Original subtitles

[Music]

to me

it is one of the most beautiful things

in holland

it is however in no sense dutch

the painting is dutch only because it is

the work of a dutchman

no other dutch painter could compass

such liquid clarity

such cool surfaces indeed none of the

others seemed to have tried

a different ideal was theirs apart

however from the question of technique

upon which i am not entitled to speak

the picture has to me

human interest beyond description there

is a winning charm

in this simple eastern face that no

words of mine can express

all that is hard in the dutch nature

dissolves beneath her reluctant smile

she symbolizes the fairest and sweetest

things in the 11 provinces

she makes holland sacred ground

[Music]

do

[Music]

during a two-year program of building

renovation and reconstruction

the painting girl with a pearl earring

embarked on a global tour

with other treasures from the world

famous moritz house museum

in the hague she was the tour's poster

girl

and attracted enormous crowds wherever

she went

[Music]

now she's returning home to a growing

sense of excitement

as the maritz house one of europe's

leading art galleries

reopens to the public once again

but what is it about this 17th century

picture

this mysterious dutch girl painted by

johannes vermeer

that has projected her to such iconic

status

who is this mona lisa of the north

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

so

writing in another place some years ago

i ventured to call

the marriage house picture of a girl's

head one of the most beautiful things in

holland

i retract that statement now and instead

i say quite calmly that it is the

most beautiful thing in holland and to

me it is in many ways not only the most

beautiful thing in holland but the most

satisfying

and exquisite product of brush and color

that i have anywhere seen

the painting of the lower lip is as much

a miracle to me

as a darwin tulip

[Music]

so

[Music]

we've seen the girl with pearl earring

all over the world recently

starting in the hague then going to

japan the u.s italy

and she's really captured everyone's

imagination

and the question i often got the

question what makes her so special

and these it was interesting to get

these and this question in various

different countries and you would see

that the

that she really has a kind of universal

appeal

i think this comes down to a number of

factors i wish i could give you

one straight answer but let's start with

the obvious and she's absolutely

gorgeous

she's a beautiful girl and she is

something you really want to look at

the composition's very clever you see a

brightly

colored figure against a dark background

which in a sense projects her

into our space and really invites us to

engage with her

that is of course only strengthened by

her gesture the way she looks over her

shoulders

her her mouth is slightly parted she

looks

there's a little tiny fleck of paint on

the corner of her lips that just

indicates she just

is saying something her whole attitude

is

very much inviting it invites you to

engage with her

simplicity and absolutely simple

just the head just the person

no background no reference to a place

i think it's a timelessness that

is really rooted in the relationship

between the artist and the subject

it gives you this entry a psychological

entry if you like

to the person without any sort of

veils of materialism

you feel very close physically to her

when you look at the painting

which i think is quite different from

the mona lisa where i feel extraordinary

distance

like massive amount of space emotionally

and physically between myself

and the image of the mona lisa with the

girl

with a pearl earring she seems like

somebody who

you could afford to be familiar with and

i think she's very sexy actually she's

not

um provocatively beautiful

but there's something very very

attractive about her

and i think it's entirely in the way

it's painted not in what she looks like

i think what's most alluring about the

painting is

that it's unresolved and unresolvable

i've looked at it for many many years

and i still don't know what she's

thinking i still don't know

if it's a happy painting or a sad

painting

and that seems like such a basic thing

to be able to unpack about a painting

you ought to be able to know whether

what you're looking at but

actually vermeer has somehow managed to

capture

in her a whole lot of contradictions

[Music]

to meet this girl's gaze is to be

implicated in its urgency

it is me at whom she gazes with real

unguarded human emotions and with an

intensity that demands something just as

real and human

in return one grows complicit in the

painting's own impossible desires

her eyes sharpen the underlying mood

into something

poignant and piercing and focus it on

the artist

on the viewer with a mixture of reproach

and regret the act of looking is haunted

here by suggestions of

violation and betrayal

is it our life that makes her real

is it her vibrancy of being that we lack

and long for

[Music]

