MENU What's New Map Town of Delft Exhibition LINK
Vermeer's View of Delft and his Vision of Reality. |
Copyright
Dr. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.,
C.J. Kaldenbach
The realism of the scene comes not only from the recognizable shapes of the structures but also from the truthfullness of their textures. One finds an extraordinary range of effects that capture the rough hewn character of the orange tile and blue slate roofs, stone, brick and mortar walls of buildings and bridges, leafy trees and wooden boats. Vermeer never precisely delineates these materials but devises a variety of means for suggesting their tactile characteristics.
One of the most successful effects are the red tiled roofs along the left side of the painting. Here he has rendered the rough, broken quality of their surface by overlaying a thin reddish-brown layer with numerous small dabs of red, brown, and blue paint. These dots of paint are not blended into the underlying layer but are juxtaposed in such a way that their very irregularity helps suggest the roughness of the roof. Augmenting this effect is the manner in which Vermeer enhanced the grainy quality of the tile roof with small bumps which protrude from the surface. These bumps are large particles of lead white paint that Vermeer either applied to the ground in this area or mixed with the thin reddish layer that established the base color for the roof.
These effects are quite different
from those seen in the sunlit roofs where he has minimized individual
nuances of the tile. Here one sees a relatively uniform surface,
although Vermeer has emphasized the physical presence of the tiles
by using a thick bumpy layer of salmon-colored paint. The impastos
of these sunlit roofs are even more strikingly evident in the
tower of the Nieuwe Kerk. Vermeer has almost sculpted the sunlit
portions of the tower with a heavy application of lumpy lead tin
yellow paint. The blue roof of the Rotterdam Gate is relatively
smooth, with white highlights dotting the surface to enliven it.
The chimneys, however, are rendered in a technique similar to
that used on the red roofs on the left, including the lumps of
lead white that protrude through the reddish layer.
|
Visible upon close examination is the fact that Vermeer changed his mind about the color of the yellow roof above the Rotterdam Gate [Fig. 8]; he painted a dense yellow layer, similar in texture to that of the Nieuwe Kerk, over the salmon color used in the distant roof tops. His painting technique differs again in the boat depicted in the lower right; here Vermeer painted highlights that do not suggest texture. Indeed, the diffuse highlights often obscure the underlying structure rather than reinforce it. They seem intended to suggest flickering reflections from the water onto the boat. Painted in a variety of |
|
 |
||
| ochers, grays and whites, these highlights cover a layer area and have a more regular contour than the dots we observed on the red tile roofs. Over these diffuse highlights Vermeer painted more opaque ones, some of which were apparently applied wet in wet. | ||
| Vermeerﾕs interest in implying textures and effects of light by actually varying the painting technique underscores his intent on making images as realistic as possible. Nevertheless, certain techniques of painting, compositional distortions and alterations in topography indicate that Vermeer was not primarily concerned with imitating reality (like the artists who produced profiles), but with transforming it into an image that was effective as a work of art. |  |
|
|
copyright. Konink Kabinet van Schilderijen Mauritshuis
inv.no.92 |
As has been mentioned,
Vermeer, in giving dramatic impact to his work, emphasized the
cityﾕs silhouette against the light sky. He not only darkened
the foreground buildings but accentuated their contours using
a purely artificial deviceﾑa white line in the sky that can be
seen just above many of the roofs, most clearly above the Schiedam
Gate. In the center distance Vermeer has tied together the diverse
roof lines with a pale blue horizontal shape that is meant to
read as a roof, but which has no relationship to the reality of
the situation. The long, horizontal building on the left of the
painting is almost certainly an imaginative construction; no comparable
structure is found in the contemporary city .
