Decorative objects in the paintings of Vermeer

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 1996 by Lorraine Karafel

The Dutch had a wide array of products from which to choose. Solid, carved furniture was produced by local craftsmen, glassware was both imported from Germany and made in Holland, exotic carpets were brought from the Middle East, and porcelain was imported in abundance from China.(3) One Englishman noted that Dutch houses were "not large, but neat, beautiful outside and well-furnished inside, and the furniture is so clean and in good order that it appears to be more an exhibition than for daily use."(4)

It is in this context of opulent domesticity that Vermeer painted his evocative, if enigmatic, interiors. The artist, his wife, Catharina Bolnes (1631-1687), and their eleven children lived with his mother-in-law, Maria Thins (1593-1680), on the Oude Langendijck in Delft. Maria Thins came from a well-to-do family in Gouda. Judging from Vermeer's inventory and his paintings, the ten-room dwelling was a large, comfortable bourgeois household.

The inventory lists thirty-five chairs, and chairs appear in almost all of Vermeer's interiors. An elegant side chair with lion's-head finials is found most frequently [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATES I, VII, VIII, IX, XI, XIII OMITTED]. It could have been one of the "two Spanish chairs" in the upstairs front room (apparently the artist's studio) along with two painter's easels and three palettes. This type of chair was often depicted by Dutch artists, from Frans Hals to Pieter de Hooch and Jan Steen, and such chairs survive in collections today.(5) Vermeer placed the side chair at an angle or against a wall to define the space of his painted interiors. The silhouette of the lion's-head finial is a prominent element in the composition of Woman with a Lute [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE IX OMITTED], while in The Girl with the Red Hat [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VIII OMITTED], the looming finials echo the girl's face and the faces of the figures woven into the tapestry in the background.

The lion's-head chairs are sometimes depicted with dark upholstery decorated with a lozenge pattern, perhaps gilded leather [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE I OMITTED], and sometimes they are covered with blue velvet or moquette [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XI OMITTED]. These may have been various chairs in the house, or the same chairs reupholstered over the years, or Vermeer may have used artistic license and simply changed the chairs to suit the composition.(6) Vermeer also included tapestry-covered chairs with colorful, floral-patterned upholstery [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XVII OMITTED], perhaps some of the "six tapestry-covered chairs" listed in the inventory.

Oak tables with carved legs were common in Dutch households and many sturdy, massive tables were being produced by local craftsmen in the first half of the seventeenth century.(7) Such a table appears in several of Vermeer's paintings [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATES IX, XV OMITTED]; perhaps it was modeled on the oak table listed in the inventory as being in a small room adjoining the great hall.

The cupboard, another major object commonly found in a Dutch house,(8) appears in only two of Vermeer's paintings, and then not as part of a simple interior but rather in the scholarly retreats of The Geographer [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XVII OMITTED] and The Astronomer,(9) where they are more likely to have been filled with a jumble of books and scientific instruments than neatly stacked linens. Two cupboards are listed in the inventory.

Vermeer incorporated many textiles into his paintings, from elaborate costumes to a wide variety of furnishing fabrics. Silk curtains, damask tablecloths, tapestry table covers, and both Turkish and Persian rugs add color, pattern, and texture to the interiors.(10) Rugs from Anatolia had been imported into the Netherlands beginning in the late sixteenth century and were used as table, rather than floor, coverings. A well-known representation of an Anatolian rug in Dutch painting is the medallion Ushak that dominates the composition of The Procuress [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE X OMITTED]. A more coarsely woven Ushak-type rug is included in the painting shown in Plate XI, where the individual knots are distinguishable,(11) while a rug of the medallion Ushak type covers the table in Plate VII. What appears to be the same Anatolian so-called "lotto" rug appears in both Plate I and Plate XIV, although the artist made the central medallion yellow in one case and green in the other.(12) Only three "rug covers" are listed in the 1676 inventory, so perhaps Vermeer adapted these, varying patterns and colors to create the many rugs depicted in his paintings.

The large-figured tapestries that Vermeer often painted as curtains could have been woven in the southern Netherlands in the late sixteenth century [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VIII OMITTED].(13) The table cover in Plate XVII with its over-all pattern of large, naturalistic flowers and plants is reminiscent of sixteenth-century Netherlandish examples. The artist may have learned to appreciate the subtleties of weave and pattern from his father, Reynier Janszoon (or Jansz.) Vos (1591-1652), who was a caffa worker (a weaver of fine decorative fabrics) as well as an art dealer and innkeeper in Delft.(14)