the painting is marked

by this series of specular highlights

and by that i mean

very very shiny points on shiny things

and it's her eyes the one pearl earring

and her lips and they have these white

dots of paint and it's it's like they've

been anointed

with paint rather than softly focused

so they look extremely shiny but there's

a

there's a wetness about it and i i think

that one of the things that makes

paintings of people look great is if you

can make

the eyes and the lips look wet and it's

funny because everybody you know

the catch word is earring and pearl

and yet i think what he's done is said

these lips these eyes they're like

pearls

and they shine and they're wet and off

the water

and the pearl in um 17th

and 16th and 15th centuries was a symbol

of virtue and faithfulness and

with dutch painting symbolism is

extremely important and so having a

painting

um there isn't a portrait

in the conventional sense that we know

who the person is

etc um it is a painting of a virtuous

or faithful person and perhaps vermeer

may have painted it

as a symbolic painting rather than

a painting of a person so it's it's all

about

illusion and that's also very smart of

an artist like

johannes vermeer who must have been a

perfect observer

of reality because first you have to

understand reality to make an illusion

of it of course

and he somehow knew when you look at a

pearl

it's all about your reflection and

that's all you have to paint just a

reflection and then you've got a pearl

also when you look at her face she has

no eyebrows but you don't need her

and for some reason the bow of her of

her nose it's it's not there

it's all like brushed out but you don't

notice when you look at her it's just

beauty and you don't think something is

missing

and not at all but also working

i think with somehow

he understood how brain works that you

can leave things out and make it more

perfect and more

real by by leaving it

we think frequently of dutch paintings

and even

my academic colleagues will write like

you know what is vermeers or rembrandt's

message

in this picture what is he saying to the

people of his time

for the most part they're not talking to

the people of their time

it's it's not a media experience like a

broadcast it's

one picture for one individual that sat

in a private collection

for a long time and so much of what

vermeer does

is addressed to a voyeur who knows

he's a voyeur and is fascinated by what

the picture

does to him psychologically

i'm holding this thing in my hand i

can't put it down

and yet i know it's a work of art it's a

brilliant invention

by another person and isn't that

fascinating

and in our world of media bombardment

it's hard to realize how powerful

a picture like this could be in its own

day

the conundrum that revolves around the

girl with a pearl earring

is that vermeer's model has never been

identified

and there is no evidence to confirm who

she is

could she be his daughter his wife

a servant or someone from the street

a neighbor perhaps many debate this

issue

but the lack of evidence adds to her

mystery and allure

i was lying in bed one morning and

the painting was on the wall opposite

the bed and

i looked at it just sort of idling

thinking about it

and i suddenly thought i wonder what

vermeer did to her

to make her look like that and it was

the first time

i had ever thought about

the girl's expression actually being to

do

with the painter before that had been

disconnected somehow

but this time i i realized to myself

anyway

that this was not a portrait of a person

it was more like a portrait of a

relationship

and everything she felt about him was

right there in her face

so i got up and i went and got out the

exhibition catalog

from the the the show and read

about the painting and more about

vermeer and i realized i discovered that

they

have no idea who she is they don't know

who any of the models

in his paintings are they suspect that

they are his

mostly women they're probably his wife

and daughters because he had a lot of

daughters and but they don't know and

i looked at it and i thought well i want

to write about this

and since they don't know that's great

because i can make up whatever i want

i tied the blue cloth over my forehead

with the yellow piece wound round and

round

covering the crown of my head i tucked

the end into a fold at the side of my

head

adjusted folds here and there smooth the

blue cloth round my head

and stepped back into the studio

he was looking at a book and did not

notice as i slipped into my chair

i arranged myself as i had been sitting

before

as i turned my head to look over my left

shoulder

he glanced up at the same time

the end of the yellow cloth came loose

and fell over my shoulder

oh i breathed afraid that the cloth

would fall from my head

and reveal all my hair but it held

only the end of the yellow cloth dangled

free

my hair remained hidden

yes he said then

that is it greet yes

[Music]

it has often been thought that it is a

portrait either of one of his daughters

or someone who worked in his house but

it could be completely imaginary

it could very well be and this is

something we don't know

and the only thing we know is that it

never was meant to be a portrait

unfortunately we have no documentation

so you know this is all my

interpretation but it could very well be

the case

it's the illusion maybe it's the maybe

that's the main thing maybe he could do

it all by

by heart but it's the illusion of having

a real person

in front of you and it's all those very

minor details that convince you that

it's it's

real that are meant to convince you that

this person is real and that's

that's exactly the the highlights just

the small

dots of page that suggest the reflection

of light the way he does

the eyes the way he does the the lips

the mouth of of

of the girl and also the reflections on

the pearl

and that's all the information that you

get together which convinces you

as a viewer that is a real person that

you see in front of you and that's

exactly what

vimeo wanted to do to convince you of

the reality of this

beautiful girl i think my big worry

about vermeer is that

there'll be some somebody who determines

they get a letter

saying thank you mr vermeer for the

painting of my daughter signed the baker

you know

i just don't want that to happen because

i really like

her retaining her mystery and i think if

we could put a name to her

that might take away from it a little

bit history is a matter of

plausible reconstructions frequently and

just imagine how little we know about

other people's lives today

let alone people in the past if vermeer

went to amsterdam even if he went to

italy he didn't use mastercard and check

into a hotel so

there's no paper trail and you know

so much is deduced from the pictures

themselves

and that makes a painting like this all

the more

mysterious and appealing

[Music]

the fame of girl with a pearl earring is

a modern phenomenon

for 200 years no one even knew where the

painting was

in fact even its painter johannes

vermeer

was essentially forgotten too until a

french art historian called

teofile torre burger wrote several

articles about vermeer

which led to his rediscovery in the

middle of the 19th century

in 1881 a dirt encrusted painting of a

girl came up for auction in the hague

only two experts suspected the picture

was a vermeer

a.a de tom and victor desters

an influential civil servant who

campaigned for dutch art to remain in

the netherlands

the two men were neighbors in the hague

and decided to hatch a plan to acquire

the painting

victor stewart and de tom went together

to assail in the hague and they agreed

not to bid against each other

um they went as friends

they tom was a collector victor joshuas

had produced copious notes about his

collection

and also a picture of the arts and

victors just was

totally involved in what his nowadays

called heritage

deton bought it for two

guilders 30 cents

it was very dirty and the tom

had already at that point decided

i think to give his collection when he

died to the

night house which in his will

they acquired it when he died victor's

just

never stopped drawing this i think is

probably the earliest one

i would guess done at the sale because

he's written

underneath it to de tom

and then there's another sketch in which

the inscription

says de tom bought it for two

florins 30 and lent it to the maritimes

which is exactly what he did do

all three drawings that we have were

drawn in the same year that it was

bought

the third one is a much more finished

drawing in which

it's in the catalog the entry

just says belongs to mse de tom

in the hague and it says it's signed

and it is attributed to vermeer

[Music]

