The Madness of Vermeer Secret Lives of the Artists


The Madness of Vermeer

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Sunrise near Delft in Holland,

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homeland of Johannes Vermeer.

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He's one of the great painters of light,

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but until recently, he himself has been obscured,

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lost in the darkness of the past.

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I've come here to try to tell his story,

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to shed light on a life that's remained secret

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for more than 300 years.

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'It's a tale of love and death,

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'about a man who dreamed of a perfect world

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'but who ended up drowning.

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'It's a story about a real flood - the flood of 1672.

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'"The year of disaster" to the Dutch, when the dykes were broken

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'and the country was inundated.

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'But it's also a story about rising tides of debt,

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'about the market forces that can swamp and destroy a life.'

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17th-century Holland was a balancing act -

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a nation poised between land and sea, debit and credit.

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At the centre of it all, there was the windmill.

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Thousands of them covered the landscape,

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busily pumping water from one level to another,

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making Dutch life, and Dutch prosperity, possible.

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But what's this got to do with the secret life of one of Holland's greatest painters?

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Well, I think Vermeer's life was a balancing act too,

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a constant struggle to keep flood-water at bay,

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which, in the end, seems to have gone horribly wrong.

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He painted stillness, but died, they say, in a frenzy -

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- a fit of madness at the age of just 43.

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I wanted to find out why.

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Madness is the last thing associated with Vermeer's work,

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but I'm interested in the passions beneath the calm waters of his art.

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'So I went to Delft, the city he lived and worked in all his life,

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'in the hope of building a psychological profile of the artist.

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'In recent years, a mass of new evidence

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'has been unearthed about his family -

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'stories of manslaughter,

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'counterfeiting, lottery fraud and domestic violence.

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'These discoveries haven't made the headlines,

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'but they may be the key to a quite new way of looking at Vermeer

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'and making sense of some of the greatest paintings ever created.

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'To begin to understand him, we need to understand his city.

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'Vermeer's Delft was a sink-or-swim world, a merchant town

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'where fortunes could be made or lost. Canals were arteries.

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'Water was power, hence the in-your-face splendour of the water board.

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'Vermeer lived in the so-called Golden Age.

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'Trade in the East Indies brought vast wealth,

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'and with it an expanding market for art.

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'But Delft was also scarred by conflict.

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'It had been at the centre of the war with Catholic Spain,

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'and after bitter strife,

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'the Protestants were in the ascendant.'

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Then, in 1652,

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when Vermeer turned 20, it was a city in trauma.

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A freak explosion in the gunpowder stores

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destroyed the town centre and killed hundreds of its citizens.

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Yet there's not a hint of disturbance in Vermeer's Delft interiors.

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Scenes of women playing music,

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thinking, dreaming. And what could be more peaceful

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than his panorama of the city?

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The novelist Proust thought Vermeer's View Of Delft the greatest painting there is.

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One of his characters breathes his last

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thinking of a patch of yellow paint glowing in the sun.

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It's SO becalmed, and for me, that's its mystery,

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The mystery of Vermeer himself. He took a turbulent reality

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and made it look like heaven on earth.

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Was there a pattern to his perfectionism?

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One which could also explain

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his eventual breakdown and madness?

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'I was hoping to find some answers inside the city walls,

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'and in a cunning attempt to blend in with the locals,

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'I'd rented an exceptionally orange bicycle.

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'Vermeer grew up in the centre of town,

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'on the great market square where the rich lived,

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'although he and his family were not very well off.

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'His father, Reynier, who in his youth

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'committed manslaughter in a canalside brawl, owned an inn on the square

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'and ran an art-dealing business on the side.

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'Vermeer grew up among paintings

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'and pints of beer.

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'None of the buildings where he actually lived survives,

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'and it's not always easy to follow in his footsteps.'

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The plaque says that Vermeer was born in this house, in October 1632.

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But it's wrong... He wasn't. X does not mark the spot.

