The concert (Vermeer)
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| The concert Het concert |
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| Jan Vermeer , 1665/1666 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 72.5 x 64.7 cm |
| Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum |
The concert (Het concert) is a 1665/1666 by Jan Vermeer painted oil paintings . The 72.5 cm high and 64.7 cm wide picture shows two women and a man making music. The painting is owned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston , but wasstolenduring the 1990 Boston art heist. The whereabouts of the painting is not known.
description
The picture shows a group of three musicians: A young woman is sitting at the keel-wing harpsichord , in front of this sits a man who accompanies her on the lute with his back to the viewer , and to the right of him is a second woman who sings. The harpsichord is decorated with an Arcadian landscape motif. Vermeer takes up the theme of music even further in the picture with the stringed instruments that are placed on and under the table in the foreground on the left. The depth of the space with the people in the background creates a special distance to the viewer of the picture.
On the wall in the background are two paintings: on the right the picture of the matchmaker by Dirck van Baburen , which Vermeer cites several times in his paintings , on the left a pastoral landscape . With the music, which was often associated with love and seduction in Dutch painting in Vermeer's time, Baburen's image alludes to a sexual component.
Provenance
The whereabouts of the picture The concert was unclear for a long time. It did not reappear until 1780. In 1892 Isabella Stewart Gardner acquired the painting at an auction in Paris and subsequently showed it in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which opened in 1903 . During the art theft in Boston on March 18, 1990, two perpetrators disguised as police officers stole 13 works of art from the museum, including The Vermeer Concert . To this day the picture has not reappeared.
literature
- Norbert Schneider: Vermeer. All paintings . Taschen, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-8228-6377-7
- Arthur K. Wheelock: Vermeer . DuMont literature and art publishing house, Cologne 2003, ISBN 978-3-8321-7339-5
Web links
- The concert . In: EssentialVermeer.com (English)
- Jan Vermeer: The Concert (1664) . In: Kulturmeister.de