the girl with a pearl earring may never

have come to light if the picture had

not been recognized and restored

it sometimes seems remarkable that any

painting survives through the centuries

with exposure to changing conditions and

different owners

but many things can be learned about a

painting and the original intentions of

an artist

when highly skilled conservators use

technology to examine a picture

looking beyond what is visible to the

naked eye and analyzing the material it

is made of

well the goal with pearl earring ended

the collection at the end of the 19th

century

and it wasn't until 1960 that it was

then uh

that it was treated in in the maritals

when it was treated again in the 1990s

the natural resin varnish had really

discolored to a point that

it was no longer considered presentable

the varnish was actually quite brown and

the first thing that's

done after examination of the painting

is actually to take an x-ray to have a

clear

indication of the state of the painting

or its condition

and it became immediately clear from the

x-ray that there are a multitude of tiny

losses

over the entire painting but fortunately

they're mostly

small in in scale and scattered over the

surface

and not located in one particular area

for instance in the face

i think a lot of people have an idea

that that paint is actually

you know very stable and nothing much

can happen to it but in fact

paint is pigments bound in

in an oil binder in the case of

traditional oil paintings that's applied

on top of a ground layer on top of a

support now that support can be canvas

or it can be panel

and of course temperature and relative

humidity affect

the shrinkage and expansion of those

layers individually and over time can

cause

delaminations or tiny losses the picture

has also been framed

often in many cases several times that

can

could also have caused cracks in the

painting so we're looking at these

tiny damages and monitoring to making

sure that they're not

increasing in size that there's no

further

damage to the painting and paint in fact

is a very sort of dynamic system

well of course what we see in the x-ray

the the all the attacks that attack

that attach the canvas to the stretcher

come out very clearly

um they absorb x-rays it's very notable

that you can actually see the

fragmentary nature of the edges of the

painting

and of course this is these black areas

are where the paint is actually

missing so that's what we call paint

losses

but it's fortunate that most of those

sources are

rather small but i think as a

conservator

i think we're really tempted to make

things more beautiful than they really

are

when the picture was treated in the 90s

there were details that were uncovered

that had been covered over by a previous

restoration

so you can say that a restoration can

reveal

features of a painting that have been

previously unknown for instance the

little highlight on the lip

had been covered over by previous

retouching so there's a really important

feature of the picture because it

actually makes her lips

look more fresh and glistening

and that was a feature that was covered

over and there was an extra highlight on

the on the pearl earring

that in fact was an upturn paint flake

so

the process of restoring can actually

bring brings the picture closer to what

the artist intended

the man who painted girl with a pearl

earring was born in delft in 1632

johannes vermeer was the son of a silk

merchant who also ran

in and dealt in the sale of artworks

little is known about vermeer's youth

until he asks to marry a local catholic

girl

called katarina bolnis in 1653

her mother maria thins seems to have

opposed the marriage

until vermeer converted to catholicism

vermeer and his young wife then moved in

with maria where they set up home

katarina would eventually give birth 15

times

with 11 of those children surviving to

adulthood

remarkably johannes also found time to

be a painter

[Music]

i find vermeer intriguing as a painter

because i

apart from the

droplets of white paint that brings

shine

to the very last touches of making the

image

i can't really work out how the rest of

the picture is made

it it's extremely clever and in

modern language it doesn't reveal its

process if you look at a rembrandt

you can follow the brush strokes they

get more complicated as they get into

the face

but around the clothing you can see how

he's matching gesture to folds of cloth

or wrinkledness to the way a brush is

scrubbed around a cheek

or something but with vermeer i really

cannot work out

how he does it and so it

looks like a kind of photographic

emulsion

to me that has been almost

processed wet in a tray it hasn't been

put on a sticky stuff with a hairy brush

so there's magic it's it's just a

celebration of skill

i think he must be a very clever man

vermeer has very thin layers

that he will blend together whites over

blues or yellows and different color

relationships he's trying out

when you look under a microscope at a

pearl

you might see a pool of milky paint

maybe with a blue base behind that

and then he'll drop just a pinhead of

brilliant white lead white on top of

that

and it will look from a certain distance

like

pearls blurred as if in a slightly out

of focus

camera which is realistic enough i mean

our eye doesn't take in with sharp focus

anybody but if we're looking at someone

we'll be focused on a particular area

and

another area will be somewhat blurred

blurring

in a illusionistic picture actually

makes it look more

realistic i think but these things read

from a distance

as an optical experience that many

people say oh he must have had some

some form of camera or some other

analogy

some secret trick which describes

reality in that way

and he does in a way because he's been

experimenting with different

techniques that render daylight and the

colors

being yellow and blue and then a touch

of red

in the lips vermeer keeps doing the

primaries

over and over again red blue yellow

or slight mixtures of them in very

careful harmonic relationships

so there's all of these elements that

you could describe as

composition which make this picture

so um easy to look at and so intriguing

it's not known where vermeer learned his

craft or with whom he studied

but some scholars think he may have been

influenced by rembrandt

who lived in amsterdam and was much

older than him

we do know that he became a respected

citizen of delft

and a prominent member of the guild of

saint luke and like his father before

he valued and dealt in selling art

he was not a prolific painter and it is

thought that he took a long time to

complete a work

his known output numbers around 36

pictures

most people feel he had one particular

patron in delft

who bought about half of what he

produced

and the idea being a patron sponsoring

an artist was a kind of

upper middle class or patrician parallel

to princely patrons that preceded them

they cost some five or six hundred

gilders a piece

at a time that a skilled cabinet maker

for example

a craftsman skilled laborer would earn

that in a year

so this is serious disposable income

what would sound like something like 120

000 today although of course they're

worth so much more

now

at delft i saw the painter vermeer who

had none of his works

but we saw one at the house of a baker

who paid

600 gilders for it although it is only a

single figure which

i would have thought he had paid too

much for even at

60 gilders

[Music]

vermeer lived his whole life in delft

which was an

important center of trade his close

relationship with the city

is captured in what many believe to be

one of the greatest cityscapes ever

painted

view of delft

[Music]

the french writer marcel proust thought

it was the most beautiful painting he'd

ever seen

in his monumental novel in search of

lost time

published in 1913 he created a character

an art critic who is fatally overcome by

familiar's genius

he was in front of that vermeer which he

remembered as dazzling

more different than all that he had

known but where

thanks to the critics article he noticed

for the first time

small blue figures and he also noticed

that the

sand was pink and finally

the precious matter of that small patch

of yellow wall

his dizzy spells increased like a child

striving to grasp a yellow butterfly

his glance would attach itself to that

precious small patch of wall

it's thus he thought that i should have

written

my last books are too dry they should

have had

several layers of color should have

rendered my

phrase precious just like this small

patch of yellow wall

nevertheless the seriousness of his

dizzy spells would not leave him

he repeated to himself little patch of

yellow wall

with a dormer but now he let himself

fall

on a circular city he fell to the floor

where all the museum visitors and guards

rushed to him

he was dead

[Music]

