Original subtitles

- Welcome to The National Gallery in London,

and to a fascinating exhibition Vermeer and Music,

The Art of Love and Leisure,

part of our ongoing event cinema series,

Exhibition Onscreen.

The National Gallery has chosen to explore

the serene genius of Johannes Vermeer

by focusing on the musical references in his art

in order to understand his broader place

in the extraordinary period of art history

known as the Dutch Golden Age.

This may not be a particularly large exhibition,

but as we'll discover Vermeer paintings are rare

and so any exhibition of his work is a momentous occasion.

In this film, we'll examine the exhibition in depth

as well as explore the life and work of this most

mysterious artist who left more questions than answers,

but also some of the most exquisite paintings

in the whole history of art.

For Vermeer and his artistic contemporaries,

music was a favorite subject.

A means of conveying allegro innuendo,

social status or romantic encounter,

the depiction of music and art

carried a diverse range of meaning.

But artists also sought to communicate something

of the power and beauty of music itself,

to capture the essence of one art form by means of another.

Gathered in a series of elegantly designed rooms,

the exhibition draws on the best examples

from The National Gallery's impressive collection

of Dutch paintings to explore this coming together

of art and music in all its different manifestations.

I'm joined by the exhibitions curator, Betsy Wieseman,

here at the very heart of the exhibition

in the room where the five Vermeer paintings are.

Betsy, what was the actual starting point

for this exhibition?

- The actual starting point was the opportunity

to have Vermeer's painting of The Guitar Player

on loan from Kenwood House while they're closed for

renovations to the building.

It's a painting from the last part of Vermeer's career,

probably dating about 1670-72.

In terms of the size, the scale, the subject matter,

it fits perfectly with the Gallery's two paintings

by Vermeer, both of which depict women playing a virginal,

so we have three paintings from about the same period

in his career, all with musical subjects.

I thought it would be such a fantastic opportunity

to show those together and to explore a little more

about music in Vermeer's paintings.

- Why is music such a broadly popular subject

in Dutch paintings in the 17th Century,

and why was Vermeer drawn to it?

- I think many artists were drawn to musical subjects

because music really pervaded life in The Netherlands

in the 17th Century.

I always have the sense that you could walk out

of your house at any moment and somewhere, somehow,

hear some music.

Of course, I think, for so many people it had

such positive enjoyable connotations that artists

wanted to record that in paintings and also,

people wanted to enjoy paintings of musical subjects.

- It's interesting because Vermeer succeeds at such

a harmonious painter, but is there any sense

in this exhibition in the way he confronts music,

that there is a confrontation between artforms,

or is it a fairly symbiotic relationship broadly speaking,

between music and painting?

- I think it's very symbiotic and I think with

his late paintings especially.

There's an almost cenesthetic approach to them,

that you either hear the music or you hear,

just as importantly, the silence between musical sounds.

- It's interesting. The space is to a painter

and certainly to a sculptur what silence is to a musician.

- Absolutely, and we see that in Vermeer's paintings

in those blank spaces of the walls behind the figures.

Other artists might have put in another painting

or some sort of accessory to fill the space.

But Vermeer's absolutely comfortable in that visual

silence in the background of his paintings.

- Thank you for now. Thank you.

- Thanks.

- Vermeer is one of the most fascinating characters

in European art, not just because of his extraordinary

beautiful and enigmatic seductively paintings

that he produced, but also because given his status

in European art history, relatively little

is known about him.

Vermeer left no account of his life.

What we do has been forensically pieced together

over the centuries,

from desperate records and documents,

and archives across Holland.

Johannes Vermeer was born in Delft

in autumn, 1632.

The only son and second child of Reijnier

and his wife Digna.

Reijnier was by training, a silk worker,

originally in Amsterdam and then here,

in the smaller city of Delft near the Dutch coast.

Towards the end of the 1620s, Reijnier had begun

dealing in paintings.

