Vermeer, Love Letter, 1670
All great works of art demand careful study, but with Vermeer, the viewer plays a crucial role. When looking at The Love Letter—in which a maid interrupts her lady’s music practice with the delivery of a letter—we may feel like an intruder, as if we have happened upon a scene we are not meant to see. Vermeer depicts a moment fraught with nervous tension; to look at the picture is almost uncomfortable. Elsewhere, Vermeer seems to invite us inside, parting a curtain in the foreground of a painting or having a figure smile coyly at us. Either way, we enter the story. We cannot hurry past such paintings. We need time to inhabit them. We need space and quiet. Ideally, we need solitude.
CONNECT
All great works of art demand careful study, but with Vermeer, the viewer plays a crucial role. When looking at The Love Letter—in which a maid interrupts her lady’s music practice with the delivery of a letter—we may feel like an intruder, as if we have happened upon a scene we are not meant to see. Vermeer depicts a moment fraught with nervous tension; to look at the picture is almost uncomfortable. Elsewhere, Vermeer seems to invite us inside, parting a curtain in the foreground of a painting or having a figure smile coyly at us. Either way, we enter the story. We cannot hurry past such paintings. We need time to inhabit them. We need space and quiet. Ideally, we need solitude.
CONNECT
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