people have commented on how the shadows

in the water

have been extended and actually in

x-rays you see they're extended

they're in one place then they're in

another place and

other adjustments are made and through

where the light is cast on a building

vermeer couldn't have recorded the

pattern of light shade

color everything else in like an hour

which he would have to given the

lighting conditions

outside much less than that this is the

product of

artistic decisions over months so

so he's really pointing the viewer in

certain directions

another fascinating thing which is

almost never mentioned is the clouds

above the view of delft and

they are deeply shaded on the underside

i actually think he probably saw a

painting by jacob van rausdale

and lifted this idea but he's looking at

other landscapers

and quite as the landscape itself

recedes over the water and back to the

city

you could get the same effect turning

the picture upside down

and feel that sense of recession in

other words the clouds create a ceiling

that seems to be going into the picture

and

enhancing the depth also but look at all

details and

especially a detail for instance with

the boats in front

i like all the different kinds of

collars he used

just to suggest it has probably just

rained so these boats are wet

you see the reflection of the light

because the sun is coming through again

this is really the mastery of the paint

and how did he do it it's

all kinds of different colors different

brush strokes

and you believe it so when you see the

painting when you would enter

the vermeer room in the mouths house you

would see this painting it's almost like

a window an extra window in the room

then you come close by then of course

you see it's a painting

and if you get even more close by you

really do see the paint you see the skin

you are almost inclined to feel it

because when you look at the brick

buildings and

for instance the two city gates uh that

were there in the 17th century vermeer

altered their place a little bit

but actually also what he did with the

the look and feel of these buildings

this is something he suggests these

buildings are there of course because we

are looking at

of course a flat canvas but the texture

is so lively there are so many details

and just these two gates

i think that's really impressive and if

you know a little bit about the history

of delft

because vermeer painted his cityscape in

the early 1660s estimated around 1661

that's only a few years after a major

disaster hit the city

the gunpowder explosion which killed a

lot of

people living in delft including kyle

fabricius who painted the goldfinch

that was actually made in 1654 so before

this

uh major explosion and nothing of that

is to be seen in this cityscape

this is about peace this is this is

about

a nice city that is really prosperous

where nothing seems to be happening

besides that the economy is thriving and

people

you know are living their uh healthy

lives and

you know they they are safe there and so

this is something that i often wonder

about he

he left out any reference to this major

disaster and

so this is sort of like more of an ideal

world

perhaps and again this is something he

does in the girl with a pill earring

which is sort of like

an ideal girl you know whether or not we

know

about her identity that's not the issue

i think this is sort of like

how it could be so of course he painted

delft as it appeared to him but

he sort of enhanced it and he you know

perhaps what he didn't like he just left

it out

and i think that's something that for me

often did actually

so perhaps that's a little bit of a

secret

[Music]

vermeer seems to have been affluent

enough to support his large family

until war broke out in 1672

and france invaded the netherlands

he had fewer clients and still only in

his forties

he sank into debt by the age of 43

he was dead

think of what has been happening in the

world during the years this sweet face

was set up on canvas

the evolutions and tragedies the lives

lived and ended the whole passionate

fretted progress of the nations

[Music]

vermeer's genius flourished during a

period that saw the netherlands rise

to one of the world's first global

empires

the dutch dominated the world's sea

routes and opened up new channels of

trade

especially with the east companies like

the powerful and influential

dutch east india company generated huge

amounts of wealth

impacting in turn on the affluence of

contemporary dutch society

it was estimated that 5 million

paintings were produced

during a 75-year period known as the

dutch golden age

it was against this background that in

1633

johann maritz of naso zigan commissioned

the building of the maurits house

in a very prominent position next to the

bienenhof in the hague

the seat of the dutch parliament the

building was designed in a classical

style

by jakob van kampen and was completed

while johan maritz was away

performing his duties as the governor of

dutch brazil

on his return he filled his house with

things he'd collected

from feathers to paintings after his

death in 1679

the house passed to the maas family

released it to the dutch government

[Music]

in 1704 a fire destroyed most of the

interior of the building

which was restored in an 18th century

style some years later

the maritz house was bought by the dutch

government in 1820

to house the royal cabinet of paintings

and curiosities

and officially became a museum in 1822

the maritz house is sometimes referred

to as the little jewel box

it is unique because it is relatively

small in scale

but houses a very high quality

collection of about 800

paintings the collection was amassed by

two princes of orange

william iv and his son william v who was

the first to allow the general public

to see the collection with links also to

prince william iii of orange

once king of england the collection

covers a period from around 1400

to about 1750 and is recognized by

experts

to have some of the best examples of

dutch and flemish art

in the world

you can go to the gallery of prince

william the fifth which is actually

quite nearby the mao's house itself and

people are always astonished when they

enter this it's just

one large room which is really filled

with paintings

from floor to ceiling and that was

actually the way

it was done in the 18th century even in

the 19th century so

it was actually made for you to impress

so instead of you know searching for a

vermeer or

rembrandt it was just sea walls filled

with paintings

and the princes of orange did that to

impress you but also to say you know we

are important people

and i think the message you know was

understood by visitors to the

gallery and even nowadays it's an annex

of them outside so there's still you

know there are a lot of paintings

worth seeing there so unlike many other

museums

were specialists specialists in

paintings and in paintings

in and around the dutch golden age so

think early netherlandish paintings

flemish paintings and especially dutch

paintings of that period

many paintings of the dutch golden age

like girl with a pearl earring

mix the exotic with the mysterious

trade with the east meant that a vast

array of sumptuous goods and foreign

travelers

arrived in the netherlands everything

from spices to textiles

decorative objects and strange animals

began to appear in northern europe

through trade

and in this painting which was a

collaboration between two artists

peter paul rubens and jan brujo or

bruegel

you see this happening now it's a it

seems strange to us today

but actually was pretty common in

antwerp for artists to work together

so what you see here is did the

landscape with all the detailed animals

you even see the fish in the river you

see

exotic animals like an absolutely huge

ostrich

and this panel he would have done most

of it and then brought it to rubens

for rubens to fill in the figures of

adam and eve

the serpent and the animals right behind

there

and then it went back to bruegel to

finish off so what you see here is

a collaboration between u2 artists in an

absolutely wonderful work it's in

perfect condition

as if it were painted yesterday

[Music]

