Original subtitles

Welcome to the National Gallery in London and to a fascinating exhibition, Vermeer and Music,

the Art of Love and Leisure, part of our ongoing event cinema series, Exhibition on Screen.

The National Gallery has chosen to explore the serene genius of Johannes Vermeer by focusing

on the musical references in his art in order to understand his broader place in the extraordinary

period of art history known as the Dutch Golden Age.

This may not be a particularly large exhibition, but as we'll discover, Vermeer paintings are rare

and so any exhibition of his work is a momentous occasion.

In this film, we'll examine the exhibition in depth, as well as explore the life and work

of this most mysterious artist, who left more questions than answers, but also some of the

most exquisite paintings in the whole history of art.

For Vermeer and his artistic contemporaries, music was a favourite subject, a means of conveying

allegory or innuendo, social status or romantic encounter.

The depiction of music in art carried a diverse range of meaning.

But artists also sought to communicate something of the power and beauty of music itself, to

capture the essence of one art form by means of another.

Gathered in a series of elegantly designed rooms, the exhibition draws on the best examples

from the National Gallery's impressive collection of Dutch painting to explore this coming together

of art and music in all its different manifestations.

Alongside the paintings are instruments from the period, some of the finest examples of their

kind, which offer a fascinating, tangible link to the past worlds depicted in the scenes

on show.

At the heart of the exhibition are five captivating, musically-themed paintings by the master of

the Dutch interior, Johannes Vermeer, works that have never hung together before.

There's the enigmatic work, The Music Lesson, from the Royal Collection, a rarely seen painting

from a private collection called Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, and then two great works

from the National Gallery itself, also depicting women playing virginals, and finally The Guitar

Player, a work that almost never leaves its home in Kenwood House in London.

Of the 36 surviving paintings attributed to Vermeer, a total of 12 feature musical instruments or

musical themes.

And so the paintings assembled here at the National Gallery offer a rare opportunity to explore

perhaps the most significant theme in Vermeer's art.

In this film we'll explore the exhibition with a number of special guests, including Tracy

Chevalier, the author of the hugely successful novel Girl with a Pearl Earring.

And we'll be hearing some of the music of the period too.

We'll also be exploring Vermeer's life and work through a series of biographical films,

with contributions from some of the foremost Vermeer experts.

Now I'm joined by the exhibition's curator, Betsy Wiesman, here at the very heart of the exhibition,

in the room where the five Vermeer paintings are.

Betsy, what was the actual starting point for this exhibition?

The actual starting point was the opportunity to have Vermeer's painting of the guitar player

on loan from Kenwood House while they're closed for renovations to the building.

It's a painting from the last part of Vermeer's career, probably dating about 1670-72.

And in terms of the size, the scale, the subject matter, it fits perfectly with the gallery's

two paintings by Vermeer, both of which depict women playing virginal.

So we had three paintings from about the same period in his career, all with musical subjects.

And I thought it would be such a fantastic opportunity to show those together and to explore a little

more about music in Vermeer's paintings.

Why is music such a broadly popular subject in Dutch painting in the 17th century, and why

was Vermeer drawn to it?

Well, I think many artists were drawn to musical subjects because music really pervaded life

in the Netherlands in the 17th century.

I always have the sense that, you know, you could walk out of your house at any moment

and somewhere, somehow, hear some music.

And of course, I think for so many people, it had such positive, enjoyable connotations

that artists wanted to record that in paintings.

And also, people wanted to enjoy paintings of musical subjects.

It's interesting because Vermeer is perceived as such a harmonious painter, but is there any

sense in this exhibition in the way he, I was going to use the word, confronts music, that

there is a confrontation between art forms?

Or is it a fairly symbiotic relationship, broadly speaking, between music and painting?

I think it's very symbiotic.

And I think with his late paintings especially, there's an almost synesthetic approach to

them that you either hear the music or you hear, just as importantly, the silence in between

musical sounds.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, space is to a painter and certainly to a sculptor what silence is to a musician.

Absolutely.

And we see that in Vermeer's paintings in those blank spaces of the walls behind the figures.

Other artists might have put in another painting or some sort of accessory to fill the space,

but Vermeer is absolutely comfortable in that visual silence in the background of his paintings.

Let's see for now.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Now, Vermeer is one of the most fascinating characters in European art, not just because

of the extraordinarily beautiful and enigmatically seductive paintings that he produced, but

also because given his status in European art history, relatively little is known about

him.

Vermeer left no account of his life and what we do know has been forensically pieced together

over the centuries from disparate records and documents in archives across Holland.

Johannes Vermeer was born in Delft in autumn 1632, the only son and second child of Rainier.

Rainier, and his wife Digner.

Rainier was by training as silk worker, originally in Amsterdam, and then here in the smaller city

of Delft near the Dutch coast.

Towards the end of the 1620s, Rainier had begun dealing in paintings.

Then around 1630, he had also turned to innkeeping.

Delft was one of the wealthier cities in the province of Holland, prosperous due to its

thriving industries of tapestry weaving, brewing, and perhaps above all, Delftware.

Johannes' early years were spent in the family hostelry, the Flying Fox, on the Woldersgracht.

His father's surname at this time was Voss, meaning fox.

By 1640, when Johannes was eight years old, the family name had changed, for reasons that

remain unclear, to Vandermeer, from the lake, contracted to Vermeer.

At the same time, his parents also gambled on the purchase of a bigger, better inn.

This was a pretty prominent inn on the main square in Delft, so it would have been a place

that would have been frequented by the upper-class citizens, and we know in the Netherlands at

that time, there was a great interest in acquiring art.

The numbers of paintings in households was quite remarkable, and travelers from different

countries would come to the Netherlands, and they would say, oh, even the butcher or the baker

have paintings hanging in their homes.

And at some point, young Johannes decided he didn't only want to admire art, or help

his father sell it, but to make it too.

Johannes' father died in 1652, and Johannes was expected to run the family business.

Yet, after little more than a year, he was accepted into the Guild of St. Luke, a prerequisite

to becoming a working artist.

Artists, at this time, were expected to undergo an apprenticeship, usually of six years, with

a master painter who belonged to a guild.

It was these guilds that accredited artists, and regulated their commercial activities.

Vermeer left behind no letters, no account of his life, but it must have been here that

he learned how to paint.

To me, I think it's one of the fascinating things that distinguishes Vermeer from other artists,

actually, in some fundamental ways.