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'The house was around the corner, where today we have the Jan Vermeer

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'Nursery School.

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'He's elusive, too. We don't really know what he looked like.'

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It's thought he included a self-portrait

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as the figure on the left in this painting,

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the first he ever dated, from 1656.

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It's called The Procuress,

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and seems to attempt to depict the world of tavern and brothel,

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the world he'd grown up in. But it's a subject he never returns to.

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The character on the left, itself a quotation from another painting,

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may be Vermeer's own face in the shadows.

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He looks out at us...and leers.

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'For hard evidence, I went to the Delft Archives,

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'where many of the pieces of the Vermeer puzzle are to be found.

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'Although they're only isolated forensic traces,

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'we can start to build a mental picture

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'both of the artist and of the nature of his tragedy.'

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Right. Vermeer's life.

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When we talk about the documents that make up a 17th-century life,

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what kind of documents are we looking at?

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We're looking at registers of baptism, of matrimony, of burial.

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We're looking at testaments, erm... business documents, transactions,

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-that sort of things.

-But quite impersonal.

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-We're not talking about personal letters, personal accounts.

-None whatsoever.

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So we need to do a bit of reading in between the lines.

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Show me some of the things you have here.

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To start with, here is the register of baptism in the New Church.

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'It's interesting that Vermeer was christened Johannes,

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'rather than plain old Jan - a posh, Latinate name

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'with social aspiration written all over it.

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'His parents clearly had plans for him -

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'ambitions he'd live up to,

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'until his sudden descent into poverty and madness.

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'There's evidence for that in the register of his death

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'from the Delft Charity Chamber, the local social services. When a man died,

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'they'd send for his finest piece of clothing

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'to be sold to raise money for the poor. The best outer garment tax,

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it was called. But when Vermeer died...'

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So this means "Nothing to get"? Then he writes "Nothing" again.

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-Nothing to get. Nothing.

-Double nothing. Big fat zero.

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Poor Vermeer.

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'But not the first poor Vermeer.

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'The archives' latest revelation is that fear of financial ruin

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'had haunted the previous generation of his family.

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'Meet the ancestors.

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'His paternal grandmother,

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'Neeltge Goris, or Little Nell, had a job clearing houses of jumble

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'and selling it off for a song. She was an uitdrager -

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'someone who drags things out.

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'Unofficially she was a small-time con artist

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'who ran semi-legal lotteries and raffles

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'and was often in trouble with the law.

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'Vermeer's maternal grandfather, Balthasar,

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'claimed to be an engineer and clockmaker,

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'but when the police arrested him in April 1619,

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'he was running a counterfeit coin operation with his son.

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'Counterfeiting was serious stuff -

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'a crime against the state.

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'Was there no end, I wondered,

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'to the lengths Vermeer's family would go to

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'to keep their heads above water?

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'I went to see an expert on coin forgery, Cor de Graaf,

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'who said he had something to show me to prove not everything was as it seemed.'

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What do you know

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about Vermeer's rather dodgy grandfather,

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-Balthasar Gerrits?

-HE CORRECTS THE DUTCH G

-Gerrits.

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Well, Balthasar Gerrits was a kind of strange person.

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He tried to make a lot of money by all kinds of means.

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He was a broker for a while.

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He tried to sell shares... of the East India Company.

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He tried to buy and sell houses.

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And he also made false coins. So coin forgery, yes.

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-He literally made some money.

-Literally, yes.

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-I assume we know about it because he got caught.

-Yes, indeed he was caught.

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But... Yeah, that's also the strange thing.

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He managed to survive, which is very unusual for coin forgers.

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'Like most counterfeiters, two co-conspirators were tortured and beheaded.

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'But not Balthasar.

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'Cor had records of meetings

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'which showed that in his case, it was hushed up at the highest level of government.

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'Balthasar was allowed to go free.'

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-When Balthasar came back to Delft...

-Yeah.