the maritz house collection is not

considered encyclopedic

but it serves as an important window

onto a period of dramatic

change in the netherlands with the rise

of the protestant faith over catholicism

and a burgeoning economy artists started

to specialize in particular genres and

went in search of new patrons

amongst the affluent middle classes this

caused a fundamental shift

in a flourishing art market

[Music]

if there was one painting that announces

the change in art

during the dutch golden age then it is

this masterpiece

by hendrik avercamp the decline in

catholic and state patronage

gave rise to private commissions from a

growing number of wealthy dutch citizens

from the middle classes also known as

burgers

who had a desire to fill their homes

with fine art

albert comp was a painter who

specialized in winter scenes

and was deaf the scene and cast of

characters displayed in the painting

marked a shift in subject matter from

history and mythological subjects

to the observation of everyday life

here you have a painting of a town

probably fictional

that shows all kinds of people outside

ice skating

you can see the entire range of the

dutch population

from the nobleman with his yellow

doublet in the foreground

to the fishermen in the background and

even a woman who has fallen over

revealing that she doesn't have anything

on under her skirt

[Music]

this kind of anecdotal detail this

observation of life

is something that the dutch really

excelled in

[Music]

you also see a transition from

largely religious paintings that would

have been done in earlier periods so

think for example about our painting by

roger van wyden

the lamentation of christ these sorts of

paintings would have been done for

devotional purposes for churches or

private devotion

in the 17th century in the northern

netherlands people

are using paintings in a very different

way they're not necessarily commissions

for religious purposes but they're often

more decorative so for example someone

might have wanted

a beautiful italianate landscape on

their wall which was

as it were a kind of vacation you know

from the dreary dutch climate

is a very different idea from something

that was done for religious purpose to

something that had maybe a different

function

i think that's the miracle of the 17th

century in the netherlands there was

just

an influx of people coming to the dutch

republic

from present-day belgium and because of

the political situation there so many

people fled to the northern netherlands

and these were talented artists we

already have talented artists

in the country so it was sort of a boom

in painting

and of course you can make paintings but

they have to be clients customers for

that

the churches for instance were

whitewashed there were no commissions

anymore for altarpieces

so artists had to look for different

commissions

and they thought well what do we need to

make in order to

to make a living and so they started

making

a lot of landscapes or still lives and

of course

many portraits of very proud dutch

burgers who wanted themselves

to be portrayed and this is something

that is quite unique

that you see well they're almost painted

as being

a king or queen themselves so this is

really very remarkable

and very typical also for the situation

in the dutch republic that's unique i

think

in europe of the time

and as for the art of painting and the

affection of the people to pictures

i think none other country goes beyond

them all

in general striving to adorn their

houses especially the outer or street

room with costly pieces

butchers and bakers are not much

inferior in their shops

yay many times blacksmiths cobblers and

so on will have some picture or other by

their forge and in their stall

such is the general notion inclination

and delight

that this country's natives have to

painting

[Music]

even the baker could buy paintings and i

think that's the secret of the golden

age is that

there was a lot of talent but also there

was a lot of demands so

many paintings were made and usually

when things

are made in large amounts the quality

tends to be lesser

but that is not the case with 17th

century dutch painting

the netherlands really became known for

this and there are a few accounts of

visitors who came to holland who and

they remarked you know how many people

actually had

works of art in their own houses so you

know

clearly people were using this art

and the demand kept going roughly until

the

third quarter of the 17th century

[Music]

the bull by paulus potter is world

famous and the largest painting in the

maurits house collection

its impressive scale is matched by

potter's virtuoso technique

and composition from the flies buzzing

around the bull's back

to the frog in the foreground every part

of the painting

is carefully rendered in a naturalistic

way

with great attention to detail but not

all is as it seems

here in the 17th century protestant

country there were more focused on what

they saw

around them and on on things that

surrounded them and i think one of the

main characteristics of that 70th

century painting is that

everything every detail from everyday

life

was worthwhile to paint and for instance

in the bull by powder spotter you see

a cow dung in in the corner and

painted with such detail and with such

love

for for it you could say is that

everything

which a painter saw he could include in

his

in his work and it's at first it looks

like it's imitating reality but it's not

photographic reality and what painters

do is they try to

improve what they see and that's just

what parlov spotter did

he made a lot of studies of bulls in the

fields

he took them to his studio and he

combined these

studies to the bull we now see in the

painting which is not an existing animal

because it consists of parts of

different animals

for instance the teeth are of an animal

of two years old

the horns are of an even older animal

and the total outlook of the bull is of

a very young

animal so potter made his own invention

out of the details which he saw so it's

very detailed it's

based on everyday life but the artist

has to make something more out of it

not just imitating it but improving it

they were so well trained in artists

studios that

the quality was extremely high so that

must have been part of the attraction

that it was so well done

flower paintings where they

really try to to show all the different

flowers the smallest insects the

smallest butterfly

flowers from sometimes from all seasons

so it's not really that realistic

because they couldn't have been together

in one bouquet

but others do become more realistic

and show only flowers of one season but

there's so much to be seen and

everything is so

nicely depicted with their beautiful

colors and

the painting technique is so high level

that the combination of what you see and

how well it is done how well it is

painted

today is the attraction but i think must

have been at that time as well

[Music]

