Baroque and Rococo

 

VERMEER





Veiled Emotions



 

The Temptations of Love


 

Seduction and Wine

The theme of the girl asleep was taken up again by Vermeer in his painting Soldier and a Laughing Girl. In the (probably) earlier painting Girl Asleep at a Table, the situation appears to have been freed from the narrative context; in the latter, the process of seducing someone with the help of wine is depicted quite bluntly. We see the partial profile of a soldier who is wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and is sitting, in deep shadow, in the foreground on the left, with his hand on his hip and his back partly turned to us. He is talking to a young woman who is smiling back at him; she is wearing a white headscarf and is lit up by the light streaming in through the open window. The rhetorical gesture of her open left hand underlines the nature of the conversation here. Nowhere else in Vermeer's pictures is there such a great difference between the sizes of the man and the woman; it is caused by the sharply shortened perspective of the room. The man dominates the scene; it is he who is trying to use wine to make the young woman submissive. The contrast between light and shadow could even contain unconscious (or perhaps intentional?) psychological symbolism. It is likely that the woman, who is lit up by the sun, embodies the principle of purity, and that she is, so to speak, the victim of the man's dark and sinister machinations.
 

Vermeer
Soldier and a Laughing Girl
c. 1658

A soldier is trying to seduce a young woman by giving her wine;
he seems disproportionately large, and this is probably due to the use
of a camera obscura.
              
Maps of the Netherlands
Vermeer's love of maps becomes apparent in the way he decorates his
interiors. The role of maps was twofold: on the one hand, they
indicated wealth (in the seventeenth century, maps were an expensive
luxury); on the other hand, they refer to a good level of education.
Cartography was still a new science, but was beginning to be held in
high regard.
  

Vermeer
Soldier and a Laughing Girl (detail)
   

Vermeer's love of maps9 is expressed in his reproduction of one on the back wall of the room; maps, like the pictures he included, were of particular significance in his paintings. This map was designed in 1620 by Balthasar Florisz. van Berckenrode and published by Willem Jansz. Blaeu shortly afterwards. The Latin inscription reads, "NOVAET ACCVRATA TOTIVS HOLLANDIAE WESTFRISIAEQ(VE) TOPOGRAPHIA", and shows that the map covers Holland and the West Frisian Islands; in contrast to modern cartographic practice, the map is on an east-west, not a north-south, axis. Maps were still an expensive luxury in the middle of the 17th century, but they were also considered a sign of humanistic knowledge. To refer to such maps was frequently a device on the part of Vermeer by which to allude to contemporary political situations. Thus this picture, with the soldier, could be an allusion to the Anglo-Dutch War of 1652-54, during which Admiral Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter won many great victories for the Republic of the United Netherlands.
The Glass of Wine has a similar theme to the Soldier and a Laughing Girl; it differs, however, in that it portrays its characters at a greater distance from our own point of view. They are not cut off by the lower frame of the picture, a device which would make them seem extremely close; instead, they can be seen in the centre of the room. The layout of the room in particular the chequered pattern of the tiled floor, was evidently inspired by Pieter de Hooch.
 

Vermeer
The Glass of Wine
c. 1658-60

Like Woman and Two Men, this seduction scene contains an open window which features the warning figure of Temperance.
 

Vermeer
The Glass of Wine (detail)

Forbidden pleasures
Women who had become intoxicated on wine were considered to be the embodiment of sin, and this is a motif central to Vermeer s work. According to Jacob Cats, a famous popular teacher of the seventeenth century, women should be forbidden drink altogether, as alcohol was the first step towards whoring.
 

The man is offering wine to the woman - as an aphrodisiac, to lower her resistance. His hand is clutching the handle of a white carafe that appears as a significant leitmotif on several of Vermeer's paintings. Here it is placed squarely in the middle of the picture, and cannot be overlooked. The man is appraising the young woman with his gaze, and she has already raised the shimmering glass to her mouth; it half covers her face, almost like a mask.
The scene has evidently been preceded by a musical divertimento to get them into the right mood. This is suggested by the lute which has been placed on the chair, and the sheet music lying on the Persian carpet on the table.
This room makes a gloomier impression, in contrast to the one the Soldier and a Laughing Girl are in. The reason for this is that the lower part of the window in the background is shuttered, and a curtain is drawn across the upper part. As in the case of the Woman Weighing Pearls, this is not without its deeper significance. It is probably a reference to a Biblical passage, Proverbs 4,19: "The way of the wicked is as dark as night". So something is occurring here that has good cause to shun the light. A German encyclopaedia, Zedler's Universal-Lexikon (Halle/Leipzig, 1734, vol. 8, col. 339), associates dark rooms with adultery, and quotes Job 24,15: "Others of them hate the light", "The eye of the adulterer watches for twilight, 'No-one will see me,' he mutters."
The partly opened window has a particular moral meaning which acts as a commentary on the scene, as it were. On it there can be seen - next to the arms of Jannetje Vogel, who died in 1621 and whose first marriage was to Vermeer's neighbour Moses J. Nederveen - a symbolic motif which has its origins in an illustration in Gabriel Rollenhagen's 1611 Book of Emblems. It concerns the personification of Temperantia, or Temperance, one of the cardinal virtues, together with its attributes, the Level (symbolising good deeds) and the Bridle (symbolising emotional control). The window is directly in the woman's line of vision, and is her opposite, its purpose being to serve as a warning.
 

 
The theme of Temperance crops up again in Vermeer's Brunswick painting Woman and Two Men, and the purpose of this picture is clearly similar. The scene does differ from the Berlin picture The Glass of Wine, however, in that not one but two men are present. The seduction seems to be even more intensive, and the man in the centre is bending down and talking to the young woman; she is wearing an elegant, full satin dress and looks rather embarrassed and unsure of herself. While the young woman in the Berlin painting has already raised her glass to her mouth, her counterpart in the Brunswick painting still seems somewhat reticent and uncertain.
The drink need not necessarily have been wine. It could also be a love potion (Lat. poculum amatorium, Fr. philtre d'amour), such as is frequently mentioned in seventeenth-century medical writings; Jan Baptista van Helmont said that it caused "the natural essences of life to surge".
The effect could be one of two things: either excessive, foolish love, or a paralysing melancholy. The man seated at the table, leaning his head on his hand, has evidently also drunk some, because his attitude is one of melancholy. It is likely that the man in the centre is acting as a matchmaker, and that in the absence of the husband (because on the wall is the portrait of a man, and it is no coincidence that he is looking down at the woman). What is taking place here is the initiation of a secret love affair, clam et absente marito, or secretly and in the absence of the husband, as it was phrased in legal texts of the time that dealt with adultery.
A peeled lemon in Woman and two Men lies on a silver dish next to a jug which has been placed on a white cloth in an arrangement which is almost like a still life; the purpose of the lemon was to reduce the effect of love potions.
      

Vermeer
Woman and Two Men
c. 1659-60

The woman is looking towards us questioningly; the man in the centre,
who is trying to get her to drink, seems to be acting as a matchmaker
between her and the gentleman seated sideways in the background.
The portrait on the wall is probably of her husband. It is no accident that,
though he is not actually present, he should be there in this picture,
looking at the young woman.
 

Vermeer
Woman and Two Men (detail)