17th century AD

Art in America, May, 1996 by Trevor Winkfield

Mundane logic suggests that a point of entry into this chimeric omneity is via the View of Delft, the natural habitat of Vermeer's protagonists and the one place we'd expect a helping hand from the artist. Marcel Proust and John Ashbery, among others, have considered this the most beautiful painting in the world, and superficially at least its dumb gorgeousness makes it the most accessible. Alas, it's a complete dead end for the novice explorer, for despite its shimmering allure inviting a visit, this is one of Vermeer's most forbidding tableaus. We are hapless spectators on the wrong bank; a river acting as a moat divides us from the city on the opposite shore, a city whose shining ramparts have all the foreignness of glaciers. If only we could reach the other side we feel sure we'd gain access through the looming gate to that warren of parlors Vermeer depicted. Impatient, we catch ourselves asking if the enchanted ferry will leave anytime soon. But the ferry stays put: nothing can float across this Dutch Styx. In a very real sense we're as stranded as the unseen folk on the other side, both groups trapped on opposite sides of the final screen.

Vermeer's compelling naturalism is at the same time very odd, and somehow unearthly. Consider the waxen morphology of the Portrait of a Young Woman whose dazed, almost imbecilic features paradoxically support a brow resembling the dome of a planetarium. The peculiar proportions of his figures--bulbous as bell jars yet windmill solid--give them the presence of miniaturized giants lowered like chess pieces onto checkered floors. Despite their mundane occupations, these personages radiate an intensity that gives them a godlike air--they are like Classical deities caught off duty.

Massively sculptural, the figures often seem too large for their surroundings. The industrious lacemaker, the one whose hair parting promises egress to eternity, can assume the overpowering stature of a 50-mile-high goddess stitching together the continent of Africa. The astronomer studiously rotating his celestial sphere can double as Atlas about to catapult a constellation along its trajectory, while in another canvas the pouring of milk into a bowl is transmuted into lava flowing from the lip of a volcano.

All the while, the artist is the omnipotent puppet master hovering offstage. Lady Standing at the Virginal offers an almost perfect illustration of Vermeer's manipulative role. The musician, as though enlarged from one of the blue figurative tiles skirting the baseboard, stands beneath a painting of the emissary of love, Cupid. Cross-eyed and brandishing a blank card--Vermeer has a sly, mischievous sense of humor few acknowledge--Cupid (or rather Vermeer) boldly impales the musician's coiffure with his bow. Knowing Vermeer to be one of the most meticulous composers in Western art, many viewers consider this the clumsiest juxtaposition in the entire oeuvre ... that is, until we register it as love controlling his victim by means of puppet strings.