Human Connections In The Age Of Vermeer

Download or read book Traces of Vermeer written by Jane Jelley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-21 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johannes Vermeer's luminous paintings are loved and admired around the world, yet we do not understand how they were made. We see sunlit spaces; the glimmer of satin, silver, and linen; we see the softness of a hand on a lute string or letter. We recognise the distilled impression of a moment of time; and we feel it to be real. We might hope for some answers from the experts, but they are confounded too. Even with the modern technology available, they do not know why there is no evidence of any preliminary drawing; why there are shifts in focus; and why his pictures are unusually blurred. Some wonder if he might possibly have used a camera obscura to capture what he saw before him. The few traces Vermeer has left behind tell us little: there are no letters or diaries; and no reports of him at work. Jane Jelley has taken a new path in this detective story. A painter herself, she has worked with the materials of his time: the cochineal insect and lapis lazuli; the sheep bones, soot, earth, and rust. She shows us how painters made their pictures layer by layer; she investigates old secrets; and hears travellers' tales. She explores how Vermeer could have used a lens in the creation of his masterpieces. The clues were there all along. After all this time, now we can unlock the studio door, and catch a glimpse of Vermeer inside, painting light.

Download or read book Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing written by Laura J. Snyder and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-03-16 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable story of how an artist and a scientist in seventeenth-century Holland transformed the way we see the world. On a summer day in 1674, in the small Dutch city of Delft, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek—a cloth salesman, local bureaucrat, and self-taught natural philosopher—gazed through a tiny lens set into a brass holder and discovered a never-before imagined world of microscopic life. At the same time, in a nearby attic, the painter Johannes Vermeer was using another optical device, a camera obscura, to experiment with light and create the most luminous pictures ever beheld. “See for yourself!” was the clarion call of the 1600s. Scientists peered at nature through microscopes and telescopes, making the discoveries in astronomy, physics, chemistry, and anatomy that ignited the Scientific Revolution. Artists investigated nature with lenses, mirrors, and camera obscuras, creating extraordinarily detailed paintings of flowers and insects, and scenes filled with realistic effects of light, shadow, and color. By extending the reach of sight the new optical instruments prompted the realization that there is more than meets the eye. But they also raised questions about how we see and what it means to see. In answering these questions, scientists and artists in Delft changed how we perceive the world. In Eye of the Beholder, Laura J. Snyder transports us to the streets, inns, and guildhalls of seventeenth-century Holland, where artists and scientists gathered, and to their studios and laboratories, where they mixed paints and prepared canvases, ground and polished lenses, examined and dissected insects and other animals, and invented the modern notion of seeing. With charm and narrative flair Snyder brings Vermeer and Van Leeuwenhoek—and the men and women around them—vividly to life. The story of these two geniuses and the transformation they engendered shows us why we see the world—and our place within it—as we do today. Eye of the Beholder was named "A Best Art Book of the Year" by Christie's and "A Best Read of the Year" by New Scientist in 2015.

Download or read book The Ashgate Research Companion to Dutch Art of the Seventeenth Century written by Wayne Franits and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the tremendous number of studies produced annually in the field of Dutch art over the last 30 years or so, and the strong contemporary market for works by Dutch masters of the period as well as the public's ongoing fascination with some of its most beloved painters, until now there has been no comprehensive study assessing the state of research in the field. As the first study of its kind, this book is a useful resource for scholars and advanced students of seventeenth-century Dutch art, and also serves as a springboard for further research. Its 19 chapters, divided into three sections and written by a team of internationally renowned art historians, address a wide variety of topics, ranging from those that might be considered "traditional" to others that have only drawn scholarly attention comparatively recently.