Then around 1630 he'd also turn to inn-keeping.

Delft was one of the wealthiest cities

in the province of Holland.

Prosperous due to it's striving industries

of tapestry weaving, brewing,

and perhaps above all, Delftware.

Johannes early years were spent in the family hostelry,

The Flying Fox, on the Voldersgracht.

His father's surname at this time was Vos, meaning fox.

By 1640, when Johannes was 18 years old,

the family name had changed for reasons

that remain unclear to van der Meer, from the lake,

contracted to Vermeer.

At the same time, his parents also gambled

on the purchase of a bigger, better inn.

- This was a pretty prominent inn

on the main square in Delft.

It was a place that would have been frequented by

the upper-class citizens and we know in The Netherlands

at that time there was a great interest

in acquiring art.

The numbers of paintings in households was quite remarkable,

and travelers from different countries would come

to The Netherlands and they would see even the butcher

or the baker have paintings hanging in their home.

At some point, young Johannes decided

he didn't only want to admire art or help his father

sell it, but to make it too.

Johannes's father died in 1652 and Johannes

was expected to run the family business.

Yet, after little more than a year,

he was accepted into the Guild of Saint Luke,

a prerequisite to becoming a working artist.

Artists at this time were expected

to undergo an apprenticeship,

usually of six years with a master painter

who belonged to a guild.

It was these guilds of accredited artists

and regulated their commercial activities.

Vermeer left behind no letters, no account of his life.

It must have been here that he learned how to paint.

- To me, I think it's one the fascinating things

that distinguishes Vermeer from other artists,

actually, in fundamental ways.

He starts his career, not as a painter of interior

genre scenes or painter of views of Delft,

or little streets or things like that,

but as a history painter.

He starts painting large-scale biblical

and mythological things.

For most people, these paintings are an affirm.

They can't really figure them out.

Why do they exist?

Why is Christ in the house of Mary and Martha?

What does that have to do with Vermeer?

This is perhaps the earliest surviving painting

by Vermeer.

It's certainly the largest and quite possibly

a commission.

Saint Luke's gospel tells of Christ's visit

to two sisters, Mary and Martha.

Christ praised Mary's desire to listen to his teachings,

whereas Martha is shown more concerned with daily chores.

The treatment of light and the characterization

of the subjects were probably inspired by artists

in Utrecht, who had in-turn been influenced by

the master Italian painter, Caravaggio.

Just over a year later, Vermeer painted this,

The Procuress.

Few of Vermeer's paintings are as provocative as this

depiction of a prostitute and their client,

a conventional scene in contemporary Dutch art.

Here, the procuress looks approvingly on,

while a soldier offers the young women a coin

while fondling her breast.

Holding a glass of wine in one hand,

she willingly accepts his money with the other.

On the left an elegant dandy, dressed in a beret

and a fashionable slit-sleeved jacket,

smiles out at the viewer.

This dimly lit figure is thought to be the only

existing portrait of Vermeer himself.

This is Diana and her Nymphs,

another of the early known work,

painted when Johannes was 31 or 32.

It's true that these mythological and biblical scenes

seem at first glance far from the Vermeer we know,

but look again.

The grainy textures, the serene female figures,

the dreamlike atmosphere.

These paintings actually point out what was to come,

rather more than one might have thought.

- Painted when Vermeer was in his early 30s,

The Music Lesson depicts a young woman playing

a keyboard while a male companion stands by,

his parted lips suggesting he may be singing.

Though the pair are widely believed to be a pupil

and her teacher, the man himself didn't title the work

so the relationship between the two is a matter

of historic conjecture.

The inscription on the instrument reads,

music is the companion of joy, the medicine of sorrow.

Alluding to both music's alleged curative properties,

as well as to the fact that love, like music,

can be the source of both joy and sorrow.

With the viewer held at a distance by objects

in the foreground, and the glimpse of the woman

in the mirror above the virginal,

the painting is as much about looking

as it is about music.