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..when it was all swept under the carpet, do you think people here

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-would have known?

-Oh, yeah... Definitely.

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The people in a city like this, yeah, they would have known.

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'Whatever the word on the street was, the whole family was involved.

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'Vermeer's uncle was imprisoned as a co-conspirator,

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'and both sides of the family, including Neeltge the uitdrager, rallied round to have him bailed.

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'Whether we consider Balthasar an informer,

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'a common criminal or even a secret agent,

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'this would have been a grim moment in the family history.

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'Prison and torture is the dark side of the 17thC Dutch free market,

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'the other side of the coin. And it's sure as hell a far cry

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'from Vermeer's serene interiors.'

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I wondered if I could make sense of Vermeer

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as a man desperate to escape from the prison of his own dubious past.

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Art was to be his way out and up.

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He became a respectable counterfeiter.

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A forger, not of false coins, but of reality.

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There may have been darkness in his family background

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but he painted light.

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More often than not, the light is falling upon a young woman.

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CHURCH BELLS PEAL

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In 1653,

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at the age of 21, he proposed to Catharina Bolnes, a Catholic girl

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from a wealthy family several rungs higher up the social ladder.

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It was the most important decision of his life.

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We know Vermeer was baptised in the New Church on October 31, 1632.

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And we know that in the Town Hall,

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he declared his intention to marry Catharina Bolnes on April 5th, 1653.

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But for those intervening 21 years,

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more or less everything about his life is a mystery.

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Archivally speaking, a void - not a single document.

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We don't know where he went to school or who taught him to paint,

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but the biggest mystery is how come this Protestant man,

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this son of a publican, with a grandfather with a criminal past

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managed to seduce, and even to marry

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a woman from a highborn Catholic family.

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CHURCH ORGAN PLAYS

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'To be a Catholic was to live part of your life in secret. It meant worship in hidden churches,

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'town houses which were not allowed to advertise their purpose to the outside world.

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'The Amstelkring Museum in Amsterdam is a rare surviving hidden church.

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'The truth is we don't know how Vermeer and Catharina Bolnes met, let alone where.

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'Perhaps through a Catholic artist who was Vermeer's master.

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'But it must have been a love match,

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'as we know Catharina's devoutly Catholic mother

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'initially opposed the marriage.

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'We don't know what happened,

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'but it's likely that in the end she struck a bargain -

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'convert, and Catharina can be yours.

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'And she was.

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'After the secular ceremony in the Town Hall,

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'the couple got married in the village of Schipluiden outside Delft,

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'an enclave of Catholics practising the old faith away from the eyes of authority

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'in what was probably a converted barn.

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'So Vermeer had a new wife, and a new religion.'

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Among his earliest surviving works is Diana And Her Companions,

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Vermeer's only mythological scene.

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But a very quiet, contained moment

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in a story which often ends in violence

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against an intrusive male presence.

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It has clear religious overtones - the foot-washing, the bowl,

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even the napkin, which suggests the shape of a dove -

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have strong Catholic and sacramental associations.

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It's a picture by a man who loved women,

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who loved to look at women and to paint them.

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There's a familiar Vermeer feel here,

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of a moment of beauty which also has a certain fragility:

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peace about to be disturbed.

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In the winter of the same year as his marriage,

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Vermeer registered as a master of the Guild of St Luke in Delft.

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He was going up in the world.

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For most of the rest of his career, Vermeer would paint calm interiors,

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an idealised everyday life of a leisured class.

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But what was his own household like?

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'I think his marriage, his domestic life,

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'was every bit as much a creation as his paintings.

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'As far as we can tell,

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'he and his wife's family moved to the Papen hoek - Papist's corner -

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'and he seems to have left his own close-knit family behind.'

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We know that by about 1660

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Vermeer was living in a house here on the Oude Langendyk.

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We know because he had to bury one of his children,

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and give his address in the register.

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It wasn't a house a poor young artist

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starting out his career could have afforded.

