Vermeer. Ett försvar för ögats vittnesbörd

Abstract

Summary Vermeer. A plea for the witness of the eye The a. opposes a certain trend of reasoning, which has long enough prevailed among the specialists on Dutch 17th century painting. From the fact that most people in Holland belonged to the Re‐formed church, it is only too readily inferred that the pictures were intended mainly for moralizing edification. The consequences of such simplistic thinking become particularly striking in the case of Vermeer. His “Girl asleep at a table”, in the Metropolitan Muse‐um. New York (fig. 1), has thus been viewed as a warning against drunkenness (S. Slive), alternatively sloth (M. Milner Kahr), whereas the “Lady holding a balance” in Washington (fig. 2) is generally considered solely for its Vanitas implications. However, to the eyes of any beholder to‐day, the mood is far more subtle and lucid in these paintings, and there is no reason to believe that Vermeer's contemporaries were incapable of perceiving such picto‐rial qualities. In the painting in New York, there is a picture on the wall which directly quotes Otho van Veen's widely read and beloved book of emblems, Amonan emblemata. Indeed, “Dreams of love” is a far better denomination than “Drunkenness” or “Sloth”, all the more so as it goes so much better with the sensuous poetry of the picture. As Lennart Seth has shown, in an outstanding article on Vermeer and van Veen (Konstkistorisk Tidskrift 1980, 17ff, with a useful summary in English, 38–40), both the text and the emblems in van Veen's book may be applied to a succession of Vermeer's paintings, and this connection provides in many cases decisive clues. Love is very much the great theme of Vermeer's oeuvre. However ignored, Love is also present in “Lady holding a balance”. Admittedly, the large Last Judgment panel on the wall behind and'objects on the table establish at the same time the Vanitas content. But the woman's pregnancy as well as the fact that the scales of the balance are empty, leads us to van Veen's avowal of the omnipotence of Love. Instead of illustrating merely the vanity of a wealthy young woman, the whole interior breathes trustful reflection and happiness. Without being subdued, the mes‐sage of the Last Judgment contains an element of confident accep‐tance. As Lennart Seth pointed out, it is more than a coincidence that the apparition of Christ in His aureole of light is located right above this serenely pensive woman. Vermeer deals indeed with sensual pleasures, which could easily be misunderstood in those days, as they have been misunderstood, more or less intentionally in the name of historic accuracy, by scholars to‐day. They have failed to consider one important fact, namely that Vermeer was a Catholic, or at any rate by marriage surrounded by Catholics. The attitudes of Catholics to the plea‐sures of life are more generous. Consider merely the way in which Catholic Flanders embraced so fully the sensuous art of Rubens.

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