He starts his career not as a painter of interior genre scenes, or painter of views of Delft,

or little streets, or things like that, but as a history painter.

So, he starts as painting large-scale biblical and mythological scenes.

So, for most people, these paintings are anathema.

They can't really figure them out.

Why do they exist?

I mean, why is Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, what does that have to do with Vermeer?

This is perhaps the earliest surviving painting by Vermeer.

It's certainly the largest, and quite possibly a commission.

St. Luke's Gospel tells of Christ's visit to two sisters, Mary and Martha.

Christ praised Mary's desire to listen to his teachings, whereas Martha is shown more

concerned with daily chores.

The treatment of light and the characterization of the subjects were probably inspired by

an artist from Utrecht, who had in turn been influenced by the master Italian painter Caravaggio.

Just over a year later, Vermeer painted this, the procuris.

Few of Vermeer's paintings are as provocative as this depiction of a prostitute and her client,

a conventional theme in contemporary Dutch art.

Here the procuris looks approvingly on, while a soldier offers a young woman a coin while

fondling her breast.

Holding a glass of wine in one hand, she willingly accepts his money with the other.

On the left, an elegant dandy, dressed in a beret and a fashionable slit-sleeved jacket,

smiles out at the viewer.

This dimly lit figure is thought to be the only existing portrait of Vermeer himself.

This is Diana and her nymphs, another of the early known works, painted when Johannes was

thirty-one or thirty-two.

It's true that these mythological and biblical scenes seem at first glance far from the Vermeer

we know, but look again.

The grainy textures, the serene female figures, the dreamlike atmosphere.

These paintings actually point out what was to come, rather more than one might have thought.

Painted when Vermeer was in his early thirties, the music lesson depicts a young woman playing

a keyboard as a male companion stands by, his parted lips suggesting he may be singing.

Though the pair are widely believed to be a pupil and her teacher, Vermeer himself didn't title the

work, so the relationship between the two is a matter of historic conjecture.

The inscription on the instrument reads,

Music is the companion of joy, the medicine of sorrow.

Alluding both to music's alleged curative properties, as well as to the fact that love,

like music, can be the source of both joy and sorrow.

With the viewer held at a distance by objects in the foreground,

and the glimpse of the woman in the mirror above the virginal,

the painting is as much about looking as it is about music.

And joining me to delve into the enigmatic world of Vermeer's music lesson is the writer Tracy Chevalier.

Tracy, bigger picture first. What drew you to Vermeer?

I really loved Vermeer's paintings because they're so quiet.

In a world that's really noisy, in order to look at one of these paintings,

you have to slow right down and get calm and quiet, and that's pretty unusual.

There's just, he has a special something, something to do with the light and the colour,

and the stillness of the paintings that really drew me in.

The music lesson in particular, is this quiet or is this one of the noisier paintings he produces?

I think this is a really quiet painting, really quiet. Even though she's supposedly playing, I suppose,

I don't think they're saying anything to each other. It's a very surprising painting to me,

because when you look at it, it's quite large for Vermeer, and yet the action is taking place here,

it's off-centre, and a lot of the painting is just room. So they're kind of squished together over there,

in the back, really far away from us, so there's deliberate distance.

And then this focal point, that of course are the two figures, but for me, as the art historian,

I can't be drawn to the mirror that shows her, but also above her head, the legs of the easel.

So Vermeer's unravelling the whole fiction of painting and process. Presumably, that appeals to

you as a writer of fiction. Yes, it's subtly done, because at first you're looking at the people,

and it's only after a while you realise that's not a painting. There is a painting on the right,

but this is the woman being reflected, and even when her face is reflected in the painting,

you can't really see her face very well. But in the top are the legs of the easel.

He somehow wanted to insert himself, and yet he's so far away, and really the easel's out here,

and there's no way that it could actually be reflected. So he's playing around with perspective.

It seems to me that there's so many narrative possibilities in a Vermeer painting. I mean,

the most obvious one is the relationship between these two, but then in the detailing,

in the mirroring, and what else is there. In some ways, that must make him very inspiring for you,

but then on another level, it's quite daunting, isn't it? There's almost too many ways that this

could go if you were writing stories around it. It's inspiring, but I think the genius of it is

that you never really know. So when I wrote about the painting Girl with a Pearl Earring, I wrote a

whole novel about the look on her face, and I still don't really know what she was thinking.

And in this painting, it's called The Music Lesson, but Vermeer didn't name his, he didn't title his

paintings. And so maybe this is a man teaching a woman to play, but maybe it's a suitor listening to

potentially his fiancee, or it could be, or it could be a father listening to his daughter. It's very

difficult to interpret. And because they're so far from us, it's like Vermeer doesn't really want us

to know. He's saying, I'm giving them a private moment, and you're standing here, and you're not

going to get any further into that story. That's interesting. So you don't think that he is giving us

a series of clues, which we can use, and we can construct our own narratives. You're saying

fundamentally that you think he's trying metaphorically to throw a spanner in the works.

He's always trying to resist a narrative interpretation. Yes, I think that when he does

allow more open interpretation, the paintings aren't as successful. The most successful paintings

are the most mysterious. So for instance, symbolically, you have a basfiole here, you have a pitcher of

wine. They're both very curvaceous, and in Dutch symbolism of the time, that's meant to indicate

a woman. It could be very sexual. It could be the wine, he's going to get her drunk and have his way

with her. But all of that seems so crude when you apply it to this painting. Yes, they are round,

they're there, but they don't, to me, they don't feel like that's what's going on here.

Tracy Chevalier, for the moment, thank you. You're welcome.

This is the first room of the exhibition, and it's dedicated to the idea of music as either allegory

or attribute. Music had long been an allegorical motif in art, a tradition that continued in the Dutch

Golden Age. In a time before recorded sound, the sense that music existed only in the moment of

performance and then disappeared forever was even more acute. And so in this still life, the musical

instruments that sit alongside a skull, an hourglass and other objects, are intended to link the ephemeral

quality of music to the transitory nature of human life. But musical instruments could also signify

personal attributes, as in this portrait of Constantin Haugens and his clerk. Haugens was a powerful and

busy man, secretary to the Dutch head of state. He was also a passionate musician and found the time to

write over 800 musical pieces, only a handful of which survive. His musical abilities and knowledge of

theory were important indicators of his sophistication, and in this painting, an arch lute, a long-necked

instrument with additional bass strings, lies on a table gathered together with an array of objects

representing his other interests. Carol Fabritius's gentle handling of the cool Delft light and interest

in optics must have had an influence on Johannes Vermeer, who was just beginning as an artist when Fabritius was

resident in the city. This small painting shows a man, believed to be Fabritius himself, sitting next to

a number of instruments, which he is presumed to be selling. He looks out pensively on a strangely

quiet street scene, perhaps contemplating the two paths in life that seem to be on offer. More worldly

pleasures and preoccupations are embodied both by the tavern sign behind and the musical instruments

themselves, once again a shorthand for everything that is transitory in life. And then across the way

stands Delft's imposing Neukirk, the new church, with its offer of eternal life.