Joining me to delve into the enigmatic world

of Vermeer's The Music Lesson,

is the writer Tracy Chevalier

Tracy, bigger picture first.

What drew you to Vermeer?

- I really loved Vermeer's paintings

because they're so quiet.

In a world that's really noisy,

in order to look at one of these paintings,

you have to slow right down,

get calm and quiet, and that's pretty unusual.

There's a special something, something to do with the light

and the color and the stillness of the paintings

that really drew me in.

- The Music Lesson, in particular,

is this quiet or is this one of the noisier

paintings he produced?

- I think this is a really quiet painting, really quiet.

Even though she's supposedly playing, I suppose,

I don't think they're saying anything to each other.

It's a very surprising painting to me,

because when you look at it, it's quite large for Vermeer,

and yet the actions taking place,

here it's off-center and a lot of the painting is just room.

So they're kind of squished together over there

in the back really far away from us,

so there's deliberate distance.

- Then this focal point, that of course,

are the two figures, but for me, the art historian,

I can't but be drawn to the mirror that shows her,

but also above her head the legs of the easels.

So Vermeer's unraveling the whole fiction

of painting and process, presumably that appeals

to you as a writer of fiction.

- Yes, it's subtly done because at first

you're looking at the people.

It's only after awhile you realize that's not a painting.

There is a painting on the right,

but this is the woman being reflected,

and even when her face is reflected in the painting,

you can't really see her face very well.

In the top are the legs of the easels.

He somehow wanted to insert himself,

and yet he's so far away and really the easel's out here.

There's no way that it could actually be reflected,

so he's playing around with perspective.

- It seems to me that there's so many

narrative possibilities in a Vermeer painting.

I mean, the most obvious one is the relationship

between these two.

But in the detailing, in the mirroring,

and what else is there,

in some ways that must make him very inspiring to you.

But on another level it's probably daunting isn't it?

There's almost too many ways this could go

if you were writing stories around it.

- It's inspiring, but I think the genius of it

is that you never really know.

So when I wrote about the painting

Girl With a Pearl Earring, I wrote a whole novel

about the look on her face and I still don't really

know what she was thinking.

In this painting, it's called The Music Lesson,

but Vermeer didn't name, even title, his paintings,

and so maybe this is a man teaching a woman to play,

but maybe it's a suitor listening to pretense Julia,

his fiance, or it could be a father

listening to his daughter.

It's very difficult to interpret.

And because they're so far from us,

it's like Vermeer doesn't really want us to know.

He's saying I'm giving them a private moment

and you're standing here and you're not going

to get any further into that story.

- That's interesting, so you don't think

that he is giving us a series of clues,

which we can use and we can construct our own narratives.

You're saying fundamentally, that you think

he's trying metaphorically to ban us from the works,

always trying to resist a narrative interpretation.

- Yes, I think that when he does allow more

open interpretation the paintings aren't as successful.

The most successful paintings are the most mysterious.

For instance, symbolically you have a bass fell here.

You have a pitcher of wine, they're both very curvaceous,

and in Dutch symbolism of the time,

that's meant to indicate a woman.

It could be very sexual, it could be the wine,

he's going to get her drunk, and then have his way with her.

But all of that seems so crude when you

apply it to this painting.

Yes, they are round.

They are there, but they don't,

to me they don't, feel like that's what's going on here.

- Tracy Chevalier, for the moment, thank you.

- You're welcome.

- This is the first room of the exhibition

and it's dedicated to the idea of music

is either allegory or attributes.

Music has long been an allegorical motif in art,

a tradition that continued in the Dutch Golden Age.

In a time before recorded sound,

the sense that music existed only in the moment

of performance and then disappeared forever,

was even more acute.

And so, in this Still Life, the musical instruments

that sit along side a skull, an hourglass,

and other objects, are intended to link the ephemeral

quality of music to the transitory nature of human life.