Download or read book Heroines, Harpies, and Housewives written by Martha Moffitt Peacock and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-11-16 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-Honorable Mention for the 2021 Book Award by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender (SSEMWG) In Heroines, Harpies, and Housewives, Martha Moffitt Peacock provides a novel interpretive approach to the artistic practice of Imaging Women of Consequence in the Dutch Golden Age. From the beginnings of the new Republic, visual celebrations of famous heroines who crossed gender boundaries by fighting in the Revolt against Spain or by distinguishing themselves in arts and letters became an essential and significant cultural tradition that reverberated throughout the long seventeenth century. This collective memory of consequential heroines who equaled, or outshone, men is frequently reflected in empowering representations of other female archetypes: authoritative harpies and noble housewives. Such enabling imagery helped in the structuring of gender norms that positively advanced a powerful female identity in Dutch society.

Download or read book Human Connections in the Age of Vermeer written by Arthur K. Wheelock (Jr.) and published by Scala Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human Connections in the Age of Vermeer focuses on the many forms of communication that existed in seventeenth-century Dutch society between family members, lovers, and professional acquaintances, both present and absent. The forty-four carefully selected Dutch genre paintings include major works by many of the finest masters of the period, including Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu. Vermeer's three masterpieces about love letters form the core of the exhibition as they are profound examples of the power of communication. Dutch artists of the seventeenth century portrayed the wide range of emotions elicited by the various forms of communication, not only in the manner in which they render gestures and facial expressions of personal interactions, but also in the ways in which they show men and women responding to the written word. The painters often introduced objects from daily life that had symbolic implications, among them musical instruments, to enrich the pictorial narratives of their scenes. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Communication: Visualizing the Human Connection in the Age of Vermeer (2011-2012), which celebrates the 400th anniversary of the diplomatic exchanges between Japan and the Netherlands, this book connects the pictorial and the literary aspects of Dutch cultural traditions during the Golden Age. AUTHOR: Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. is the curator of Northern Baroque Paintings at the National Gallery of Art. He is also a professor of Art History at the University of Maryland. Wheelock has written extensively on Vermeer and his contemporaries, including the exhibition catalogue Johannes Vermeer (1995). Danielle H.A.C. Lokin is the former director of the Stedelijk Museum het Prinsenhof, Delft, and is the senior consultant at BMC Groep, Amersfoort. Ms. Lokin has published widely on seventeenth-century Dutch art, including Delft Masters: Vermeer's Contemporaries (1996). 70 colour illustrations

Download or read book Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age written by Blaise Ducos and published by Art Book Magazine Distribution. This book was released on 2019-03-20T00:00:00+01:00 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accompanying the exhibition at Louvre Abu Dhabi, the catalogue Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age provides an image-rich overview of the artworks exhibited, complimented by four essays. The first situates The Leiden Collection within the context of the Dutch Golden Age. The second and third describe the major role that the Netherlands played on a global scale in the in the 17th century, the specificities of the Dutch Golden Age as well as the work of Rembrandt and his contemporaries, rooted in the society of that time and place. The fourth essay sheds light on the particular role that drawing played in the creative process of Dutch artists.

Download or read book The Gardner Heist written by Ulrich Boser and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of one museum, two thieves, and the Boston underworld: “Boser cracks the cold case of the art world’s greatest unsolved mystery.” —Vanity Fair Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and committed the largest art heist in history. They stole a dozen masterpieces, including one Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and five Degas. But after thousands of leads, hundreds of interviews, and a $5 million reward, not a single painting has been recovered. Worth as much as half a billion dollars, the missing masterpieces have become the Holy Grail of the art world and their theft one of the nation’s most extraordinary unsolved mysteries. Art detective Harold Smith worked the theft for years, and after his death, reporter Ulrich Boser decided to pick up where he left off. Traveling deep into the art underworld, Boser explores Smith’s unfinished leads and comes across a remarkable cast of characters, including a brilliant rock ’n’ roll art thief and a golden-boy gangster who professes his innocence in rhyming verse. A tale of greed, obsession, and loss, The Gardner Heist is as compelling as the stolen masterpieces themselves. “Captivating.” —The Wall Street Journal “A tantalizing whodunit.” —The Boston Globe