it was a feature of dutch and flemish

art of the time

to produce paintings that were immersive

and told a story

vermeer was considered a master of

composing simple scenes

full of intrigue and mystery his serene

compositions

always seem to suggest a more complex

narrative

who are the central characters in his

paintings we really don't know

which seems to be vermeer's intention

but he was not alone in conjuring up

illusion

[Music]

the girl with the pearl earring is

something that specialists now call a

trony because that's what it's

frequently

described as in inventories this is

t-r-o-n-i-e

and it is a now defunct dutch word i'm

told it's still used occasionally in

police stations for mug shots and so on

uh goes back to a now defunct french

word throne

and this refers to simply a head

or expression maybe suggesting a certain

emotion um but it it

implies individuality but at the same

time

anonymity and tronies are frequent based on real

people

and in the popular imagination that's a

portrait

and this picture has frequently been

described as a kind of portrait

remembrance was really important i think

without rembrandt for vermeer probably

would not have painted

his own tonys because rembrandt sort of

popularized this theme of tony's

so he painted soldiers and young girls

or old women

as types so these were not never meant

to be recognized as portraits

and also if you would make a portrait of

someone someone had to pay you for that

so

he used models from the street he would

dress them up

or if he didn't have malls he would

dress himself up

and then copy what he saw in the mirror

and this dressing up is something that

well at least painters of the time they

like to do that

clothing actually tells you a lot

about what you're seeing and sometimes

because we don't live

in in the time that these works were

painted we don't necessarily get all the

hints

but what you see in a portrait for

example one by van dijk is someone

dressed at the very height of fashion

and it sort of tells you something about

the social standing the wealth uh the

taste of a sitter

he takes these people wealthy

merchants and elevates them gives them a

kind of elegance and

aristocratic ease that he that he really

became known for

so for example if you look at anna wake

she's dressed in the absolute height of

fashion

these sort of bulbous sleeves that she

has on everything in black

very costly feather fan these were the

trappings of the most

fashionable antwerp burgers

the girl with the pearl earring to give

you a very different sort of example

would have told the 17th century viewer

immediately this isn't a portrait

this is a figure an exotic figure a

figure from history

or from mythology and the reason is that

she's wearing

a turban something that a 17th century

woman never would have worn

so to a viewer at the time it would have

been a very clear signal that what

you're seeing here is not meant to be a

portrait of an actual figure

but of a fictional person

i mean this is an age when people are

collecting cabinets of curiosities

and exotica from around the world and

the dutch are sailing

to new york south america

china eventually japan south africa etc

so there's a lot of encounter with other

people

the girl with the pearl earring is

wearing a silk scarf on her head

and and a colossal pearl which

probably couldn't have been a pearl at

all but a

glass imitation such things were made in

venice at the time and the turbans

vaguely

suggests orientalism or the middle east

and i think if the girl with the pearl

earring were

described in an inventory at the time

even though she does look like a dutch

face and the jacket

itself is ordinary clothing

she would probably be described

something like troney alla turk

head in a turkish fashion

tronies were generally produced for the

open market

which allowed artists to be more

creative with their subject matter

and experimental with their technique

the harlem painter franz hulls

was a master of the looser style of

painting which he often used when

painting tronies

we have this absolutely amazing round

panel with a laughing boy who is one of

the

darlings of our public

it's a beautiful painting of a small boy

who is

laughing is really very gay and very

happy and you see

some yellowish teeth which are not

the best and it's very done very freely

very brushy

paint work it's painted very freely

that's a cerony it's not a portrait the

identity of the sitter is not of any

importance

but if you compare it with the portraits

of mr olikan and his wife

they're painted much more

less broad and and and much more sober

and more restricted both ways of

painting

the rough manner and the smooth runner

were appreciated but i think

when people want their own portraits

they want to be to look a bit dignified

and that's different from a boy out of

the people out of the crowds

who is is depicted as an image of

youthfulness and of youth

the popularity of tronies and images of

everyday characters

is partly due to the rising interest in

realistic representation

in dutch art the portrait became a

powerful medium

for rich burgers to express who they

were and their position in society

unlike girl with a pearl earring it was

important that the image portrayed

was known and recognized as the person

who commissioned it

great works by artists like hans holbein

and memling

mark the beginning of a change in the

way portraiture was considered

appreciated and commissioned during this

period

[Music]

the miracle of the dutch golden age is

still that these paintings were made for

dutch burgers they were not made for

churches

and they were not directly

connected to religion and that is i

think really important

if you would look at one of the

paintings in our collection which is an

exquisite painting by hans memling

it's supported of a man from the

lesbianette family

it's made at the end of the 15th century

and you if you see it you think well

this is a really nice separate portrait

but you see that he has his hands folded

and

so he was originally praying to the

virgin mary one sees

a really nice portrait of a man in front

of a flemish landscape

it's something that was made for him it

was not meant to be

representative in any way it was not put

on display

in his house it was something that he

perhaps traveled with but something that

was really personal and

when you would then look at the flemish

portraits by van dijk that are in the

mousehouse collection

or other portraits by dutch artists

that were made also in the 17th century

then you see

that they are meant to be representative

so they were

put in the hole or in the living room or

in the dining room

where people would sort of show off even

their riches

it became more common to have your

portrait painted and that was something

that was really

exquisite because people got married got

engaged had portraits made

they got their children they were

portrayed so in the end when you had a

large family

you would have a house filled with

portraits and other paintings

uh this is completely different from how

it started in the 15th century

and i think also that this is sort of

like a carte visit

it's sort of like when you would make

when you would have your portrait made

in the 17th century

it was also like this is who i am or

this is who i want to be

and that's something that is completely

new so it's self-representation

and the artist will do that for you

[Music]

artists of the 17th century excelled in

telling a story

through the skillful rendering of a

moment in time

most would agree that the master of this

was rembrandt

an artist who had a great influence on

painters of the day

and we think also on vermeer

[Music]

