Vermeer’s “Thrushmaid” was studied thoroughly – Newspaper Kommersant No. 167 (7368) of 09/10/2022
[ad_1]
On February 10, an exhibition will open at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which has not been equaled and, most likely, will not be in the next hundred years. It couldn’t be easier to come up with a name for it – “Vermeer”: is it necessary to say something else when 27 out of 35 precisely known paintings of the “Delft Sphinx” will be presented at one exposition. However, even the preparation for this exhibition brings interesting news. Tells Kira Dolinina.
On September 8, the Rijksmuseum began selling tickets online for its Vermeer megashow. The exhibition will open on February 10 and will last until June 4, but it is clear in advance that tickets will be sold out in just a few days. The pandemic seems to be behind us, bombing in Europe, as it seems to many, far from the Netherlands, people yearning for movement are breaking travel records this summer, and any Vermeer exhibitions have always been absolute bestsellers without that. In fact, even the coronavirus was not a hindrance to them – last fall, ten paintings by Vermeer were shown in Dresden. And the Europeans, who were able to break through the quarantine cordons, were more than enough to make the exhibition one of the brightest of the season. And here 27 out of only 35 recognized as belonging to the brush of Vermeer, no one else has ever seen together. In 1995, the National Gallery in Washington collected 22 Vermeers, it seemed that this record would not be broken, but they did.
On the eve of the start of online ticket sales, the museum has prepared another high-profile news. As part of the preparation for the exhibition, each of the participants conducts conservation and restoration procedures. The Rijksmuseum approached this process very responsibly and subjected one of its masterpieces, The Milkmaid (1657–1658), to the closest scrutiny. Here, as in big medicine – no matter how much you study, but technical progress is no, no, and it will throw up new unprecedented opportunities, and with them discoveries.
Vermeer’s “Thrushmaid” is infinitely good, undeniable, absolutely accurate in every stroke, this is one of the most canonical works of the artist. If they found in it something like what “Cupid” from the Dresden Gallery thundered to the whole world (there, under the top layer, they found a huge portrait behind Cupid’s back and decided that he was the artist’s intention, and the dull gray wall, with which the picture has come down to us – a later intervention), that would be a tragedy. The emptiness and fullness of the visual range in “The Milkmaid” are in such a balance that any, even the most convincing “addition” can destroy it in our eyes.
But, thank God, in this case we are not talking about discoveries, from which the picture will change. New methods for studying different layers of paint coating allowed scientists to see not what the artist erased in an almost finished work, but what he began to compose it with. In modern science, it is generally accepted that a feature of Vermeer’s painting style was that his canvases were made with maximum accuracy, they were obviously painted very slowly, with almost complete absence of traces of direct work on the composition during the painting. That is, until now, researchers have found almost no traces of its change at an early stage of creation. “Thrush” was a big surprise: the methods used for this study, including advanced Macro-XRF and RIS scanning technologies, showed that a thick streak of black paint was hastily applied under the girl’s left arm. This sketch clearly shows that Vermeer first quickly painted the scene with light and dark tones before working out the details. This is a classic “underpainting”, a primary sketch, which until now has not been seen by Vermeer. Moreover, the scanners showed that the primary composition of the “Thrushmaid” included two more items: a jug holder (a wooden plank with attached handles, used in 17th century kitchens to hang several ceramic jugs by the handle) and a “fire basket” (in such baskets a bowl of hot coals was placed to warm newborns and dry diapers). New technical methods made it possible not only to “see” the objects included in the original composition, but also to identify them. And since art historians have the opportunity to work with a complete inventory of Vermeer’s property, they can also confirm their presence in his house.
The objects discovered by scientists seemed superfluous to the artist, and he did not begin to prescribe them already at the stage of transition from underpainting to painting. As a result, we have the classic dull gray Vermeer wall behind the girl with a jug of milk, against which every object, every stroke and splash of color seems to be the only possible solution. And by the same Vermeerian miracle of creating a paradise in a small and almost empty world, about which the best minds are still breaking spears. The dispassionate scanner told us that such a miracle is not born immediately, but through trial and error. Vermeer, of course, was a pure genius, but, what is consoling, he is still a man.
[ad_2]
Source link