The musical instruments could also signify

personal attributes as in this Portrait of Constantijn

Hwygens and his Clerk.

Hwygens was a powerful and busy man,

secretary to the Dutch head of state.

He was also a passionate musician

who found the time to write over 800 musical pieces,

only a handful of which survived.

His musical abilities and knowledge of theory

were important indicators of his sophistication,

and in this painting an archlute, a long-necked

instrument with additional base strings,

lies on a table gathered together with an array of objects

representing his other interests.

Carel Fabritius's gentle handling of the cool Delft light,

and interest in optics must have had an influence

on Johannes Vermeer who was just beginning as an artist,

but Fabritius was resident in the city.

This small painting shows a man believed to be Fibritius

himself sitting next to a number of instruments,

which he is presumed to be selling.

He looks out pensively on a strangely quiet street scene,

perhaps contemplating the two parts in life

that seem to be on offer.

More worldly pleasures and preoccupations are embodied,

both by the tavern sign behind and the musical instruments

themselves, once again a short-hand for everything

that is transitory in life.

Then across the way stands Delft's imposing Nieuwe Kerk,

the new church with its offer of eternal life.

After 36 paintings in existence,

commonly attributed to Vermeer, a third are in the USA.

Some of these are now highlights at The Metropolitan

Museum of Art in New York,

and also here, at The National Gallery of Art,

Washington, D.C.

Vermeer, the painter of calm interiors,

is considered, perhaps more than ever,

in an increasingly phrenetic world,

one of the all-time greats and his paintings

are now priceless treasures of these collections.

They represent a pinnacle of a glorious period in art

known as the Dutch Golden Age.

In the mid-1500s, the preeminent power in Europe

flush with gold in the newly discovered American

territories, was Spain and among it domains

on the flat coastal plains adjoining the North Sea,

were the provinces of The Netherlands.

But in 1568, the Dutch revolted.

- What happened, was very much like the American Revolution,

that the northerners got tired of taxes

and all sorts of intrusions from Spain,

and wanted to free themselves from that kind of oversight.

Under the leadership of William of Orange,

or William the Silent, as he was also known,

the Dutch successfully created an independent state

in the northern provinces of The Netherlands.

- It was a moment of great celebration for

The Netherlands and a great pride of who they were

as a country.

It's huge, it's like they'd beaten back the small

little swampy area, beaten back this greatest power

in the world and who we are, our might,

and our world power becomes very conscious.

It went further than that.

What followed Spanish rule was a republic.

No king, no royal court.

A Dutch republic that began to rival Spain,

and England, France, and Portugal,

for the title of the greatest colonial power,

the world leader in trade, science, and art.

- This is a new and democratic and more open economy

based in urban manufacturing.

The two most important industries being

the manufacture of cloth, linen, canvas, cotton, and so on.

Supporting that is the number two reason,

is the great merchant marine of The Netherlands.

Their ships were always full, going in both directions,

and they were great middle-men in terms of their produce.

For example, they would get wool from the Baltic countries

and they would finish into bolts of cloth on a large scale.

This merchant marine empire stretched all the way to China

and ultimately to Japan, throughout South America,

and of course they were right here in New York,

which was New Amsterdam back in those days.

The northern provinces of The Netherlands,

including the province of Holland,

were full of bustling canals, ports, and dock yards.

In 1659 Vermeer painted this wonderful view

of his native city, a city full of beautiful,

expensive, well-furnished houses.

- Where you would have in other countries

the kings and queens or the emporors that would buy

paintings, not to skep the church, in the Dutch Republic,

there was a large group of people that made a lot of money

so which citizens and they would have paintings.

They would really fill up their house with paintings.

- This is remarkable.

The average house in Amsterdam in the 1650s

had 10 paintings in it.

This is not true for Manhattan today.

The reason in the global, the big picture,

would be that the main way you would hold

wealth in another country, land,

is basically unavailable in Holland.

It's remarkable how urban this culture is.

