View of Delft

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View of Delft (Jan Vermeer)
View of Delft
Jan Vermeer , 1660/1661
Oil on canvas
96.5 x 115.7 cm
Mauritshuis

The View of Delft is a cityscape by Jan Vermeer , based on his hometown Delft . The 96.5 centimeter high and 115.7 centimeter wide oil painting was created in 1660/1661. Today it hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague . The painting is one of only two surviving paintings in Vermeer that show an exterior view. The other is Delft Street , which was created in 1657/1658 and is a 54.3 centimeter high 44 centimeter wide oil painting.

Image description

The picture shows a view of the city of Delft from an elevated point of view with the river Schie in the foreground. At the lower left edge of the picture there is a triangular strip of shore that extends over about three quarters of the edge. The area of ​​the sky extends over half of the picture. The two spiers in the middle of the picture are exactly in the middle of the height of the picture. The lighting conditions change from the foreground to the background: while the houses in front are in the shade, those in the back are in the sunlight.

The architectural elements are arranged parallel to the edge of the picture. Your illustration is not strictly realistic. Vermeer made small changes to the roofs, and simplified the silhouette of the city and made it wider, giving the impression of a compact frieze . On the right edge of the picture is the Rotterdam Gate . The Arsenal can be seen behind the bridge to the left of the gate, and the Schiedam Gate to the left of the bridge . Two towers can be seen near the left edge of the picture: the larger one belongs to the Oude Kerk , the smaller one belongs to the De Papegaai brewery . The church tower, which is slightly shifted to the right in the center of the picture, belongs to the Nieuwe Kerk , since there are no church bells in it , the painting must have been created between May 1660 and autumn 1661. The tower is brightly lit by sunlight, which is probably a political statement by Jan Vermeer, as the tomb of William I of Orange , who died in an assassination attempt in Delft in 1584 and was considered the hero of the resistance against Spain, is in the church. The elongated red roof on the left edge of the picture is the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company . In the foreground is a section of the triangular harbor basin with horse-drawn barges, caravels, and tusks , which were moored to the quays and used to transport herrings . The clouds, which are broken through by the light, pile up and thus form a contrast to the horizontal orientation of the city.

Vermeer does without the streets leading into the depths that can be found in many cityscapes, with which the inner life of the city should be made accessible. In general, the picture hardly shows any representation of life. A group of four people can only be seen in the lower left corner. A little further to the right, two more women can be seen.

The color scheme of the view of Delft is dominated by brown and ocher tones. At the same time, Vermeer also used texture as a design tool. The texture of the salmon-colored roofs in the sunny background is painted in a thick, wavy color to emphasize the wavy roof tile structures. The brick-red roofs on the left edge of the picture, on the other hand, are painted with a sandy, rough color. Vermeer added dots of color to the shadowed buildings in the foreground and to the hulls to show the structure of the joints and the incrustations. The clouds also have a wide variety of color nuances.

Provenance

It is not known to whom Jan Vermeer sold the Delft view . It is possible that the painting was in the possession of the Van Ruijven family. The view of the city can be traced for the first time in 1696 in the auction catalog of the collection of the Delft book printer Jacob Dissius . In the 18th century it was owned by the merchant Willem Philip Kops . After his death it passed into the possession of his wife, who in turn left it to her daughter, Johanna Kops, upon her death in 1820. She had it auctioned in 1822.

The director of the Mauritshuis, Jonkheer Steengracht van Oostkapelle , instructed the minister not to bid for it as it would not fit in the cabinet. On the other hand, at the instigation of the director of the Rijksmuseum , Cornelius Apostool , the minister should ask King William I for money for the purchase. The painting was then acquired by the state for 2900 guilders. However, the king had it exhibited in the Mauritshuis in The Hague and not, as expected, in Amsterdam. The reasons for this decision are not known. It is believed that Wilhelm I simply liked the painting or that he felt the depiction of the Nieuwe Kerk as a reminder of his ancestors.

Reception at Proust's

Marcel Proust mentioned the work. In 1921 he visited an exhibition at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris , which also showed the view of Delft . On the stairs to the exhibition he suffered a fit of weakness.

Proust took up the Delft view like the fit of weakness in his monumental work In Search of Lost Time . In the fifth part of the novel, Die Gefangene (1923), the fictional character Bergotte becomes aware of a “yellow piece of wall” in the view of Delft through a criticism . However, this detail cannot be found on the painting; Proust may have invented it.

literature

  • Norbert Schneider : Vermeer. All paintings . Taschen, Cologne 2004. ISBN 3-8228-6377-7
  • Arthur K. Wheelock Jr .: Vermeer . From the American by Dieter Kuhaupt. DuMont Literature and Art Publishing, Cologne 2003. ISBN 3-8321-7339-0
  • Epco Runia, Peter van der Ploeg: Vermeer in the Mauritshuis . Waanders Publishers, Zwolle 2005. ISBN 90-400-9073-4
  • Timothy Brook : Vermeer's Hat - The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World. Profile Books, London 2009, ISBN 978-1-84668-120-2
  • Jørgen Wadum: Vermeer illuminated: conservation, restoration and research; a report on the restoration of the View of Delft and The girl with a pearl earring by Johannes Vermeer . The Hague: V + K, 1995 ISBN 90-6611-034-1
  • Kees Kaldenbach: A flight over the "View of Delft": Jan Vermeer's masterpiece from 1660 as a virtual world . In: Weltkunst , Vol. 69 (1999), H. 2, pp. 308-310
  • Anthony Bailey : Vermeer - a view of Delft . Berlin: Siedler, 2002 ISBN 3-88680-745-2
  • Irene Netta: Vermeer van Delft: a painter and his city . Munich: Prestel, 2005 ISBN 3-7913-3352-6
  • Christiane Rambach: Vermeer and sharpening the senses . Weimar: VDG, 2007 ISBN 978-3-89739-570-1 Zugl .: Regensburg, Univ., Diss., 2006 pp. 141-161
  • Cees Nooteboom : The Enigma of Light: Tricks . Munich: Schirmer / Mosel, 2009 ISBN 978-3-8296-0428-4 , pp. 16-20

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Norbert Schneider: Vermeer. All paintings . Taschen, Cologne 2004. page 19
  2. ↑ Brook, p. 15
  3. ↑ DuMont: Vermeer . DuMont Literature and Art Publishing House, Cologne 2003. Page 94
  4. ↑ a b Epco Runia, Peter van der Ploeg: Vermeer in the Mauritshuis . Waanders Publishers, Zwolle 2005. page 56
  5. ^ Rainer Moritz: A small yellow piece of the wall . In: THE WORLD . March 13, 2010 ( welt.de [accessed on March 28, 2020]).
  6. ↑ Looking for the yellow section of the wall. Retrieved March 28, 2020 .