years’ War from 1618-1648, should unite in their shared Christian faith.

“All the terrible atrocities and deaths and murders of the past 80 years, that’s now over, and these people believe that their message of tolerance will land on fertile ground. They actually believe that they are on the brink of world peace.” 

Dutch women were relatively independent in this period, compared to other European women, and the Remonstrant women delved further into their beliefs, founding a splinter movement known as the Collegians. They concluded that anyone could have a direct relationship with God and so dispensed with ministers in favour of meetings to discuss scripture and moral behaviour, similar to the Quaker movement in Britain. 

The further speculation is that the subject of the painting was young Magdalena. 

I enjoy a good romance but I find this line of thought quite meaningful. There is a luminous quality to Vermeer's work unlike virtually any other artist. Was it his attempt to capture the glow of fervour in this family and their fellow believers? Open this photo in gallery:

                                                                       The Milkmaid -- Vermeer