In all of these changes,
Vermeer sought to simplify the cityscape by emphasizing the parallel
nature of the buildingsﾕ orientation. If one compares the site
with a section of the large Figurative Map of Delft that
was executed in the mid-1670ﾕs, one sees that the topography is
more irregular than Vermeer suggests. The twin towers of the Rotterdam
Gate, for example, project far out into the water. The extent
to which they project can clearly be seen in two drawings by Josua
de Grave in which the gate is seen from a location to the far
right of Vermeerﾕs painting. Vermeer flattened the angle of the
Gate by distorting the perspective. The building is virtually
at right angles to the picture plane and, to be consistent with
the rest of the composition, he should have drawn the focal point
of the perspective so that it would fall slightly left of center.
Orthogonals constructed along the Gate, however, join far to the
left of the painting, meaning that Vermeer must have consciously
flattened their forms.
A pen drawing of the same site
from the early 18th century by the topographical artist A. Rademaker
offers an interesting comparison. Although Rademakerﾕs vantage
point is slightly closer and lower than Vermeerﾕs, his view in
other respects is comparable. His interpretation of the scene,
however, is different. In his drawing the covered portion of the
Rotterdam Gate projects forward, therby creating a more three-dimensional
composition. Part of this effect comes from the perspective, part
from the detailed articulation of architectural elements, and
part from the effect of shadows on these buildings. Rademaler,
like many other artists who depicted this area, emphasized the
horizontal bands on the side of the Rotterdam Gate that were made
by alternating levels of brick and light-colored natural stone,
wheras Vermeer merely suggested their presence with a series of
shifting light colored dots of paint. Interestingly, examination
of the painting with x-radiography and infra-red reflectography
has shown that Vermeer initially painted the twin towers of the
Rotterdam Gate in bright sunlight. In his original conception
the pronouced light and shadow effects on the towers were comparable
to those seen in Rademakerﾕs drawing.
Comparison of View of Delft with Rademakerﾕs drawing
illustrates other differences; In the latter, the profile of the
city is more jagged and uneven and buildings are taller, narrower
and set more closely together. A mid-eighteenth century and print
after a drawing by C. Pronk shows similar characteristics. Vermeer
made numerous modifications in his city view to simplify and harmonize
its appearance. To emphasize the horizontals of the cityscape,
he apparently straightened the bowed arch of the bridge. One may
compare, for example, the bridge in Vermeerﾕs painting to a drawing
by Josua de Grave, 1695, showing the bridge from the inside of
the city. It is uncertain whether Vermeer also elongated the bridge
as well. Most views of the city from the south place the two gates
somewhat closer together than Vermeer does. Some artists, however,
wanted to show more buildings within their frames and compressed
the scene. All topographical views of this scene vary slightly,
however, and no single view can be relied upon for its accuracy.
Even such a precise and detailed drawing as that by Gerrit Toorenburgh
(1737-1785) seems to be wrong in the position of the Nieuwe Kerk.
 |
When a structure such as the armament warehouse, the large building behind and to the left of the Schiedam Gate, had a very complex roof shape, Vermeer minimized its complexity by eliminating orthogonals that would suggest recession in space and by coloring it uniformly. An x-ray of this area demonstrates that he arrived at this solution only after blocking out the roofs in a much more three-dimensional fashion. As with the Rotterdam Gate, he had initially accented portions of the roof by painting these in strong sunlight. | |
|
copyright. Konink Kabinet van Schilderijen Mauritshuis
inv.no.92 |
Finally the tower of the Nieuwe Kerk, while strikingly illuminated, is not as physically large as one might expect, its height and width varying greatly in the views of various artists. For example, in a rather picturesque view by Jan de Beyer (1703-1780), from 1750, the tower is extremely high. Nevertheless, specific measurements of the proportions of the existing building in comparison to the painting suggest that the tower should be either less wide, or higher in Vermeerﾕs work to be totally accurate. Although the spire burned down in 1872, and was replaced with a somewhat taller neo-gothic one, the size of the base remained the same and accurate calculations based on contemporary photographs of the site can be made. Vermeer may have minimized the scale on the Nieuwe Kerk to emphasize its distance from the foreground plane. It also blends more successfully with the horizontality of the composition than it would were it slightly larger.
MENU
What's New Map Town of Delft Exhibition LINK
Hata Stichting
Foundation