About 75% of the entire population lived in cities or towns.

If you went to France in the 1800s,

it would be 90% agrarian.

So this is really very different.

Extraordinary commercial success

had created a middle class who desired

to have paintings in their homes.

It is estimated that between 1600 and 1700,

some five million paintings were produced,

and this was the Dutch Golden Age,

for that incredible demand led to an abundance

of superb paintings.

Accounts from contemporary travelers to the Dutch Republic

remarked in surprise of the sheer volume

of paintings to be had there and in astonishment

of the people who seemed to be buying them.

It was commonplace for blacksmiths or cobblers,

merchants or bankers to adorn their homes

and shops with artworks.

This was something unique in Europe, art commissioned,

not by a court of kings and courtiers,

but by wealthy, and indeed, not-so-wealthy businessmen.

What they wanted was a reflection of their own lives.

- This work shows a finely dressed young woman

standing at a virginal,

her outward gaze an invitation to the viewer

to come and join her in making music.

The scene is set in a Delft interior, typical of Vermeer,

as light spills from a window on the left,

and onto a floor of black and white tiles.

The woman plays a muselar virginal,

an instrument usually played standing up.

Unlike the virginal scene in The Music Lesson,

or the one in The Gallery,

both featuring a printed motto,

this more deluxe version has a painted landscape on the lid,

done in the style of a Delft contemporary.

The instrument maker would leave certain areas blank,

allowing their clients to commission artists

to decorate the virginal, often doubling its price.

Behind the young woman, on the back wall, are two paintings,

a small landscape and an image of cupid

holding a playing card signifying faithfulness in love.

- I've been joined again by exhibition curator,

Betsy Wieseman.

Betsy, this room is filled with women

playing musical instruments of which, perhaps,

the most supreme example is this one.

What do we know about the women in general,

and this woman in particular?

Is this a portrait

Do we know anything about them

- I think it may be a little bit of everything.

I think Vermeer based the figures in his paintings,

perhaps, on family members or professional models,

or friends who would have stood for the paintings.

But I think they're intentionally generalized,

and idealized so that we can't relate them

to a specific person.

There's no way, looking at this,

that we can mistake it for a portrait.

It might bare a generic resemblance to someone,

but I think the intent is to make it intentionally

vague and anonymous, if you will, so that perhaps,

we can project ourselves into the painting a little better.

- The other thing that immediately strikes you

is the paintings within the painting,

but in particular the painting on the lid of the virginal.

Why would the virginal have that particular landscape,

for example, painted on it?

- I think a lot of musical instruments had

landscapes like this decorating them,

because it was something pleasant to look at.

Sometimes they have mythological figures

or people having a picnic, things like that.

Pleasant, pastoral associations.

The paintings here, both the painting on the background

wall and the one decorating the lid of the virginal,

are done by Vermeer in the style of one of his

Delft contemporaries, a landscape painter.

Sometimes they have printed motto's on the lid,

but a more expensive option would be to hire

a painter to paint a landscape or another scene

that you recommended to them.

- Just looking at this, in his lifetime,

would this painting have been more valuable

than the virginal he paints with a landscape on it,

or in the culture of Delft at the time,

would the instrument itself have been more valued?

- I think the instrument would have cost more.

Virginal's like this would have been incredibly expensive

and owned only by the very well-to-do.

We know from the inventory of Vermeer's possessions,

that he in fact, did not own a virginal like this.

On April the 20th, 1653, the 20-year old

Johannes Vermeer married Catharina Bolenes,

the daughter of a respectable and wealthy Catholic family.

Given Vermeer's financial circumstances and prospects

following his fathers death a few months before,

this was a fatuitous match.

Catharina's mother, Maria Thins, was reluctant

to give consent to the marriage but in the end relented,

perhaps only when the Protestant Vermeer

agreed to convert to Catholicism.

- This question of religion's important for Vermeer

because he grew up Protestant but converted to Catholicism

in order to marry the woman he loved.

