A major new Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam displays the artist’s evocative and serene paintings of daily life – but they harbour secret, symbolic messages, writes Matthew Wilson.
This month, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam opens its doors to the largest ever retrospective of Johannes Vermeer, bringing together 28 of the artist’s 37 extant paintings. It is an intelligent, carefully curated, and stylish exhibition, and a genuinely once-in-a-lifetime event. What first strikes you at the exhibition is Vermeer’s incredibly realistic painting technique, particularly his skill in depicting light. How it gives shape and volume to objects, and how different varieties of sunlight, filtered through windowpanes and tinged by cloud-cover, modify the colours of objects, and make textiles seem to sparkle.
But Vermeer’s art is like an ice-covered lake, where hidden life lurks beneath a deceptively cool and crystalline surface. Within the artist’s beautifully constructed visual reality is another dimension: an invisible reality of ideas spoken in the language of symbols. “For Vermeer, symbolism was crucial,” Pieter Roelofs, one of the co-curators of the exhibition, tells BBC Culture. One of the curators’ interests is how symbols functioned in Vermeer’s art to communicate religious ideas. “They helped in presenting his paintings as a kind of virtuous example.”
More like this:
– The mysteries of Girl with a Pearl Earring
– Why Vermeer’s paintings are less ‘real’ than we think
– Who was the Girl with a Pearl Earring?
Here’s how five seemingly random objects – a curtain, a footwarmer, a jacket, a set of weighing scales, and a glass orb – expose the deeper meanings of Vermeer’s paintings.