Of the 36 paintings in existence commonly attributed to Vermeer, a third are in the USA. Some of these are

now highlights at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and also here at the National Gallery of Art,

Washington DC. Vermeer, the painter of calm interiors, is considered, perhaps more than ever

in an increasingly frenetic world, one of the all-time greats, and his paintings are now priceless

treasures of these collections. They represent a pinnacle of a glorious period in art known as the

Dutch Golden Age. In the mid-1500s, the pre-eminent power in Europe, flush with gold from the newly

discovered American territories, was Spain. And among its domains, on the flat coastal plains adjoining

the North Sea, were the provinces of the Netherlands. But in 1568, the Dutch revolted.

What happened was very much like the American Revolution, that the northerners got tired of

taxes and all sorts of intrusions from Spain and wanted to free themselves from that kind of oversight.

Under the leadership of William of Orange, or William the Silent as he was also known,

the Dutch successfully created an independent state in the northern provinces of the Netherlands.

It was a moment of great celebration for the Netherlands and the great pride of who they were

as a country. I mean, it was huge. It was like they'd beaten back, the small little swampy area

had beaten back this greatest power in the world, and who we are, our might and our world power becomes

very conscious. It went further than that. What followed Spanish rule was a republic, no king, no royal

court. A Dutch republic that began to rival Spain and England, France and Portugal for the title of the

greatest colonial power, the world leader in trade, science and art. This is a new and democratic and

more open economy based in urban manufacturing, the two most important industries being the manufacture

of cloth, linen, canvas, cotton and so on. And supporting that is the number two reason is the great merchant marine

of the Netherlands. And the ships were always full going in both directions. And they were great middlemen

in terms of their produce. For example, they would get wool from the Baltic countries and they would finish it

into bolts of cloth on a large scale. And this merchant marine empire stretched all the way to China

and ultimately Japan throughout South America. And of course, they were right here in New York,

which was New Amsterdam back in those days. The northern provinces of the Netherlands, including

the province of Holland, were full of bustling canals, ports and dockyards. In 1659,

Vermeer painted this wonderful view of his native city, a city full of beautiful, expensive,

well furnished houses.

In other countries, the kings and queens or the emperors that would buy paintings,

not to forget the church. In the Dutch Republic, there was like a large group of people that made a lot

of money, so rich burgers, citizens, and they would have paintings, they would really fill up their house

with paintings. This is remarkable. The average house in Amsterdam in the 1650s had 10 paintings in it.

This is not true for Manhattan today. And the reason in the global, the big picture, would be that

the main way you would hold wealth in another country land is basically unavailable in Holland.

It's remarkable how urban this culture is. About 75% of the entire population lived in cities or towns.

If you went to France in the 1800s, it would be 90% agrarian. So this is really very different.

Extraordinary commercial success had created a middle class who desired to have paintings in

their homes. It is estimated that between 1600 and 1700, some five million paintings were produced.

And this was the Dutch Golden Age, for that incredible demand led to an abundance of superb painters.

Accounts from contemporary travellers to the Dutch Republic remarked in surprise at the sheer volume

of painting to be had there, and in astonishment at the people who seemed to be buying them.

It was commonplace for blacksmiths or cobblers, merchants or bankers to adorn their homes and shops

with artworks. This was something unique in Europe. Art commissioned not by a court of kings and courtiers,

but by wealthy, and indeed not so wealthy, businessmen. And what they wanted was a reflection of their own lives.

For this emergent Dutch middle class, music making was a highly popular form of socialising.

And so this room in the exhibition is dedicated to musical festivities and companies.

Distinct from the grandiose compositions for church and state that dominated musical life in other

European countries. In the Dutch Republic, music had a more intimate and often interactive character.

Attending a concert didn't mean listening passively while the players performed.

Participation was encouraged and indeed expected.

A musical party in a courtyard painted by Vermeer's stealthed contemporary Peter de Hooch in 1677 is a teasingly ambiguous take on the social act of music making.

A boy stands in the doorway, as if keeping watch, as a lone female musician plays a tenor viola.

Violins and violas had strong erotic associations, both because of their curvaceous shape, which was

likened to a woman's body, but also because they were used to play music for dancing, a morally dubious activity.

Although the man gestures towards the musician, his attention is completely

focused on the young woman seated beside him, who returns his gaze with a smile.

In Peter de Hooch's painting, once again, music sets the tone and also provides a kind of shorthand for an erotic or sensual encounter.

And it's also a painting full of narrative possibility as well as mystery.

But the thing that draws me into this painting is the idea of a kind of contrast of worlds,

a contrast between darkness and light, the ambition of painting the main part of the scene in this murky light,

but also giving us something more complex and ambitious in the sense that we can also then see into rooms across the road.

So it's the interior in the distance, as well as the interior intimately before us in the foreground.

But of course, it's also a picture that is resolved, harmonised if you like, by the traditional elements of wine, women and song.

Though images of instruments and music making populate the exhibition, the paintings themselves obviously, ultimately, remain silent.

But to make up for this, the National Gallery is hosting a series of performances in the galleries of music from the period,

so that visitors can enjoy both sight and sound.

The musicians come from the Academy of Ancient Music.

Before the exhibition opened, we travelled to Handel House in central London to hear them perform.

Throughout the exhibition, the paintings share the gallery space with rare examples of instruments from the period.

Offering the viewer a greater sense of connection to the scenes depicted in the art.

Through the 16th century, the violin was played by itinerant musicians in dance halls or inns,

but by Vermeer's time, it had become far more acceptable in polite circles.

With no chin rest, it was played laid on the chest or arm, or even played upright.

The bass viol, the most common of the viol family of instruments,

has since been superseded by the cello.

But in the 17th century, it was by far the most popular bass component of an ensemble,

and features in many of the paintings in the exhibition.