rembrandt von rein is considered one of

the preeminent stars of the dutch golden

age

and the anatomy lesson of dr nicholas

tulp was an early masterpiece

it brilliantly displays his great

ability to tell a story

through clever composition and the

rendering of light

a feature that would mark his career

rembrandt wanted to be a history painter

and tell stories in his work and he was

only 25

when he received the commission from the

guild of surgeons to paint the leading

surgeon of the day

dr telp it was a great honor for such a

young artist

but he did something different with his

commission

and what he did there is very

interesting because it's supported a

group

portrait but it's very different from

the other group

portraits which were made for the guild

of surgeons which

was the the commissioner of this

painting what rembrandt did is make a

story out of it

so he shows something happening he shows

the anatomical lesson himself

not really the way it was done in those

days it's it's imagination it's a bit

different

it shows the uh dr tope he is the

instructor the other doctors are around

it

and they're all reacting to what is

happening in their own way they show

emotion

since there were so many men to include

in this picture

i decided to start with a pyramidal

shape

as i have done with my new composition

of christ's descent from the cross

the one i'm working on for the stat

holder

there is a beautiful cohesion that comes

from a pyramidal structure

if you've got the geometry right every

point in the painting

seems to relate to every other point

as the viewer your eye is encouraged to

move back and forth between the elements

before settling directly into a single

focus

you see different characters and give

each of them your visual attention for

as long as they interest you

and then your eye moves along to the

next character

knowing that each one plays a role in

the unfolding drama

i think that many people throughout the

years have tried to give voice to

rembrandt and they've done it in

many various ways it's impossible to

really know what rembrandt

spoke like or sounded like he only wrote

a handful of um

written notes and all of them said

something like here's the painting that

i've promised you and you owe me the x

amount of gilders for it

so uh we can't hear him we can

imagine what we hear based on looking at

his works of art which of course are

also

a form of documentation of his life i

thought that rembrandt must have been an

incredibly erudite

man because uh of all the references

that he brings to his works and

and all the things that he knew about

italian painting and

and and everything about art history

really without having ever left holland

he had a good collection of books as

well which wasn't necessarily common for

artisan painters of the day

novelists and filmmakers have often been

inspired by paintings from the dutch

golden age

because of their ability to capture a

moment in time

and fill it with intriguing narratives

paintings like the anatomy lesson and

girl with a pearl earring

construct a scene that invites the

viewer in to complete the story

this is a feature of dutch art from this

period and

something that seems to have universal

appeal

um well i'm a journalist and a fiction

writer

so for me i love to play with the

with the boundaries of fact and fiction

and i did a great deal of research for

this novel working with

rembrandt scholars and also medical

historians and

historians of the 17th century so it was

very important to me to

to get all the facts right in the sense

that there's an

underlying basis of historical reality

the thing about paintings is that they

stop a moment

in time and they allow you to

focus on it and concentrate on it and

um for writer uh

writing requires a focus

and it takes it takes a long time to

write a novel

and you have to be quite patient and

slow

this is my research notebook from girl

with the pearl earring

it's so tiny and there's not even that

much in it i don't know what i

how i managed it it was like a dream

this book

i uh it's mostly got notes in it but

there's a little bit

the beginning that i wrote and uh

as is often the case with novels you

start in the wrong place and then you

have to cut it out so i

i actually had an alternative first few

paragraphs and then i realized

i got rid of that i got it out of my

system and then i started

[Music]

my mother did not tell me they were

coming afterwards she said she did not

want to make me nervous

i was surprised for i thought she knew

me well if i'm nervous

i do not appear so to strangers only my

mother would see the tightness along my

jaw

the slight narrowing of my eyes i was in

the kitchen

chopping vegetables for the soup when i

heard voices on the front stoop

a woman's bright like polished brass and

a man's

low and dark like the wood of the table

i was working on

that's vermeer you can see

gorgeous reproductions all over the

place now but there's something about

being in the room with her

and knowing that vermeer touched that

canvas it brings you closer to him

and i think that the the internet can

have you know the computer can have this

effect of distancing you or or the

painting being on a t-shirt

it kind of distances you from it but

when you're when you're

actually in the room it's like

everything stops and the world stops and

you're with that

real thing it's really you and it's

really the painting

and uh there it's it's a feeling that is

strong and you just feel really alive

and i think that that

blows everything else out of the water

[Music]