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It was his mother-in-law's house,

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and Vermeer, Catharina, and their increasingly large family

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lived, for his entire working life,

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in Maria Thins', the mother-in-law's, house.

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It's an unusual setup, and if we want to build up a psychological profile of Vermeer

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it's important to understand the nature of his household.

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'Here's what it wasn't.

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'This portrait of the patrician van der Dussen family

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'shows a wealthy Catholic household. Everything speaks of opulence.

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'- note the paintings on the wall - and harmony,

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'hence the music-making.

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'But the home which Vermeer shared

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'with Catharina and her mother, Maria Thins, didn't fit

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'a 17thC cornflake-box ideal. Apart from its potential

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'for mother-in-law jokes, it had its own skeletons in the closet.

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'Unlike this little girl, Vermeer's wife Catharina

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'had grown up in a house in which she was regularly woken

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'not by music, but by her parents fighting.

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'A world in which she sometimes feared for her life.

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'She'd been raised in the nearby town of Gouda.

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'Its archives hold an extraordinary paper trail of angry witness statements

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'from relatives, charting the disintegration of Maria Thins' marriage

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'to the violent and abusive Reynier Bolnes,

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'a wealthy brickmaker whose business was on the slide.'

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What I'm looking for is the deposition which concerns

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Vermeer's mother-in-law

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being beaten up and insulted

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-by her husband, Reynier Bolnes.

-Mm-hm.

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I think it's that.

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Yes, it is. Yes.

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He doesn't have very good handwriting.

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No.

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Even I can see that.

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-Lots of crossings out.

-Yes.

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-Is that because he's writing down what people say as they say it?

-Yes.

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When they make mistakes, he has to, er...

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-It's a fantastically vivid piece of history.

-Yes.

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What do they say Reynier Bolnes did to Maria Thins?

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'According to the witnesses,

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'Bolnes used to beat her black and blue until she ran out screaming into the street.

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'He turned her only son against her,

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'and whenever Maria annoyed him he had a nasty habit of taking it out on Catharina.

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'Nobody knows the secrets of a household,

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'but it's a pretty damning dossier of domestic abuse.

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'I wonder what Vermeer made of these tales of Catharina's childhood?

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'Rich Catholics who turn out to be

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'dysfunctional neighbours from hell.

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'After the separation, Maria Thins moved to Delft with Catharina,

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'and Reynier kept custody of their son, Willem.

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'His parting shot was to pull down his breeches

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'and bare his arse to his mother in the street.

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'She shared one thing with Vermeer in the house on the Oude Langendyk -

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'a past she'd rather forget.

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'It's only relatively recently that anyone

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'has wanted to guess Vermeer's mental landscape,

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'but now the process seems unstoppable.

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'I'd come to a film set in Luxembourg to meet Tracy Chevalier,

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'whose novel about the Vermeer household, Girl With A Pearl Earring,

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'has sold more than two million copies.

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'Yet 100 years ago,

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'the painting that inspired her wasn't even recognised as a Vermeer.

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'The Girl With The Pearl was bought at auction for 2 guilders 40 cents.

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'Nowadays she's priceless, known as "the Mona Lisa of the North", and starring in her own movie.'

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It's such a seemingly simple painting,

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but I found that, actually underneath it all,

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it's very hard to tell the narrative of it.

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I think what attracts me about Vermeer's paintings is that he takes away the narrative.

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Typical Dutch paintings of that time tell you what to think. He doesn't.

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He removes the symbols so you're just left with a girl's face

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and you make of it what you will.

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When you look at a Vermeer, you slow down and get quiet.

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And it's like a little gift you get from the painting.

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You can't appreciate a Vermeer quickly.

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You look at it and it's like, "Whoa!" And you stop.

0:23:100:23:13

And you feel like you're becoming the calm person in the painting.