A viola da gamba is actually nothing to do with the cello, although you hold it between your legs and bow it underhand like this.

It's actually a guitar on its side, because it has frets and it has a flat back like a guitar.

It's a chordal playing instrument, like a guitar is a chordal playing instrument, and a harps chord is a chordal playing instrument.

So it was a very versatile instrument, in that you could play melodic lines on it as a bowed instrument,

and play melodies, but you could also play chords. So it was a very, very useful and very versatile instrument, and a very popular one.

The best viols were made in England, from where many were exported to the Netherlands.

But perhaps the most popular instrument, among the wealthiest of Dutch citizens in the 17th century, was the virginal.

Similar to a harpsichord, but smaller, and housed in a rectangular case,

the strings are plucked when the keys are pressed.

The keyboard instruments that you see in the paintings are usually the virginals or the musilar type instruments,

which are like sort of big suitcases really, with a keyboard either on the left or on the right.

The musilar is what's often most portrayed, which is the right hand drive.

But these instruments that you see depicted are generally the amateur instruments, the household instruments

where as the professionals would have been using something bigger like a harpsichord shape,

a more like a piano shape, a concert piano shape, a winged instrument.

And that was more the professional instrument,

which isn't to say that the amateur instruments were not fine, wonderful instruments.

It's a bit like having, in the 20th century, a really, really fine upright piano in your home.

A virginal was an expensive object.

One might cost the equivalent of a skilled worker's wages for a year.

By far the most famous keyboard makers in Europe during the 17th century

were the Ruckers family of Antwerp.

Four of the five Vermeer paintings in the exhibition feature virginals

similar to the Ruckers in the gallery,

including the painting we're going to examine next.

This work shows a finely dressed young woman standing at a virginal,

her outward gaze, an invitation to the viewer to come and join her in making music.

The scene is set in a delft interior, typical of Vermeer,

as light spills from a window on the left and onto a floor of black and white tiles.

The woman plays a musilla virginal, an instrument usually played standing up.

Unlike the virginal scene in the music lesson, or the Ruckers one in the gallery,

both featuring a printed motto,

this more deluxe version has a painted landscape on the lid,

done in the style of a delft contemporary.

The instrument maker would leave certain areas blank,

allowing their clients to commission artists to decorate the virginal,

often doubling its price.

Behind the young woman, on the back wall, are two paintings,

a small landscape and an image of Cupid holding a playing card,

signifying faithfulness in love.

Now I've been joined again by exhibition curator Betsy Wiesman.

Betsy, this room is filled with women playing musical instruments,

of which perhaps the most supreme example is this one.

What do we know about the women in general, and this woman in particular?

I mean, is this a portrait? Is this a fantasy?

Do we know anything about them? Are they generic?

I think it may be a little bit of everything.

I think Vermeer based the figures in his paintings,

perhaps on family members or professional models or friends

who would have stood for the paintings.

But I think they're intentionally generalised and idealised,

so that we can't relate them to a specific person.

There's no way, looking at this, that we can mistake it for a portrait.

It might bear a generic resemblance to someone,

but I think the intent is to make it intentionally vague

and anonymous, if you will,

so that perhaps we can project ourselves into the painting a little better.

The other thing that immediately strikes you

is the paintings within the painting,

but in particular the painting on the lid of the virginal.

Why would the virginal have had that particular landscape, for example, painted on it?

Well, I think a lot of musical instruments had landscapes like this decorating them

because it was something pleasant to look at.

Sometimes they have mythological figures or people having a picnic, things like that.

Pleasant pastoral associations.

The paintings here, both the painting on the background wall and the one decorating the lid of the virginal,

are done by Vermeer in the style of one of his Delft contemporaries, a landscape painter.

Sometimes they have printed mottos on the lid,

but a more expensive option would be to hire a painter to paint a landscape or another scene that you recommended to them.

Just looking at this, in his lifetime, would this painting have been more valuable

than the virginal that he paints with a landscape on it?

Or in the culture of Delft at the time, would the instrument itself have been more valued?

I think the instrument would have cost more.

Virginals like this would have been incredibly expensive and owned only by, you know, the very well-to-do.

And we know from the inventory of Vermeer's possessions that he, in fact, did not own a virginal like this.

On April 20th, 1653, the 20-year-old Johannes Vermeer married Katerina Boulnes,

the daughter of a respectable and wealthy Catholic family.

Given Vermeer's financial circumstances and prospects following his father's death a few months before,

this was a fortuitous match.

Katerina's mother, Maria Tins, was reluctant to give consent for the marriage, but in the end relented.

Perhaps only when the Protestant Vermeer agreed to convert to Catholicism.

This question of religion is important for Vermeer because he grew up Protestant but converted to Catholicism

in order to marry the woman he loved.

And then he lives in his mother-in-law's house, which is interesting for Vermeer's economy

because the mother-in-law was moderately wealthy and had a four-story house.

So the question of housing and even food was, in part, taken care of for Vermeer.

He was the person who would guide visitors to the Catholic chapel in the neighborhood.

The Dutch Catholics, perhaps 30% in Delft, worshipped mostly in chapels within private houses.

In Vermeer's own painting, the allegory of the Catholic faith, the one rather realistic thing about the picture,

the female figure who's an allegory of the faith itself and a globe under her feet, she dominates the world.

She's looking up at a glass sphere which symbolizes heaven.

But the surprising thing is the setting itself.

It's not a church or something allegorical.

It looks like the room in an ordinary house that was, on a rather impromptu basis, set up as a Catholic church.

A tapestry on the floor used as a rug and a table which is modified into an altar by a blue cloth thrown over it.

And this really reflected the conditions of Catholic worship in the Netherlands.

It had to be in private.

We were a Calvinist country and all the churches were whitewashed.

So there were no paintings ordered for churches.

And with the new clientele, so to say, so new people ordering paintings, they would order portraits.

And of course, this is not something new, but because there were so many different people ordering portraits,

then the artist also had to make up a new genre of portraits.

So, because everybody wanted to have different portraits.

And I think what is important, because there were so many artists, they had to have like niche markets,

because if everybody would make the same paintings, then, you know, it wouldn't work.

Living in his mother-in-law's home, Vermeer set to work in his first floor studio.

Here, the stage was set for the production of the delicately lit domestic interiors for which he is so renowned.

The marriage, too, was productive.

Over the years, Vermeer would father 15 children, between 7 and 11 of whom seem to have survived infancy.

