Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum review: ‘one of the great art experiences’
This show is easily the largest Vermeer retrospective ever and is surprisingly ‘revolutionary’
“Everybody loves Vermeer,” said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. His paintings are “irresistible”: “the magical light, the air of perfection, the whispery moods, the intoxicating combinations of yellow and blue”. They are also very rare things indeed: Johannes Vermeer (1632-75) seems to have produced only about two paintings per year; it is thought that he completed about 45 in total, of which just 37 survive; three are disputed, and one has been missing since a robbery in 1990.
So it is a great coup that Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has managed to unite so many of them for this landmark exhibition. Seven years in the making, the show is easily the largest Vermeer retrospective ever, bringing together a full 28 of his paintings, from little-known early landscapes to world-famous masterpieces.
As scholarly as it is “relentlessly pleasing”, the event plunges the viewer into Vermeer’s world. The surprise is “how revolutionary” it all seems. We thought we knew Vermeer so well; but we didn’t. “Paradigm-shifting, brilliantly presented, cleverly designed, revelatory, intoxicating”, this is “one of the great art experiences of my lifetime”.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The show is “perfectly argued” and “perfectly paced”, said Jason Farago in The New York Times. It requires no explanatory videos or comparative works to pad out its ten galleries, instead leaving us to focus on the paintings alone – and what paintings they are. The Milkmaid, for instance, stands just “18 inches tall”, but packs in a universe of ingeniously rendered detail: the titular maid pours milk into a vessel, her gaze concentrated; Vermeer perfectly captures the Delft tiles lining the floor, nails hammered into the walls and the bread rolls on the table, articulated with “proto-pointillist dabs”.
Girl with a Pearl Earring (which will only be on show here until 30 March) “has skin so seamlessly contoured she could give TikTok tutorials”; the pearl itself (probably made from glass) consists of little more than “two bare white strokes”. The scholarship is revelatory: we now know that Vermeer, a Catholic convert in the Protestant Netherlands, was far more influenced by his faith than previously understood. Indeed, he may well have worked with the aid of a camera obscura demonstrated to him by Jesuit priests in his native Delft.
For two centuries, Vermeer was an “art-world Cinderella”, said Jackie Wullschläger in the FT. Although successful in his lifetime, he was all but forgotten thereafter. We owe his 19th century rediscovery to the Impressionists, and looking at the “crystalline, mysterious pictures” here, you can see why they championed him: for Vermeer, “paint was itself a subject”, and passages of detail in his work can appear almost abstract.
He also shared the Impressionist habit of repeatedly painting the same “beloved costumes and props”. His wife’s “fur-trimmed yellow jacket”, for example, figures in five works: in A Lady Writing; in Woman with a Pearl Necklace; and in Mistress and Maid. Vermeer creates an illusion of the real that is “more persuasive and enticing than reality itself”, an effect which suffuses almost every work here. This is an “unrepeatable exhibition”, perfectly showcasing “his vision of interiority and the eternal presence of things”.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (+31 20 6747 000, rijksmuseum.nl). Until 4 June
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
'New arrivals are more than paying for themselves'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
6 stylish homes in Portland, Oregon
Feature Featuring a wall of windows in Collins View and a historic ballroom in Portland Heights
By The Week US Published
-
What's next for US interest rates?
The Explainer Stubborn inflation forestalls anticipated rate cuts
By Becca Stanek, The Week US Published
-
6 stylish homes in Portland, Oregon
Feature Featuring a wall of windows in Collins View and a historic ballroom in Portland Heights
By The Week US Published
-
Tom Crewe's 6 favorite works that challenge societal norms
Feature The novelist recommends works by Margaret Oliphant, Patrick White, and more
By The Week US Published
-
On the trail of India’s wild lions at Sasan Gir National Park
The Week Recommends The sanctuary is a 'roaring' conservation success
By The Week UK Published
-
Recipe: almond marmalade cake
The Week Recommends This syrupy cake can be toasted for brunch
By The Week UK Published
-
Properties of the week: houses with enchanting gardens
The Week Recommends Featuring pretty homes in Hampshire, Devon and West Sussex
By The Week UK Published
-
Venice Biennale 2024: from the good to the bad to the downright 'bizarre'
The Week Recommends Central exhibition features the work of some 330 artists
By The Week UK Published
-
Sunset Song: gripping theatre that's 'close to magic'
The Week Recommends Morna Young's 'first-class adaptation' of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic novel
By The Week UK Published
-
Challengers: 'the most purely pleasurable film of the year so far'
The Week Recommends Zendaya plays a former tennis player turned coach in this 'almost ridiculously' sexy drama
By The Week UK Published