0:23:130:23:18

I always thought of him as a quiet man. The calm appeals to him. There is an intensity

0:23:190:23:25

that he can focus on that corner, and put everything into it.

0:23:250:23:30

He's not painting a huge market scene, a huge world -

0:23:300:23:34

he finds the world in a corner instead.

0:23:340:23:37

Your master's a fine painter, Griet.

0:23:370:23:40

The finest in Delft.

0:23:410:23:42

'In Chevalier's book, the girl with the pearl is Vermeer's servant,

0:23:420:23:47

'who becomes an object of desire for a character who is also Vermeer's patron.'

0:23:470:23:53

He's painted me.

0:23:530:23:55

Perhaps that will be my epitaph.

0:23:550:23:58

'His existence in real life

0:23:580:24:00

'was unknown till recently. His discovery helps explain

0:24:000:24:04

'one of the great mysteries about Vermeer - why he produced so few paintings.

0:24:040:24:09

'The detective here was a man who doggedly combed the Delft archives for over 20 years.

0:24:100:24:16

'Yale professor John Michael Montias.'

0:24:160:24:19

I suddenly realised that various documents relating to a man

0:24:220:24:27

named Pieter Claesz van Ruijven

0:24:270:24:30

actually had to do with a patron of Vermeer,

0:24:300:24:34

which nobody had realised before.

0:24:340:24:37

I sort of put two and two together and it hit me -

0:24:370:24:40

this must have been Vermeer's patron.

0:24:400:24:44

Look at that dress! You can almost stroke the satin.

0:24:450:24:49

Well, we think that he may have painted

0:24:490:24:52

maybe 45 to 55 pictures.

0:24:520:24:54

And we think that...

0:24:540:24:57

he may have sold to his patron

0:24:570:25:03

close to half of his output.

0:25:040:25:07

Can you imagine yourself in such finery, Griet?

0:25:070:25:11

She loved it, you know.

0:25:120:25:14

Men...looking at her.

0:25:150:25:17

Cut and check that, please.

0:25:220:25:24

'Knowing Vermeer had a patron makes a lot of sense, and helps explain why he seems so modern to us.

0:25:280:25:34

'A patron who'd accept whatever he painted

0:25:340:25:38

'gave him freedom to be himself, explore his own vision,

0:25:380:25:42

'rather than play to the market.

0:25:420:25:44

'In New York they have one of the earliest paintings for van Ruijven,

0:25:440:25:49

'where we can see the master manipulator of light and space

0:25:490:25:53

'coming into his own.'

0:25:530:25:55

It's an absolutely wonderful little picture.

0:25:560:26:00

It draws you towards it.

0:26:000:26:01

The girl's face, that beautiful face, flooded with light.

0:26:010:26:06

It's like a beacon. You have to stand here.

0:26:060:26:09

You realise Vermeer has choreographed you.

0:26:090:26:12

He's made you an eavesdropper, a voyeur on a 17thC scene.

0:26:120:26:16

But what is it that you're actually looking at?

0:26:160:26:20

'There's a tremblingly immediate quality to the light,

0:26:210:26:25

how it strikes the young woman's face,

0:26:250:26:27

'giving an electric sense of the contact between a man and a woman,

0:26:270:26:32

'erotic, but also, I think, full of tenderness.

0:26:320:26:35

'As so often in Vermeer, interpretations vary wildly.

0:26:350:26:39

'The man's a soldier, and some say the girl's a prostitute,

0:26:390:26:44

'the map behind her signifying her worldly, and therefore corrupt, nature.

0:26:440:26:49

'I don't buy that.

0:26:490:26:51

'I think it's a picture about the look of love,

0:26:510:26:54

'the instant two people fall for each other.

0:26:540:26:57

'Maybe Vermeer drew on his own memories

0:26:570:27:00

'of falling in love with his beloved Catharina,

0:27:000:27:03

'the light striking her like this? I think painting was his way

0:27:030:27:08

'of preserving those rare moments in life

0:27:080:27:11

'that have real value, real meaning.