You know, the house he lived in was not that big, so there must have been a room where we could close the door

and make his paintings, because I cannot imagine, you know, making what he did with the noise of, you know,

young children, because I come from a very large family myself, so I have a lot of brothers and sisters.

And it was very difficult to find a quiet room in the house where we lived, and we had a very large house.

So, I can relate in that aspect to Vermeer, but then, when you would look at his paintings, then, it's so quiet.

Interestingly, this is the only painting that has children in it.

Are they Vermeer's own? We'll never know.

No names, no explanations survive for any of his subjects.

What is apparent is a stillness, maybe a peace that never existed in his own household.

And it was these somewhat peaceful domestic scenes that Vermeer concentrated on for the rest of his life.

The sense of time in Vermeer, to me, is one of the, so crucial to understanding him.

And to look at a painting, any painting, takes time, but a Vermeer painting, it really, the more you can lose yourself in the experience,

to stand in front of a work and let it envelop you, the greater the experience really is.

And that's one of the wonders of these paintings.

And he creates this sense of time in such interesting ways.

And it's a lot of this arrangements of the figure, so the composition, so where a figure stands and the relationship of a figure to the object.

So the woman in blue reading a letter in the Rijksmuseum example, she holds, she's reading the letter, she's got her hands clasping,

you can watch her thumbs pushing the letter, but her hand is right over the bar of a map on the back.

So those hands are locked into space. They'll never move.

And she's this triangular form that will never move.

What's so amazing about Vermeer is that these everyday scenes or the suggestion of these everyday scenes is painted with such great delicacy.

The light, the light, and I think that his paintings are about, the two main things are light and movement.

I think the last we often forget because we like the kind of stillness of Vermeer's paintings,

but there is always a narrative taking place.

In the milkmaid there is an action painted because she is attentively pouring milk and she has the ingredients of making a milk pudding on her table.

And you see a little basket hanging in the background in which the bread is stored.

You see a little jug with which she gets the milk at the door.

So you know the whole story.

It's a kind of secular Madonna.

She stands there in a monumental way, pouring out milk in an everyday life scene.

But, so that's one side, the cultural importance it has.

It is fantastically well preserved.

So every brushstroke Vermeer set is still visible.

And it is the illusion he creates of us really looking through window to the 17th century,

which is fantastically well orchestrated.

I mean, he's like a film director.

He, every little bit is in the right place.

And what I always say is it's, it is the, also the painting with the most beautiful plaster wall ever painted.

If you look at the background, this plaster wall behind her with the little nails,

and even the nails have a little bit of rust around them in the wall,

and the dust of the whitewashed wall on the floor,

and every detail in that wall is vivid.

So it's really a vibrant painting in every sense.

Out of a probable 50 paintings that Vermeer made during his lifetime,

just 36 survive to the present day.

So it's a rare moment that Vermeers from different collections are brought together.

Rarer still because the guitar player from Kenwood House in London

is so fragile that it never travels,

and so has never been part of a Vermeer exhibition before.

The Kenwood House picture has been physically here in the gallery for the past year or so,

while Kenwood House has been closed for repair.

So we've had this honoured guest in the galleries.

But this is the first time that we've seen the three paintings together.

It's really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

You know, just to have those three pictures and nothing,

no other paintings together on the wall,

I think that makes it even more powerful,

just because that's what you're focusing on.

And it's almost as if you're in the artist's studio,

and you see the paintings lined up, you know, as he's finishing them.

And what's been so fascinating about doing this exhibition is just getting that better sense of the artist at work

and his thought process as he's doing different interpretations of the theme of music

in these wonderful little genre pictures.

It's amazing to see the three paintings together.

I mean, it just sort of comes over you like a wave.

You know, it's a very moving moment.

One of the most important metaphorical roles of music in art

was to communicate the concept of harmony.

Harmonious relationships, both between men and women and within families,

could be expressed through the depiction of a unified ensemble or duet.

The implication in this painting is that the young woman will soon be joined in just such a duet.

Her virtuous nature is contrasted with the painting on the wall behind her,

showing a prostitute playing a lute,

with a procure-ess or brothel madam demanding payment from the prospective customer.

It's been suggested that this work is a companion piece to young women standing at a virginal.

Both show solo female keyboard players gazing out at the viewer.

But in this work, the viola da gamba in the foreground lies ready to be played,

a direct appeal to duet with the young woman.

And while the other is set during the day, here the scene takes place after dark.

A visit made in the evening would be a much more private interaction

than one made in the middle of the day.

Now, I'm joined again by the novelist Tracy Chevalier.

Tracy, it's been suggested, I think, many times,

that this painting, a young woman seated at a virginal,

is a pendant piece, a companion to the girl standing by the virginal.

Do you see them in interrelated terms, or do you think they're self-contained pictures?

I go back and forth about it.

You know, of course, they're hung in the same room in the National Gallery,

so it's quite tempting to see them together.

They are probably painted around the same time,

and yet this one has a very different feel to it.

It's much darker.

A lot of it is quite murky.

If you see the painting in the background, it's very murky,

and the floor is a bit dingy.

When you think about, usually, you see those tiles kind of popping out.

And what you see popping out is her face, her sleeve, and the basviolet there.

She has a beautiful face, but you look at the rest of her,

and some of the painting is not actually that great either.

Look at those arms and the hands.

As somebody who likened them to pig trotters, and I sort of laughed at it,

I thought, we don't normally allow ourselves to criticize master painters.

We just think every painting they've done is perfect.

And that's not the case even with Vermeer.

I think there's this feeling of strain about this

that I don't see in the lady standing at the Virgil's in quite the same way.

This is a darker piece.

In the depths of your rich imagination,

what kind of a man do you imagine Vermeer now

as a consequence of having looked at his painting so intently?

I had to make a decision about what he was like

in order to write a novel about him.

And what I decided was, based on the few facts we know,

he had 11 children.

So it would have been a huge, chaotic household.

We know he lived with his mother-in-law, and we know that most of his paintings

are painted in this room, in this corner, and they think it was on the first floor

of his mother-in-law's house, in this one room.

And I think, how could he paint these very quiet, contemplative paintings with 11 children around,

and all of the servants, and the wife, and everybody?

So is the answer that their refuge, painting is a form of refuge?

The answer is that he compartmentalized his life.

He kept his daily life away from his studio life.

And so, in my book that I decide, he says, you know, nobody can come into this studio,

not the wife, not the kids, oh, well, the servant can come in to clean.