Then he lives in his mother-in-law's house,

which was interesting for Vermeer's economy,

because the mother-in-law was moderately wealthy

and had a four story house.

So the question of housing, and even food,

was in part taken care of for Vermeer.

He was the person who would guide visitors

to the Catholic chapel in the neighborhood.

The Dutch Catholics, perhaps 30% in Delft,

worshiped mostly in chapels within private houses.

Vermeer's own painting, the Allegory of the Catholic Faith,

the one rather realistic thing about the picture,

the female figure who's an allegory of the faith itself

and a globe under her feet, she dominates the world.

She's looking up a glass sphere which symbolizes heaven.

But the surprising thing is the setting itself.

It's not a church or something allegorical.

It looks like the room in an ordinary house,

that was on a rather impromptu basis,

set up as a Catholic church.

Tapestry on the floor, used as a rug,

and a table which is modified into an altar,

by a blue cloth thrown over it.

This really reflected the conditions

of Catholic worship in The Netherlands.

It had to be in private.

- We were upheld in this country and all

the churches were white-washed.

So there were no paintings ordered for churches,

and with the new clientele, so to say,

new people ordering paintings, they would order portraits.

But this is not something new,

but because there was so many different people

ordering portraits then the artists also had to

make up a new genre of portraits,

because everybody wanted to have different portraits.

I think what is important, because there were

so many artists, they had to have niche markets,

because if everybody would make the same paintings,

then it wouldn't work.

Living in his mother-in-law's home,

Vermeer set to work in his first floor studio.

Here, the stage was set for the production

of the delicately lit domestic interiors,

for which he is so renowned.

The marriage, too, was productive.

Over the years, Vermeer would father fifteen children,

between seven and eleven of whom seemed to have

survived infancy.

- The house he lived in was not that big,

so there must have been a room where he would close the door

and make his paintings, because I cannot imagine

making what he did with the noise of young children,

because I come from a very large family myself,

so I have a lot of brothers and sisters.

It was very difficult to find a quiet room in the house

that we lived and we had a very large house.

I can relate in that aspect to Vermeer,

but then when you would look at his paintings it's so quiet.

Interestingly, this is the only painting

that has children in it.

Are they Vermeer's own?

We'll never know.

No names, no explanation survived for any of his subjects.

What is apparent is a stillness,

maybe a peace that never existed in his own household.

It was these, somewhat peaceful, domestic scenes

that Vermeer concentrated on for the rest of his life.

As the probable 50 paintings

that Vermeer made during his lifetime,

just 36 survived to the present day.

It's a rare moment that Vermeer's from different

collections are brought together.

Rarer still, because The Guitar Player,

from Kenwood House in London, is so fragile

that it never travels and so has never been part

of a Vermeer exhibition before.

- The Kenwood House picture has been physically here

in The Gallery for the past year or so,

while Kenwood House has been closed for repairs.

We've had this honored guest in The Gallery,

but this is the first time that we've seen

the three paintings together.

It's really a once in a lifetime opportunity,

just to have those three pictures,

and no other paintings together on the wall.

I think that makes it even more powerful,

just because that's what you're focusing on,

and it's almost as if you're in the artists studio,

and you see the paintings lined up as he's finishing them.

What's been so fascinating about doing this exhibition

is getting that better sense of the artist at work,

and his thought process as he's doing different

interpretations of the theme of music

in these wonderful little genre pictures.

It's amazing to see the three paintings together.

It just sort of comes over you like a wave.

It's a very moving moment.

- One of the most important metaphorical roles

of music in art was to communicate the concept of harmony.

Harmonious relationships, both between men and women,

and within families, could be expressed through

the depiction of a unified ensem or direct.

The implication in this painting is that the young

woman will soon be joined in just such a duet.

Her virtuous nature is contrasted

with the painting on the wall behind her,

showing a prostitute playing a lute,

with a procurator brothel madam demanding payment

from the prospective customer.

