More Vermeer

Not much is known about Homer. There might have been no such person but if there was he might have been blind. But otherwise there is usually somebody finding out what they can about everybody else. I once read that not much was known about Shakespeare but now have a yard of shelf space full of evidence and what inferences might be made from it. Similarly, Anthony Bailey pieces together an impression of Vermeer from contemporary records, a few anecdotes and the same sort of imaginative supposition.

Such a book is filled out with context and the painter does make much of an appearance in the first two chapters but eventually we are assured he married Catharina, who came from a Catholic family whereas he was Reformed Protestant, had 15 children, 11 of which survived childhood, didn't make a fortune, inherited an inn and died quite suddenly aged 43.

That he didn't produce many paintings is attributed either to perfectionism or that a house full of kids wasn't conducive to art-making but, to critcize the critic, one can read some of the bookish man's aversion to children into Bailey's theory there as we all sub-consciously assume our subject to be like ourselves.

But the jacket worn in six of the paintings is surely the one listed in an inventory and other such circumstantial evidence can be used to identify the figures in several.

It comes as some surprise that he wasn't quite perfect, that the Allegory of Faith is 'bad Vermeer' and the last two canvasses, Young Woman Seated at (and Standing at) Virginals aren't quite as good as The Art of Painting, which is accorded the status of the signature mastepiece, like Hamlet, here, and the earlier famous pieces. 

I'm glad to know that,

Vermeer went out of his way not to be caught drawing moral lessons,

because it is that avoiding of bad practice and element of free-standing ambivalence that makes art great and him so essential.

If Vermeer's Hat worked from the paintings outwards towards a big, wide C17th world that was being discovered, Vermeer, A View of Delft, does as much as can be done in the other direction, towards the man. Anthony Bailey won't necessarily have got everything right about him but he sets out the story, it is a very satisfying read, and we can take from it as much or as little as we feel able.