And that's it.

So there's this, quite in a way, a slight ruthlessness about getting his time away from the family.

And this is a refuge.

And I think this is a painting that reveals maybe some anxiety in that refuge, that it's

not such a refuge after all.

There's a glistening beauty to the pearls, to the sleeve.

But he didn't do that with the gold around this painting there, where he does in some

of the other paintings that we see in this gallery.

He doesn't, he doesn't bring out the best in this scene.

He leaves it dark.

Tracy Zivali, there we must leave it.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

This painting, by the Leiden-born artist, Gerrit Du, in many respects, bears a striking

resemblance to Vermeer's young woman seated at a virginal.

The curtain is drawn back to reveal the young woman, who sits looking out at the viewer.

She appears to be waiting for someone to arrive and play the viola de gambe, positioned in

the foreground.

These similarities have led many to suggest that Vermeer was directly inspired by this

painting, which predates his own.

In his day, Du was one of the most famous artists in the Dutch Republic.

A pupil of Rembrandt, he's largely responsible for introducing a highly detailed painting

technique that came to characterise the art of the Leiden school.

Every facet of the room, down to the nails in the floor or the texture of the tapestry,

is meticulously rendered.

Du has given his solo player a clavichord, one of the quietest and most delicate of keyboard

instruments.

Because of its size, the fingering was notoriously difficult to master.

Now I'm joined by Xavier Bray, the chief curator from Dulwich Picture Gallery, also here in

London, who's going to look at this picture in a little more detail.

Xavier, Gerrit Du is not a household name now, but he was in his lifetime, wasn't he?

He was incredibly famous and very much collected, and actually the first owner of this picture

actually had 27,000 in his collection, and he probably saw more pictures than Rembrandt,

who actually had been his master back in Leiden in his own lifetime.

Unfortunately, he's been slightly shadowed by Vermeer, particularly from the 19th century onwards.

So he's slightly forgotten, but people still, here at Dulwich, it's one of the key pictures

that people come and see and take much pleasure in the beautiful detail throughout the picture.

And one of my favourite bits is the cushion, which is, you know, picking up the light, but

you can really sort of see that it's been crinkled, somebody's just been sitting on it

and has left the room, and this is what makes this picture so intriguing.

This work was produced five to seven years before Vermeer tackled the same subject.

We don't know if Vermeer saw Dow's work, but I suppose he must have done to some extent,

but what are the differences and what are the similarities?

What's one learning or teaching another?

Well, I really do think Vermeer saw this picture.

The picture was exhibited in 1665 in this small exhibition of 27 pictures in Leiden.

In Delphes?

In Leiden.

In Leiden, right.

And so Vermeer could have taken a boat down from Delphes to Leiden and seen it.

And it definitely works incredibly well as a sort of preparation.

Just imagine Vermeer seeing this, being amazed by the concept of a woman at the clavichort,

the space, the light. And what's interesting is that Vermeer, had he seen this picture,

what he does is he basically captures the essence of the scene and then edits it right down.

And that's what's so wonderful about Vermeer is that you don't have this over meticulous

attention to detail. He simplifies the scene and it is about that light, the mood, the silence,

the act. There's an elegance that maybe it's not exactly lost here, but it's perhaps you spend too much time

looking at detail. Well, with Vermeer, it's the mood of that picture.

Are you saying that Dow is a more ambitious artist then? Whether or not he succeeds is another question,

but is this a more ambitious attempt?

I think as a painter, he's wanting to really achieve a very refined composition that

sort of concentrates on pretty much everything from the very beautiful flowers that have been

positioned here on the edge of the window, the light coming in, the sense of the curtain that

is pulled backwards. It's quite theatrical. And I think, yes, he's wanting to really capture

every single moment. And I think Vermeer is like a good filmmaker, is able to edit and not over focus.

Whether or not we can prove that Vermeer saw this work, what I like from what you've said is that

he's distilling or refining this kind of vision anyway, whether he saw this painting or not.

No, and you could say Dow invented in a way, I mean, this is where I'll get protective of

Dow if we are going to put him against Vermeer. He's in a way inventing a sort of genre here of this

interruption of a lady playing music and her looking at us expectantly. And I think that's

something that Vermeer would have been amazed by and want to maybe make a better version of it.

Xavier, thank you.

Vermeer worked slowly and precisely, two, maybe three paintings a year. And it's likely this

meticulous attention to detail and reluctance to nurture a reputation beyond Delft's city walls

did little to help his financial situation. But despite this, Vermeer was actually slowly

creating some of his finest paintings, primarily a continuing series of mesmerizing studies of women

in the corners of gently-lit interiors, all absorbed in some private moment or thought.

Vermeer picks moments in these stories, whether music or otherwise, where people are going about

their daily life in ways that we can well conceive ourselves doing, reading a letter, playing an

instrument. But there are moments that we are often never conscious of. They kind of pass by,

and Vermeer identifies them as somehow significant enough to be the subject of a painting. But what makes

it all the more strong in Vermeer is that there is something about these moments, the way Vermeer

creates them, that seems timeless. And that they take on, thus, a dignity and significance beyond the

passage of time. I think that's part of the reason these paintings seem so powerful and so compelling,

the way we connect to them. It makes us feel better about themselves because there is somebody in this

wonderful world that seems totally at ease with themselves and yet they're just like us.

I think there is an element of male voyeurism in Vermeer's pictures. It's something of a dream world for

a middle-class, upper middle-class man who would like to meet a woman like our young woman with a water

pitcher, for example. That painting in the Metropolitan Museum is a classic Vermeer in its subject matter.

And she's wearing fine street clothes, although she's home alone, except for the scarf that's over her

shoulder and one over her head. She would only wear that when she's washing up and making up in the

morning. And she has this basin and pitcher which would have water in it. She's probably opened the

window for fresh air. What the basin and pitcher also tell us is, in addition to she's in a private

moment, she is a rather wealthy young lady. Back in those days, these pitchers and basins were solid

silver with gold plate, silver gilt, not brass. And we see a map on the back wall which is varnished.

Those were expensive as well. And then a Persian carpet on the table and a Spanish jewel case with a

string of pearls coming out of it. I don't want to say that it's all invented because maybe the single

most remarkable thing about Vermeer is observation. Vermeer might throw a bolt of cloth over the back

of a chair and study the light in that motif while he's working on it for two days. But the whole

composition wasn't there and there was no arrangement in the studio to preserve.