0:27:110:27:14

'Nowadays Vermeer's work's in cities all over the world,

0:27:160:27:21

'but in his lifetime

0:27:210:27:22

'he was a stay-at-home.

0:27:220:27:24

'Unlike commercial, self-proclaiming genius

0:27:240:27:27

'Rembrandt,

0:27:270:27:29

'Vermeer was loyal

0:27:290:27:31

'to his patrons and his city.'

0:27:310:27:33

It's fascinating to see a great Rembrandt next to a great Vermeer.

0:27:360:27:40

Rembrandt thrusts himself at you - this rugged paint-handling,

0:27:400:27:45

this presentation of himself, warts and all.

0:27:450:27:48

Vermeer presents this

0:27:480:27:50

mysterious, mirror-like world,

0:27:500:27:54

that leaves you wondering, "Where is he? Where IS Vermeer?"

0:27:540:27:58

You've got a sense he's in there somewhere,

0:27:580:28:01

that somehow his compulsion has shaped the nature of this

0:28:010:28:06

strange, psychological mystery of a picture. What IS going on?

0:28:060:28:10

The mistress looks at a letter the maid holds,

0:28:100:28:13

which catches the light. You sense that

0:28:130:28:17

it will change this woman's life, she's at a crossroads.

0:28:170:28:21

But you don't know how the story ends - Vermeer leaves us guessing.

0:28:210:28:26

He ALWAYS leaves us guessing.

0:28:260:28:28

Some people say it's nothing to do with compulsion,

0:28:310:28:35

it's all down to technique -

0:28:350:28:37

that the mysterious quality of Vermeer's art

0:28:370:28:41

is thanks to his use of lenses.

0:28:410:28:43

And you do meet the most unlikely people in the strange world of Vermeer-vision.

0:28:430:28:48

You'll know better than to take our word for anything by now.

0:28:480:28:53

This is an exact reconstruction of The Music Lesson,

0:28:530:28:56

and the room which Vermeer used as his studio.

0:28:560:29:00

'It's the first time this room has been reconstructed, and...'

0:29:000:29:04

-HE FAST-FORWARDS

-'What do Vermeer's working methods tell us about his mind?

0:29:040:29:10

'I watched footage from BBC archives.

0:29:100:29:13

'Going to great lengths to prove Vermeer used lenses is Dr Phillip Steadman.'

0:29:130:29:18

'That's right, and it's not just me who thinks that.'

0:29:180:29:22

Most writers on Vermeer think he used an instrument like this - a camera obscura.

0:29:220:29:28

-'This is one...'

-HE FAST-FORWARDS

0:29:280:29:31

'There's no real evidence to back up these theories,

0:29:310:29:35

'but I do like the idea that Vermeer might have seen

0:29:350:29:39

'a world transfigured from the confines of a darkened box.'

0:29:390:29:43

'Will Vermeer be there working?

0:29:430:29:45

'We'll see where he's working. This cubicle

0:29:450:29:49

'is his camera obscura.'

0:29:490:29:51

'And it is a working method suited to a man with an obsession.'

0:29:510:29:55

'We can see what Vermeer would actually have seen.

0:29:550:29:58

'He might have worked in stages.'

0:29:580:30:01

'Whether or not Vermeer actually had a walk-in cupboard in his studio,

0:30:010:30:06

'it fits our profile that he should have been attracted by the camera's sealed-off world.

0:30:060:30:13

'I think he fell in love with its silent images formed

0:30:130:30:17

'from rays of light, and tried to give his paintings the same quality.'

0:30:170:30:23

That's why there's almost no trace of drawing in Vermeer,

0:30:290:30:34

as he showed us in his own depiction of The Artist's Studio.

0:30:340:30:38

No painter before him had eliminated line to this extent,

0:30:400:30:45

expressing everything in terms of fluctuating light impressions.