in this room we have a beautiful

collection of john stein paintings and

what's interesting that we both have the

largest painting by johnstone

as the old thing so pipe the young and

also the smallest painting the oyster

eater

when you look at paintings from the 17th

century the important thing is

you have to realize they were painted to

entertain

for enjoyment to look at them and see

how beautiful they are

or how funny the scene is which was

depicted but often they also contain a

message

they have a deeper meaning we have

industrial expression the household of

john stein where everything goes wrong

and

and the children run around and don't

listen to the parents and

the parents are smoking and drinking

giving the bad example

to the young ones and all of that you

see in this painting

and we see the the older generation for

instance

john stein himself it's a self-portrait

he often

included himself to you know as a funny

footnote to to his scenes making a young

boy

smoke and they're drinking and the

middle is there's the child

that's it's his baptism

and the man on the left the older man is

wearing a cap

a hat that the young father would

actually

wear on the party where a young child is

baptized but he's much too old to be

the father so that's also the world

upside down that you see there

genre paintings are paintings which show

scenes from everyday life or

inspired by everyday life and different

from history paintings which are based

on written stories

these paintings are taken from from

everyday reality but they do not imitate

everyday reality

what painters did is is add something to

it put a message in it

for people to understand uh when they

when they look at the painting

with genre painting one of the confusing

things for a lot of people when they

look at such a painting is that they

think

it's a social document that it's exactly

the way things were in the 17th century

and that's true for parts of it

there were tables like the one you see

at

seongsing so pipe the young there were

cans as you see in this painting people

were eating fruit like that

but but not exactly because it's all

representing uh something else and it's

uh it's idolized uh there's something

extra

uh the fruit as it is on the table is

like a still life so it's not like the

way people would normally

eat it it's it's it's improved it's make

made better

with the same painting sometimes he's

referred to

as like a director of a movie uh with

or of a play even with people over

acting

with strange faces grimaces

strange laughing and also wearing

clothing that just don't make any sense

sometimes i'm pretty sure that

you know all the paintings that you can

see in the mouse house

uh at least those from the dutch golden

age

do tell you a lot about dutch society

they liked pretty girls like the girl

over pillow earring

they had a good sense of humor there was

one painted by franz famires

which used to be called an in scene but

if you

have a really good look you see that

the man and woman in the painting they

are sort of like

interested in one another and there's a

bed in the back

of the painting and there are also if

you haven't got the point yet

two dogs that are really interested in

one another so we have renamed that

painting

actually a brothel scene because

actually the woman in front of the

painting is working in the house

and the man is one of her customers and

this is something people laughed about

they like that that is also daily life

so

it's like when you walk through the

mouse house you see the beautiful

countryside you see the dutch kettle

which is still very important in our

country

you see the nice houses they had the

nice costumes

they had all the portraits of course

they had made

but also this is another side of their

life they enjoyed one another

on both sides of the girl with the pearl

earring are paintings by a different

artist

gerard terbourg and those are both

genre paintings with a subject matter

that's really linked to the work by

vermeer

because vermeer is most well known

of these kind of paintings of interiors

with ladies

working sitting writing a letter

very intimate pictures of

people in their in their houses

so that's an important reason why these

paintings are

next to the girl what we see is that

both paintings girl with the pearl

earring

and the the girl writing they they post

some kind of riddle

to the viewer you do not know exactly

what's going on the girl with the pearl

earring we do not know who it is

she has not everyday clothes she wears a

turban

she has a very large pro earring and at

that time everyone could see that it

wasn't

real pearl earring pearls weren't that

big

in the 17th century so it's a fantasy

figure

and it's a figure which you can think a

story

she can could be an express in a story

it's the same with the painting by tabor

we see a lady writing the writing of

letters was a famous pastime in the 17th

century

and often letters of love were written

and there is a bed

behind the girl we could think that

she's waiting for her lover or even

writing to a lover

we can also see that the paper of the on

which

she's writing has been folded so is it a

letter she's writing again

or is it a letter she's correcting we do

not know for sure

and think that was the intention of the

artist that

the viewer can make up his own story

with what he sees in the painting

[Music]

the wonder of vermeer the reason that he

looks so much like

reality uh is i think

two-sided and kind of contradictory one

is his absolute absorption in visual

experience

and i think he saw a great number of

pictures his father was an art dealer

he probably traveled more than we knew i

would think he'd gone to

amsterdam and visited rembrandt or had

seen

rembrandt's and other collections and he

certainly knew personally

carol fabrizius who was perhaps

rembrandt's most brilliant pupil

who moved to delph and delft in the late

1640s

i think at least two tronies by

fabrizious are

listed in vermeer's own inventory

and we don't know if he

saw the goldfinch probably

[Music]

it was a small picture the smallest in

the exhibition

and the simplest a yellow finch against

a plain pale ground

chained to a perch by its twig of an

ankle

he was rembrandt's pupil vermeer's

teacher

my mother said and this one little

painting is really the missing link

between the two of them the clear pure

daylight you can see where vermeer got

his quality of light from

i stepped back to get a better look it

was a direct

and matter-of-fact little creature with

nothing sentimental about it

and something about the neat compact way

it tucked down inside itself

its brightness its alert watchful

expression

made me think of pictures i'd seen of my

mother when she was small

a dark capped finch with steady eyes

it's a very interesting comparison to

the girl with the pearl earring because

here's this bird

who is suddenly turning to the viewer

seen in profile but the head is turned

and

a close view set against a plain

background in that case it's a brilliant

daylight plaster wall unlike the dark

background in the

in the vermeer but there's a contrast of

light and shadow which has been used to

enhance the sense of

an object in a shallow space it's

frequently shallow when it's figural

whether it's a bird or

a person there's also in the

the goldfinch these broad strokes that

blend together as

feathers and volume and so on at a

distance

but create a sense of motion and light

and atmosphere playing over the form and

vermeer's looking at those

technical qualities and thinking what

can he do

within his own style to also suggest a

sense of motion

and immediacy and the the real

the dynamic qualities of optical

experience which are

atmosphere and focus and the behavior of

light itself

the goldfinch is fast becoming an iconic

painting in the maritz house collection

and like girl with a pearl earring is

inspiring not only works of fiction

but also great devotion amongst an eager

public

but what effect does this fame have on

iconic masterpieces like these

does it change the way we understand and

appreciate them

does it perhaps diminish them in any way

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it's very interesting when images become

very well known

i i would say it images become well

known not paintings become well known

because

most people never see the real thing

they just see

the mechanical reproduction of that

image

on various surfaces you know which might

range from the cover of a

paperback book to a t-shirt to a print

on a wall

to an image on a mug i don't think it

actually diminishes

the painting in any way but

it does give a lot of people the

illusion that they have seen the picture

and they know the painting because they

are

physical things that are made out of

stuff they're

they're not made out of printing ink and

they're not made through you know

through a camera

they are made with brushes with glues

with pigments

and like sculpture they have a physical

presence that is

at least half of their visual quality

and what it means is something about

that look that

person i mean you know you might say one

why are some starlets in modern times so

haunting to a generation

and other equally pretty people not and

it's something magical in their

physiognomy

the way they hold themselves and also

the way

they're lit by professionals and

treated on camera so vermeer

intended this picture to be haunting

visually and psychologically and we've

taken his bait and you know that's part

of

being a great artist

did you ever see such ease as there is

in this painting

such concealment of effort

it was no small thing as that day for a

dutchman to lay his colors like this

so openly and lucidly it is as though

the paint

evoked life rather than counterfeited it

as though the child had been waiting

there behind the canvas

to emerge at the touch of the brush

no wonder so many now flock

to worship her

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