That's the remarkable thing. These scenes seem so realistic and yet they never existed except in

Vermeer's mind. Love in its many manifestations is one of the themes of the exhibition and this room

is devoted to intimate duets. In 17th century Netherlands, music making was one of the few

activities single men and women could participate in without supervision. Courtship had to be conducted

under strict rules and moral guidelines and making music added a veil of decency to a potentially

improper scenario. These romantic encounters, explicit or implied, were one of the most popular musical

motifs in Dutch genre painting. In Jan Steen's 1659 painting a prim young woman looks down demurely as

she plays a harpsichord while her male companion slouches over the instrument. The two Latin inscriptions

make the message unambiguous. On the lid of the harpsichord next to the man reads actions make the man

whereas on the keyboard lid is inscribed solely for the glory of God. His intentions are clear

underlined by the large loot being carried by the boy down the corridor in the background.

This in fact is a relatively restrained Jan Steen painting. He'd become justifiably celebrated for

his images of debauched festivity and rowdy inns and even today there's a phrase used by the Dutch,

a Jan Steen household, in order to describe someone's rowdy or messy home. But even though this

is restrained at the same time Steen's humour shines through and from the prominent predatory hand at

the heart of the painting to the Latin inscriptions to the boy in the distance bringing the lute that's

going to be played in the way that the girl's going to be played, it's fairly clear and relatively

unsubtle as to what's actually going to happen next. And what's interesting for me in the context of

this exhibition is seeing a painting like this it reinforces just how restrained the innuendo and

symbolism is of Vermeer and how controlled and ordered his world is in comparison to that of his

great contemporary Jan Steen. Aside from the popularity of keyboard instruments, the other

category of instrument preferred by the wealthy bourgeoisie of Vermeer's time included the lute,

siten and guitar. The lute was a well-established instrument used for both solo and ensemble performance

but it was most popular as an accompaniment for song. I think the lute's character is one of intimacy

certainly. It's a very expressive instrument in the way that the harpsichord isn't or the virginals

isn't but it's never going to be audible in a large space so the lute is perfect for intimate

surroundings like within a house, within a house concert.

The siten was also a popular instrument of the time. Less delicate than a lute it had wire instead

of gut strings which meant its piercing tone cut through the other stringed and wind instruments.

The siten often had extraordinarily detailed ornamentation inside the sound box as in this example.

It was during the 17th century that the guitar was introduced to northern Europe from Spain.

Cheaper and easier to play than the lute it quickly became very popular.

The guitar was this sort of new wild, especially coming from Spain, something which is a little

bit more exotic and a little bit wilder. The classic guitar pieces are the Sarabande from Italy

and the Chaconne. These pieces were, particularly the Sarabande, initially was a very wild and sort of erotic dance.

In different sets of this room, the guitar was also a small American heart, from the

Doctora Miriam who was sitting in front of the room and this was a small band of the

different voices of the little ball, but I also wanted to do it with the meantime.

These pieces were used to mash up a large band of dessie, but whatever, I'm not

really excited to have been a feature, this was also a lot of a long band of dessie.

The guitar player marks a compositional change from the other Vermeer pictures in the exhibition

and in his oeuvre in general.

Vermeer places the figure to the left of the frame, leaving a bare wall and some books

to take up the remainder of the picture.

The imbalance suggests a sense of movement and impending change to this deceptively simple image.

With tipped head and a gentle smile, the woman fixes her gaze on something just outside.

Some magnetic presence seems to threaten to pull her from our view, suggesting that she

now plays not for us, but for an unseen visitor.

Whilst on loan from Kenwood House, the guitar player has been subject to an extensive technical

analysis here at the National Gallery.

One of the most fascinating discoveries is the high number of paintbrush bristles embedded

in the paint, both in this and the other Vermeers on show.

This could have been due to Vermeer using poor quality or older brushes, an intriguing insight

into the state of his studio or even his financial situation towards the end of his life.

Equally fascinating is a pair of fingerprints detected on the top edge of the guitar player,

left, we presume, by the great master himself when the paint was still wet.

Bessie Wiesmann is curator of this exhibition.

Were you surprised to discover that Vermeer didn't have a pristine studio, given that he

presents such a clean vision of the world in his art?

Well, on the one hand I wasn't so surprised because he did have eleven children, but on the

other hand I was surprised that it left a physical trace on the paintings.

So, this kind of conflict that we perceive between process and the kind of immaculate

way that he produces the image is one thing, but the other thing that's so remarkable about

this work is the radical cropping of this figure and the fact that we're brought much

more intimately and directly into the picture.

Is this a radical departure in Vermeer's art or am I over-reading?

I think it is unusual and one thing I should point out for this painting is

that it is on its original strainer and the original canvas.

It's never been cut or modified in any way.

This is his intention.

Absolutely.

I think that he did it in order to animate the composition and to give us a sort of sense

of the unexpected because it seems as if she's being pulled outside of the picture and obviously

she's looking off in that direction.

Her attention is no longer on us, the viewer standing in front of her, but by something that

we can't see, that we're not privy to.

And I think that's Vermeer's way of enticing us even further because there's something that

we want to be a part of.

And I think, you know, there's this subconscious feeling of jealousy.

We want to be the one that she's looking at and that her attention is directed towards.

What about the guitar?

Because, I mean, this was an instrument that was popular in, I think, Spain and France.

In the context of the Netherlands, is this a symbol of her contemporaneous, her fashionableness,

her edginess, or is it just another musical prop?

No, I think you're absolutely right because it was still sort of a racy instrument or had

racy connotations because it had been used for, you know, folk music that was played quite

fast in the Mediterranean countries.

And so that was quite exotic in the Netherlands in the 17th century.

It still carried some of those connotations in the 1670s when Vermeer was painting.

And I think his choice of that instrument for this painting is absolutely intentional because

it feeds into that slight edginess of the composition.

So it's another way of creating a different sort of sentiment in the viewer.

You've hung all three together.

It's a kind of a semi-religious triptych you've assembled.

But this is at the centre and this is different and it's sort of, it seems, you'd never call

it discordant in any way, but it makes it seem more radical because of the harmonious nature

of the two paintings that flank it.

Is that your conclusion?

Does it enhance the importance of this picture?

I think so.

And hanging this one in between the other two, I think, emphasises the edginess of it, that

it is a bit more radical than the other two, that the woman is closer to us.

