After coffee and pastry with Esther this morning, we dropped in to check out Delft’s Vermeer Center. Years ago (ten?) we went to an exhibit on the history of Delft and there was Vermeer’s “The Little Street” on display. Back then I was thrilled since we were staying at a place a block away from the street that Vermeer probably painted. (The painting with its prominent little red door is currently part of the Vermeer collection in Amsterdam at the Rijksmuseum.)
The Vermeer Center is primarily concerned with the times Vermeer lived in and the process that went into making his art unique. Delft was where Johannes Vermeer lived and died. His grave is marked by a paving stone in Delft’s Old Church.
In 1654 a massive storage of gunpowder blew up flattening a large part of Delft. Known as the Delft Thunderclap, it shattered windows miles away and killed at least 100 people. In the basement of the Vermeer Center there was a long horizontal video putting forth the theory that the explosion not only reshaped the city physically, but culturally. After the Thunderclap Vermeer became, well, Vermeer, concerning himself with depicting quiet slices of life that could be pictured inside the homes. So an early not quite mature painting done before the explosion looked like this:
After the explosion things simmer down, people are portrayed not by their excess of their actions, but by their inward thoughtful concerns.
The Vermeer Center video traveled along a seventeenth-century Delft street opening shutters on windows that revealed the interiors that Vermeer painted.
In another exhibit on another floor, Vermeer’s subtle gradations of light is compared with Rembrandt’s harder contrasts.
On the same floor it’s demonstrated how Vermeer achieved his dimensions of depth within a painting by pinning tightened string to various vanishing points.
Thematically, one of the most interesting examinations of Vermeer’s work studied how deep stirrings of love are captured in a moment of stillness in the women he portrayed. It was a nice meditative way of closing the door on Rubens’ strenuous clamor.
