A Late Vermeer — Or is it?

We read Martin Gladwell’s Blink for my museum studies seminar — a bestseller that focuses on the importance of those inexplicable moments of intinct. In the first chapter, he talks about the Getty Kouros  controversy.  Curators at the Getty, looking over the Greek statue for months, became convinced of its authenticity and purchased it at great price; yet others, such as Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan, saw it at first glance and simply knew it could not be real.  Whether or not the Kouros is a forgery or not remains unknown, but Gladwell argues that those first glace, gut-instinct moments should not be ignored.

Attributed to Vermeer, A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Click image for larger view)

I had a “blink” moment in front of the controversial Vermeer now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I wrote about a few months ago.  As I walked through the Italian Renaissance rooms to the Dutch Golden Age galleries, I was completely ready to dismiss the Vermeer as a fake.  After all, in reproductions we’d viewed in my seminar, it looked so preposterous: a huge yellow shawl, blank walls, ringlets in her hair and those hands (click the image to the right to view it closeup, and you’ll understand what I mean).  But when I walked in to the room, turned the corner, and marched straight up to the little painting, the first thought that popped into my mind was: Wow, it really is a Vermeer.

It took me a good twenty minutes or more in the room — happily, surrounded by almost all of the Met’s authenticated Vermeers for comparison — to put my fingers on exactly why my gut instinct was so positive.  The second thought in my mind was when I looked at the ribbons in the figure’s hair.  They are painted with such care but at the same time such simplicity — a single pulling of bright red paint, a few daubs of white — that immediately made me think of a very similar detail in the Louvre’s Lacemaker (see gallery below): the red and white threads pooling over the pincushion are painted with just as much care.  Interestingly, the ringlet hairstyle I’d originally considered so odd appears in that very painting, too. Moreover, the Lacemaker is about the same size as this intimate, small painting.

As for her hands and the strange, almost blurry quality of the painting style — both are actually pretty consistent with the late style of Vermeer.  The Woman at the Virginals (see gallery below) in the National Gallery in London is a prime example of this late style: glassy eyes, a somewhat vacant expression, less outright attention to anatomy (those hands), and a thicker, flatter, and less paint-dappled touch than in earlier works like the Rijksmuseum Maid with a Milk Pitcher, where even loaves of bread seem to sparkle in midday light.  But they do retain some of Vermeer’s well-known style, especially in the soft quality of light.  Just a few canvases over from the Young Woman at the Virginals is the Met’s own Study of a Young Woman (see gallery below).  The soft contour of her cheek against the black background — identical to that of the infamous Girl with a Pearl Earring in the Hague — can barely be called a contour, as it melts into a soft non-edge of light.  I found that same quality (though not quite as stunning) in the curls and neck of the Young Woman in question.

Of course, I guess a forger could have looked at the late Lacemaker and Woman at the Virginals and decided to create some sort of merging of the two: the hands and virginal theme of the London piece, with the size, hairstyle and tiny detailing (down to the very same colors) of the Louvre work.  It’s not totally out of the question.  But even as I stood in front of that painting trying to play devil’s advocate of my first gut reaction, I was sucked in by the ribbons and the soft, melting outlines of her face into the wall behind her — feelings I have to say I’ve only really felt in front of real Vermeers.  And I couldn’t help but remember Gladwell’s Blink and the importance of first impressions that we’d discussed in my seminar.

Of course, I’m an undergrad, albeit one with a great love of Vermeer — so I’m certainly not trying to put myself at the same level of Thomas Hoving or Walter Liedtke, curator of Northern Art at the Met, who just published this work in his recent monograph on the famous Dutch artist, adding that the odd yellow shawl was probably painted over this “minor” late work of Vermeer.  Who knows if this work is a forgery or not? — I certainly don’t, and maybe we never will know for sure; but till then, I’m content to think fondly of those gorgeous ribbons, the softness of her curls against the whitewashed wall, and the memories they stir up about the Vermeers I was lucky enough to see in Paris and the Netherlands.

What do you think? Have you seen this “new” Vermeer? Tell us your thoughts in the comments…

Photos from the Met and Reference Comparisons