It's been suggested that this work is a companion

piece to Young Woman Standing At a Virginal.

Both show solo female keyboard players

gazing out at the viewer.

But in this work, the viola de gamba in the foreground

lies ready to be played, a direct appeal to duet

with the young woman.

While the other is set during the day,

here the scene takes place after dark.

A visit made in the evening would be a much

more private interaction, than one made

in the middle of the day.

I'm joined again by the novelist Tracy Chevalier.

Tracy, it's been suggested, I think many times,

that this painting, A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal,

is a pendant piece, a companion to

The Girl Standing by the Virginal.

Do you see inter-related terms or do you think

they're self

- I go back and forth about it.

They're hung in the same room in The National Gallery,

so it's quite tempting to see them together.

They are probably painted around the same time,

and yet this one has a very different feel to it.

It's much darker, a lot of it is quite murky.

You see the painting in the background is very murky.

The floor is a bit dingy.

When you think about it you usually see

the tiles kind of popping out.

What you see popping out is her face, her sleeve,

and the bass viola there.

She has a beautiful face, but you look at the rest of her,

and some of the painting is not actually that great either.

Look at those arms and the hands.

Somebody who likened them to pig trotters,

and I sort of laughed and I thought,

we don't normally allow ourselves

to criticize master painters.

We just think every painting they've done is perfect.

That's not the case, even with Vermeer.

I think there's a feeling of strain about this,

that I don't see in The Lady Standing at the Virginal

in quite the same way.

This is a darker piece.

- In the depths of your rich imagination,

what kind of a man do you imagine Vermeer now,

as a consequence of having looked

at his paintings so intently?

- I had to make a decision about what he was like

in order to write a novel about him.

What I decided was, based on the few facts we know,

he had 11 children, so it would have been

a huge chaotic household.

We know he lived with his mother-in-law,

and we know that most of his paintings

were painted in this room, in this corner.

They think it was on the first floor

of his mother-in-law's house in this one room.

I think, how could he paint these very quiet

contemplative paintings with 11 children around,

and all of the servants, and the wife, and everybody?

Painting is a form of refuge?

- Yes, the answer is that he compartmentalized his life.

He kept his daily life away from his studio life.

In my book that I decide he says nobody can come

into this studio, not the wife, not the kids.

The servant can come in to clean and that's it.

There's this quite, in a way, a slight ruthlessness

about getting his time away from the family.

This is a refuge and I think this is a painting

that reveals, maybe some anxiety, in that refuge.

That it's not such a refuge after all.

There's a glistening beauty to the pearls,

to the sleeves, but he didn't do that with the gold

around this painting there where he does in some

of the other paintings that we see in this gallery.

He doesn't bring out the best in this scene.

He leaves it dark.

- Tracy Chevalier, there we must leave it.

Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- The Guitar Player marks a compositional change

from the other Vermeer pictures in the exhibition,

and in his over in general.

Vermeer places the figure to the left in the frame,

leaving a bare wall and some books

to take up the remainder of the picture.

The imbalance suggests a sense of movement

and impending change to this deceptively simple image.

With tipped head and a gentle smile,

the woman fixes her gaze on something just outside.

Some magnetic presence seems to threaten

to pull her from our view,

suggesting that she now plays, not for us,

but for an unseen visitor.

Once on loan from Kenwood House, The Guitar Player,

has been subject to an extensive technical analysis

here at The National Gallery.

One of the most fascinating discoveries

is the high number of paint brush bristles

embedded in the paint in this,

and the other Vermeer's on show.

This could have been due to Vermeer

using poor quality or old brushes,

an intriguing insight into the state of his studio,

or even his financial situation towards the end of his life.

Equally fascinating, is a pair of fingerprints

detected on the top edge of The Guitar Player,

left we presume, by the great master himself,

when the paint was still wet.

