Vermeer: a life lost and found

Vermeer: a life lost and found

Andrew Graham-Dixon

Allen Lane £30

978-1-846-14710-4

For many decades hanging in one of our rooms has been a copy of Vermeer’s painting Girl with a pearl earing. I am not alone, for this is the most iconic work of one of the most popular artists of our time. There has always been a mysterious stillness about Vermeer’s paintings, an almost spiritual quality. Now, in a ground breaking book which will radically transform the way we see these works, Andrew Graham-Dixon has revealed why they cast such a spell.

The vast majority of them  are not, as might have been thought, genre paintings sold on the art market. They were commissioned by  a particular couple, Pieter van Ruikven and his wife Maria de Knuijt, for their own  home, and they paid Vermeer a set sum to paint them over a period of years. Andrew Graham Dixon shows by a careful examination of the documents of the time, wills, bills, accounts of visits, debts and sales that this couple belonged to a pious Christian group who held meetings for prayer, worship and music in their house. These paintings on their walls expressed their understanding of  the Christian faith in everyday terms.

Religious life in the Dutch Republic at the time was fraught and dangerous. It was dominated by the strict Calvinistic Reformed Church. At the same time there were a number of splinter groups wanting something more tolerant. Emerging out of an Arminian theology they called themselves Observants and within that wider grouping, Collegiants. Women played a key role and of course most of Vermeer’s paintings focus on women. Graham-Dixon builds up a picture of these Collegiants and their contacts with Pieiter and Maria, who lived in a house beside an Observant church. Against this background he examines each one of Vermeer’s paintings arguing for its Christian significance. The girl with a pear earing for example is Mary Magdalene, for whom the group had a particular devotion, recognising the risen Christ. Woman with a balance  depicts a woman weighing her conscience before God, whilst The Milkmaid  which shows a woman pouring milk from a jug is a sign of our duty to feed the poor. These Christians were peace loving and also looking for the promised new heaven and new earth which they thought would come soon. So Vermeer’s painting View of Delft , it is argued, is not just an ordinary town scene but a sign of that new age when all will be enveloped in peace.

Andrew Graham-Dixon is careful at every point to put in ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘perhaps’ and ‘probable’ for the direct hard evidence is scarce, but his plausible conjectures are like a good detective story and they build up to a fascinating story. One particularly difficult feature to fit into his story is the fact that Vermeer’s wife was a Roman Catholic and they lived in the house of his fiercely catholic mother-in-law on whom they were financially depended. All their 11 children were baptised as Catholic. This suggests that Vermeer’s own presence in the group of his patrons must have been very limited. But overall Andrew-Dixon convinces and as a result of his detailed research  these paintings will never be viewed  in the same way again.

Richard Harries is the author of Seeing God in Art: the Christian faith in 30 images, SPCK