A fresh look at Vermeer
Thought for the Day
Friday 31st October 2025
Good morning. Hanging on the wall of our house for decades now has been a copy of Vermeer’s painting ‘The Girl with a pearl earring.’ It shows a young girl in an oriental style turban half turned towards the viewer with the shape of her large liquid eyes matched by a pearl dropping down from her ear. I am hardly alone in loving this painting for it is one of the most iconic pictures of our time, and has been the basis of both a novel and a film. This painting and its artist Vermeer is now in the news for a new book by the art critic Andrew Graham Dixon, based on a decade of careful research, seeks to revolutionize the way we understand these paintings. He shows that they were not just pretty scenes designed to be sold on the art market but were commissioned to hang on the walls of a single house by a women who belonged to a devout Christian sect. In this house surrounded by these paintings the group met to pray and make music. Vermeer himself participated in these gatherings.
Andrew Graham Dixon argues that each of these paintings has a particular symbolic significance. The girl with a pearl earing for example is dressed as Mary Magdalene, whom the community revered. The painting entitled ‘Woman holding a balance’ indicates a weighing of the woman’s conscience before God whilst ‘The milkmaid’ in which a woman pours milk out of a jug indicates food being prepared for the poor. No doubt critics will continue to argue for years over the exact details of this symbolism but what interests me is perhaps something even more fundamental. What is it about these paintings that make Vermeer one of the most popular of artists in our time? Why do they make such an intense spiritual impact? I think it is because Vermeer in his depictions of people captures something of the shock of their being, the fact that they actually exist, their sheer isness. At the same time he conveys something of their mystery. Those woman - reading a letter or playing a musical instrument - have a life of their own, different from ours and unique. In all this he is able to convey the miracle of the ordinary, the marvel of the everyday. Women in his paintings go about their ordinary business, sweeping or sewing in some hidden corner, with a stillness that is almost palpable. In retrospect it does not seem surprising that these paintings should have come out of a religious sect that was at once intensely devout and tolerant. And apart from the pleasure they give us, they show that nothing is ordinary. The daily routine is a miracle.