Original subtitles

Welcome to Great Art. For the past few years,

we've been filming the biggest exhibitions,

art galleries and museums in the world

about some of the greatest artists and art in history.

Not only do we record landmark shows,

but we also secure privileged access behind the scenes.

We then use this as a springboard to take a broader look

at extraordinary artists.

A few years ago in our series, Exhibition On Screen,

we brought to the cinema a fascinating show from

the National Gallery, here in London.

Entitled Vermeer And Music: The Art of Love And Leisure,

it explored the serene genius of Johannes Vermeer

by focusing on the musical references in his art

in order to understand his broader place in

the celebrated period in art history known as the Dutch Golden Age.

It wasn't a particularly large exhibition,

but, as we'll discover, Vermeer paintings are rare

and so any exhibition of his work tends to be a momentous occasion.

And now, here in our Great Art film,

we once again delve deep into the show

and go beyond the gallery walls

to explore his life and art more fully.

And in doing so, we throw light

on 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.

Now, I'm joined by the exhibition's curator, Betsy Wieseman,

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 are 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 the 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 is an almost synesthetic approach to them

that you either hear the music, or you hear, just as importantly,

the silence in between musical sounds.

Yes, 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've 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.

Now, Vermeer's 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.

NARRATOR: Johannes Vermeer was born in Delft in Autumn 1632,

the only son and second child of Reynier and his wife, Digna.

Reynier was by training a silkworker,

originally in Amsterdam,

and then here in the smaller city of Delft near the Dutch coast.

Towards the end of the 1620s,

Reynier had begun dealing in paintings.

Then, around 1630, he had also turned to inn-keeping.

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's early years were spent in the family hostelry,

The Flying Fox, on the Voldersgracht.

His father's surname at this time was Vos, meaning Fox.

By 1640, when Johannes was eight years old,

the family name had changed, for reasons that remain unclear,

to Van der Meer, "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.

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 travellers from different countries

would come to the Netherlands and they would say,

"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 learnt 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.

That he starts his career not as a painter

of interior genre scenes, or a painter of views of Delft,

or little streets, or things like that,

but as a history painter.

So he starts painting large-scale biblical mythological scenes.

So for most people, these paintings are anathema,

they can't really figure them out, why do they exist?

I mean, why as... 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 characterisation of the subjects

were probably inspired by artists from Utrecht,

who had in turn been influenced

by the master Italian painter, Caravaggio.

Just over a year later, Vermeer painted this, The Procuress.

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 procuress 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-sleeve 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 31 or 32.

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 up what was to come

rather more than one might have thought.

Painted when Vermeer was in his early 30s,

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 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 these paintings,

you have to slow right down and get calm and quiet

and that's pretty unusual.

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 is 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 a 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 but 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

that 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 is out here,

and there's no way that he 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. Yeah.

I mean. the most obvious one is the relationship between these two,

but then in the detailing and in the mirroring

and what else is there.

In some ways, that must make him very inspiring for you,

but on the other hand 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 title his paintings,

so maybe this is a man teaching a woman to play,

but maybe it's a suitor listening to potentially his fiance.

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.

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 Constantijn Huygens and his clerk.

Huygens was 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 archlute, a long necked instrument

with additional bass strings, lies on a table,

gathered together with an array of objects

representing his other interests.

Carel 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 musical instruments themselves,

once again a shorthand for everything

that is transitory in life.

And then across the way, stands Delft's imposing Nieuwe Kerk,

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, you know, 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 a 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.

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.

Where you would have in other countries

the kings and queens, or the emperors

that will 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 burghers, 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 ten 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 is 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.

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 muselar virginal,

an instrument usually played standing up.

Unlike the virginal seen in The Music Lesson,

or the Rucker's 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 Wieseman.

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?

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 that they're intentionally generalised

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

There is 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 the 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 Catharina Bolnes,

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.

Catharina's mother, Maria Thins, 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's 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-storey 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 neighbourhood.

The Dutch Catholics, perhaps 30% in Delft,

worshipped mostly in chapels within private houses.

And Vermeer's own painting, the Allegory Of The Catholic Faith,

the one rather realistic thing about the picture,

the female figure who is 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 symbolises 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.

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.

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,

because everybody wanted to have different portraits.

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 seemed to have survived infancy.

You know, the house he lived in was not that big.

So there must have been a room where he could close the door

and make his paintings.

Because I cannot imagine 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,

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.

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,

and 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.

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... It just...

..sort of comes over you like a wave, you know, it's...

VOICE BREAKING: ..it's a very, erm, 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 procuress,

or brothel madam, demanding payment from the prospective customer.

It has been suggested that this work is a companion piece

to A Young Woman 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 A Girl Standing By A 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 bass viol there.

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

and somehow the painting is not actually that great either.

Look at those arms... and the hands!

Somebody likened them to pig trotters

and I sort of laughed and I thought,

"We don't normally allow ourselves to criticise 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 a feeling of strain about this

that I don't see in The Lady Standing At The Virginal

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've been a huge chaotic household.

We knew he lived with his mother-in-law

and we know that most of his paintings

were painted in this room and this corner

and they think that 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 they're refuge?

Painting is a form of refuge? Yes.

The answer is that he compartmentalised his life.

He kept his daily life away from his studio life

and so, in my book, 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 bring out the best in this scene, he leaves it dark.

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 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 paint brush 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.

Betsy Wieseman, as 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 11 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 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 are 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 anyway.

So 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 is something that we want to be a part of

and I think there's this subconscious feeling of jealousy.

We want to be the one that she is looking at

and that her attention is directed towards.

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 rampjaar, "Year Of Disaster",

saw invading armies from France, England and Germany.

The economy, under these assaults, practically collapsed.

After the French invasion and the rampjaar

and all that, the art market dries up.

That 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 are quite a few paintings left over,

so that's when they have their financial problems.

The effects of the rampjaar were certainly complicating

his poor financial situation.

Yet Vermeer's paintings bear no signs of the crisis.

There is one great painting by Vermeer

that suggests he is thinking beyond his own lifetime

and that is 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 Clio, 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 judgement 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 his studio

and was probably...

I mean, calling card wouldn't be the perfect term for it,

but a kind of sign for his ability.

Just imagine going up the narrow staircase

in Vermeer's house

and you are there under the rafters of the roof.

And there's probably one window looking out on to the town square,

and a fairly humble interior with a wooden floor

and maybe two easels and a dirty worktable.

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.

Vermeer died, possibly from a stroke,

on December 15th 1675.

His death at the age of 43 was described by his wife Catharina

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 has got his studio, etc,

and there is 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.

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