Betsy Wieseman, as the curator of this exhibition,

were you surprised to discover that Vermeer

didn't have a pristine studio,

given that he presents such a clean vision

of the world in his art?

- On the one hand, I wasn't so surprised

because he did have 11 children,

but on the other hand I was surprised

that it left a physical trace on the paintings.

- This kind of conflict that we perceive

between the process and the immaculate way

that he produces the image, is one thing.

But the other thing that's so remarkable about this work,

is the radical cropping of this figure,

and the fact that we're brought much more intimately

and directly into the picture.

Is this a radical departure in Vermeer's art,

or am I over

- I think it is unusual and one thing I should point out

for this painting is that it is on it's original

strainer and the original canvas.

It's never been cut or modified in any way.

- This is his intention.

- Absolutely. I think that he did it in order

to animate the composition and to give us

a sort of sense of the unexpected because it seems as if

she's being pulled outside of the picture,

and obviously she's looking off in that direction.

Her attention is no longer on us,

the viewer standing in front of her,

but something that we can't see, that we're not privy to.

I think that's Vermeer's way of enticing us even further,

because there's something that we want to be a part of,

and I think there's this subconscious feeling of jealousy.

We want to be the one that she's looking at,

and that her attention is directed towards.

By the beginning of the 1670s,

Vermeer, with a large family to feed,

was desperately short of funds.

In 1672, things deteriorated further.

The so-called rampjaar, Year of Disaster,

saw invading armies from France, England, and Germany.

The economy under these assaults practically collapsed.

- After the French invasion, the rampjaar and all that,

the markets rise up, the effects makes an impact

on him as a painter, but also for his art dealing.

So we know that he can't sell his paintings.

There is quite a few paintings left over,

so that's when they have their financial problems.

The effects of the rampjaar

were certainly complicating his poor financial situation,

yet Vermeer's paintings bare no sign of the crisis.

- There's one great painting by Vermeer that suggests

he is thinking beyond his own lifetime,

and that's The Art of Painting in Vienna,

where he shows an artist very much like Vermeer,

who is painting a model who is a very attractive

young lady holding a trombone.

She is Cleo, the Muse of History,

and this is a very rich allegory about the status

of the art of painting in Vermeer's time,

and probably a suggestion that Dutch painting in particular,

had rose to the highest level in the judgment of people

like themselves, who consider the highest level

to be the greatest, fairest, similitude,

rather than the most pretentious, mythological

subject or whatever.

So that large painting was kept in his studio

and was probably, calling card wouldn't be the perfect

term for it, but a kind of sign for his ability.

Just imagine going up the narrow staircase

in Vermeer's house and you're there under the rafters

of the roof and there's probably one window

looking out onto the town square,

and a fairly humble interior with a wooden floor,

and maybe two easels and a dirty work table.

You see Vermeer's image of the artist's studio

with a marble floor and a tapestry,

and grand decoration, and much larger scale.

He's dressed like some bohemian dandy from the past.

It is a kind of dream world in that respect.

Vermeer died, possibly from a stroke,

on December 15th, 1675.

His death at the age of 43 was described by his wife,

Catharina, as owing to the great burden of his children

and having no means of his own he had lapsed into decay.

- You know that we have an inventory of Vermeer's house

shortly after his death and we see so many things

in his paintings that don't turn up in the inventory.

This seems to be pretty complete.

It's got his studio, etc. and there's not a single

musical instrument or tapestry.

There are, I think, about 16 pictures throughout the house,

and a few other fancy things including the yellow

erman or imitation erman and velvet jacket in yellow

that we see in a number of pictures.

It's remarkable to see no tapestries,

no brass chandeliers, apparently,

and no musical instruments at all.

He was one of the greatest painters

of the Dutch Golden Age.

It is brilliant that he began to gain to wide

recognition two centuries later,

when a French critic praised him in the 1860s.

At the time of Johannes Vermeer's death,

despite the wealth displayed in his paintings,

he, the artist, was virtually penniless.