Worship Resources for April: 6. Visibility

Within the paintings of Vermeer, there is a sparkling interplay between what is visible and what is not. We see the women and the men but what we don’t see is what is going on within their hearts. Who has written the letter? Is it good news or bad? Why did the woman turn her head away from the music teacher or the obsequious looking man proffering a glass of wine?

In addition, the experts have been able to X-ray the paintings to reveal the train of thought which led to Vermeer’s final compositions. So in A Girl Asleep, we discover that, through the half-open door, there is a framed mirror. Underneath, Vermeer had actually painted a man. His absence from the scene makes the final composition much more intriguing and less likely to have an emblematic reading.

And there is Vermeer’s visibility too. There is only one definite appearance, and that is in The Music Lesson, where the bottom of his easel appears in the mirror. There are five mirrors in his œuvre, and this is the only one in which a person can be seen. For the most part, Vermeer is, like us, invisibly standing on the threshold of the painting, looking in at people who are only visible for a single moment in time.

In The Love Letter, we are invited to enter a very opulent room where the mistress is sitting on a chair playing a cittern. The maid interrupts her with the mail. They exchange a knowing look—the mistress more anxious than the maid. The letter is unopened but the handwriting recognized. There are two paintings above—a landscape and a seascape, opening their domestic world into an adventure on land or sea?

Curiously, the aperture through which we view this interaction is narrow. A curtain is draped over the top of it. Perhaps it is not really a door into a room but a mirror reflecting what is happening behind us? This effectively puts the viewer between the action and the mirror! But, of course, Vermeer hasn’t painted us, for we are invisible!

The experience is tantalising for if it’s true that we are looking into a mirror, then we are actually caught up in the drama as it unfolds like an erstwhile Dr. Who landing in seventeenth-century Delft and the studio of Johannes Vermeer! From the maid’s countenance, it looks as if it is good news about the lover. She has certainly interrupted her life to share it—the laundry basket and broom bear witness to it.

What more can we say? Perhaps St Paul is our best guide. ‘For now we see through a glass darkly,’ he says, ‘but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’ ¹ As we look through this glass darkly, we know something of the maid and her mistress and their lives and Vermeer knows something about ours.

All his paintings are like mirrors in which we look as through a glass darkly and what we see reflected back again is something of ourselves—the moment pregnant with excitement, touched by spiritual insight, standing on the threshold of a mistake or an opportunity, opening us up to the love in our hearts awakened by the freshness of the one turning aside to catch our look!

There is a lot of longing in Vermeer’s paintings. Single women turn their heads in the canvas, look out at our world and draw us in. Assorted letters make the paintings ache with unresolved longing. A guitar player turns her head to look into an unseen corner of the room and a lute player gazes out of the window.

If you look closely at all Vermeer’s paintings, you will notice that three-quarters of them have an air of melancholy. There are particular exceptions—the laughing girl, the guitar player, the head of a young woman and the lady writing. But a melancholic sadness prevails. It touches us.

Most startlingly, the paintings which feature a man and a woman together are full of ambiguity. They all register the same sensation—a lack of connection. Four of them feature a glass of wine. In three of them, the woman has the glass but the man has none. In the Glass of Wine, he stands beside her ready to refill the glass. A symbol of Temperance features in the stained glass window!

In Girl with Two Men, one bends over her obsequiously and offers the glass of wine. He has none. She looks out at us with a contrary, slightly tipsy look, unsure about his affection or perhaps his affectation! Another man sits in the corner—dejected or rejected in love?

In Girl Interrupted at her Music, the glass of wine remains on the table along with a blue and white Delftware pitcher, a cittern and a musical score. She looks out at us with a quizzical look, wondering why we are there. He hasn’t noticed us yet but we have seen the painting of Cupid on the wall and wonder whether he is a bone fide music teacher or a lover?

There are only two prospective lovers who smile. The laughing girl with the officer is one although her open-handed generosity is not reciprocated by his heavy-handedness. The other is in The Procuress. In fact, this is the only painting which features a man and a woman who look as if they fit together and are enjoying the love which enfolds them!

It seems unsatisfactory or perhaps it is a reflection of a world in which people find it difficult to connect with each other and rarely find a depth of communion with another for which their heart aches and if it doesn’t perhaps it’s because it has shut the door a little to protect itself from the pain which comes from the vulnerability in offering ourselves to another.

There are two particular things which seem evident in these ambiguous paintings. Firstly, the attitudes of the men and the women are different. The one is manipulative and controlling, the other is trusting and open. In this context, there cannot be a true meeting of minds and hearts. The disconnection is painful to see and to experience but it resonates within our world just as in the world of Vermeer.

Secondly, the dominance of the social code. On the one hand, there is the restraint exhibited in The Music Lesson breaking down in the subversive gaze of the young woman reflected in the mirror and on the other, the uninhibited expression of sexual pleasure portrayed in The Procuress. This is the most surprising communion of all!

In the other two paintings which feature men and women, both involve music. In The Concert, a man with his back to the viewer plays the lute. On his left, a young woman plays the harpsichord. On his right, another sings. There is a sweet communion here as befits music’s potential to bring people together in harmony. But, what’s that on the wall? Two paintings—one a landscape, the other a procuress!

In The Music Lesson, we have already observed the engraving on the virginal revealing the potential of music to be a companion in pleasure and a balm in sorrow. Relationships are not easily cultivated. They require our attention. This is especially true in the affairs of the heart. Harmony is what we all long for. Music may provide immediate consolation but it’s love which stills the heart and makes room for a sweeter communion.