Because she's playing an instrument that had a different sort of sound that was not so traditional

and expected, perhaps.

And also that just the composition being slightly off-centre and her gaze being off to the side,

not out at the viewer.

I think it's really fascinating to put it in the context of these other pictures because

it shows that Vermeer is starting with the same theme of a woman playing a musical instrument,

but he's trying something completely new and different here.

By the beginning of the 1670s, Vermeer, with a large family to feed, was desperately short

of funds.

In 1672, things deteriorated further.

The so-called Rampier, Year of Disaster, saw invading armies from France, England and Germany.

The economy, under these assaults, practically collapsed.

After the French invasion, the Rampier and all that, the art market dries up, the effects

makes an impact on him as a painter, but also for his art dealing.

So we know that he can't sell his paintings.

So there was quite a few paintings left over, so that's when they have their financial problems.

The effects of the Rampier were certainly complicating his poor financial situation, yet Vermeer's

paintings bear no signs of the crisis.

There's one great painting by Vermeer that suggests he is thinking beyond his own lifetime, and that's

the art of painting in Vienna, where he shows an artist very much like Vermeer, who is painting

a model who is a very attractive young lady holding a trombone, but she is Cleo, the muse of history.

And this is a very rich allegory about the status of the art of painting in Vermeer's time.

And probably a suggestion that Dutch painting in particular had rose to the highest level in

the judgment of people like themselves, who consider the highest level to be the greatest

verisimilitude rather than the most pretentious mythological subject or whatever.

So that large painting was kept in a studio and was probably, I mean, calling card wouldn't

be the perfect term for it, but a kind of sign for his ability.

And just imagine going up the narrow staircase in Vermeer's house and you're there under

the rafters of the roof and there's probably one window looking out onto the town square,

and a fairly humble interior with a wooden floor and maybe two weasels and a dirty work

table.

And you see Vermeer's image of the artist's studio with a marble floor and a tapestry and

grand decoration and much larger scale.

And he's dressed like some bohemian dandy from the past, so it is a kind of dream world in

that respect.

This picture, painted around 1671, shares the same title as one of the National Gallery's

Vermeer's.

Smaller in scale, its focus is narrower, its composition simpler, but Vermeer's command

of light is as sophisticated as ever.

It delicately fringes the surface of the instrument case and highlights the pearls at the young

woman's neck, as well as giving the back wall a gentle luminous glow.

The effect is a picture which draws your attention to the face of the young woman and engages the

viewer in the intimacy of her performance.

Now, I'm joined in front of the final picture in the exhibition by the curator Betsy Wiesman.

Betsy, that was a time when one or two people doubted the authenticity of this picture.

Standing in front of it seems pretty clear it's a Vermeer to me.

But are the arguments sealed by analysis and x-ray and so on?

Yes.

We know from analysis of the materials that were used and the technique that is used in

the painting that it is absolutely consistent with other pictures by Vermeer from this late

period in his career.

The canvas that the painting is painted on is probably from the same bolt of cloth as

another painting by Vermeer in the Louvre.

I think what is misleading for some people is this yellow drapery, which seems a little

heavier than other bits of the painting.

And that's because it was added a little bit later, possibly by Vermeer himself, but probably

by someone else.

Now, let's take it in the context of this exhibition as a kind of end point.

Because, I mean, it is consistent and yet, in another way, it's different.

I mean, this idea about honing in, more intimate, I suppose.

Right.

It's very different because it's so small and so intimate and so simple.

In the other paintings, there are accessories.

We have more of a sense of an interior space.

There are paintings on the wall, perhaps a window off to the side.

We can see the floor.

Here, the painting focuses just on the woman seated in front of her virginal.

There's nothing else to distract from that image.

Apart from the reflection of her arms, exquisitely rendered, for instance, in the instrument.

And light, the way that light plays across the surface.

Yeah.

I mean, one of the things that keeps being reiterated here, although it's music we're focusing

on, is that he's the great painter of light in Western art, isn't he?

Absolutely.

It's so subtle and so beautiful.

Not just the reflections that you mentioned and the glimmers along the edge of the music

stone, but just that glow that washes over the wall in the background and really animates

it.

I think in the hands of almost any other painter, that would just be a flat white expanse.

But Vermeer is such a master of those subtleties and those gradations of tone in the background,

that you have no sense of it being a dead space.

It's really lively and just embraces the figure and the instrument.

Broadly speaking, then, I mean, you've taken a familiar subject to Vermeer's painting, but

there's never been an exhibition and there's never been a detailed and deep analysis of music

in Vermeer and also in the broader context of Dutch art.

Does it suggest a new way of looking at an artist or is that impossible now?

You know, there are only 36 acknowledged Vermeers now in the world.

Many art historians have scrutinized them.

Can we see him in a different way?

Can we hear him in a different way?

I hope so.

And I hope that by bringing music together with the paintings, you start to think about

them not purely in a visual way, but sort of immerse all of your senses into the painting

and just experience them rather than just seeing them as paintings on a wall.

Try and really drink them in and become a part of them.

And that idea of silence that you mentioned at the very beginning of this film, that's

there in this picture, isn't it, in particular?

It is.

And I hope that that communicates itself to people in the course of experiencing this exhibition,

because I think Vermeer's paintings are so much about silence.

And when we look at paintings with a musical theme, it's about music, it's about sound,

but it's also about the silence that's embraced within that sound.

Betsy Reisman, thank you very much and congratulations on an illuminating and kind of lyrical show.

Thank you very much.

Vermeer died, possibly from a stroke, on December the 15th, 1675.

His death at the age of 43 was described by his wife, Katerina, as

owing to the great burden of his children and having no means of his own, he had lapsed into decay.

You know that we have an inventory of Vermeer's house shortly after his death,

and we see so many things in his paintings that don't turn up in the inventory.

And this seems to be pretty complete. It's got his studio, etc., and there's not a single musical

instrument or tapestry. There are, I think, about 16 pictures throughout the house and a few other

fancy things, including the yellow ermine or imitation ermine and velvet jacket in yellow that we

see in a number of pictures. But it's remarkable to see no tapestries, no brass chandeliers,

apparently, and no musical instruments at all.

He was one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, yet his brilliance only began to gain wide

recognition two centuries later, when a French critic praised him in the 1860s.

At the time of Johannes Vermeer's death, despite the wealth displayed in his paintings,

he, the artist, was virtually penniless.

He was one of the most famous artists who were the most famous artists who were the most famous artists.