0:30:450:30:50

'It's as if his pictures are actually MADE of light,

0:30:530:30:57

'which is why The Girl With The Pearl still shines so brightly.

0:30:570:31:01

'But technique is only a means to an end.

0:31:010:31:04

'What drives Vermeer is the desire

0:31:040:31:07

'to preserve this look of love.

0:31:070:31:09

'It's a signal. It says, "Yes, there's a spark between us."

0:31:100:31:14

'It's that transient moment when eyes meet, and the world seems to stop.

0:31:140:31:20

'Vermeer knows that it can't last for ever,

0:31:210:31:24

'but he can make it seem as if it can. That's his magic,

0:31:240:31:28

'whether he's back there in his box or not.

0:31:280:31:32

'Lenses helped Vermeer master space,

0:31:330:31:35

'but like every great painter he also wanted to conquer time.

0:31:350:31:40

'He was too much of a control freak to simply paint what was in front of him.'

0:31:400:31:45

We have analysed so many paintings

0:31:450:31:47

with x-ray radiography or infrared photography

0:31:470:31:51

where we can see that he very often starts the building up and eliminates.

0:31:510:31:57

He focuses and changes, and ponders, apparently.

0:31:570:32:01

He might spend time on another painting, then come back and change things.

0:32:010:32:06

A woman in the foreground with a black skirt is not seen in the x-ray

0:32:060:32:11

because the black has not been exposed here,

0:32:110:32:15

but that black dress has got grey stripes painted over it.

0:32:150:32:20

The grey stripes were added when the black paint wrinkled so much that we would say it's cracking.

0:32:200:32:26

That would have been more than six months, nearly a year, after, that he painted that in.

0:32:260:32:33

He moves around the buildings and towers, that are not necessarily

0:32:330:32:38

in this position really.

0:32:380:32:40

It's not a photographic image.

0:32:400:32:42

Sometimes you change things so they look real,

0:32:420:32:46

because reality is not as good as an artist likes it to be.

0:32:460:32:50

You translate. That's the fascinating thing about artists.

0:32:500:32:55

They see what we see, but they are able to translate it

0:32:550:32:58

into a new image that looks real without being it.

0:32:580:33:02

Can we look at The Girl With The Pearl?

0:33:030:33:06

It's a much smaller canvas, and...

0:33:080:33:10

What is this? Is this damage?

0:33:110:33:13

That's damage. All the black spots show where the original paint has been lost, unfortunately.

0:33:130:33:20

The painting has apparently had a very tough life.

0:33:200:33:24

Don't forget, this is almost 400 years old, this girl.

0:33:240:33:28

Who wouldn't have damage in the course of time?

0:33:280:33:31

After our most recent restoration in 1994,

0:33:310:33:34

I had the pleasure of cleaning the painting,

0:33:340:33:38

which means removing the very yellow varnish.

0:33:380:33:41

Not only yellow, but with an additive of black pigment to it.

0:33:410:33:46

Apparently, after the previous treatment in 1952,

0:33:470:33:51

the general opinion in this museum was that the painting was too bright in colour.

0:33:510:33:57

So in order to subdue the brightness of the entire painting,

0:33:570:34:02

this yellow, but also pigmented, varnish was smeared

0:34:020:34:06

over the whole image.

0:34:060:34:08

We had to remove this, and out came the brilliant colours you see today,

0:34:080:34:13

plus a number of details,

0:34:130:34:15

the small reflections of moisture in the corners of her mouth.

0:34:150:34:19

The surface there is so delicately applied.

0:34:190:34:22

You never forget that look. One of the most popular paintings in the Dutch School.

0:34:220:34:28

It is a figure looking out at you.

0:34:280:34:31

You are being drawn in.

0:34:310:34:32

By not explaining what is going on, the fascination will be there for ever. The Mona Lisa

0:34:320:34:39

of the North, you could say.

0:34:390:34:41

I suppose Vermeer understood that if you make a picture that people

0:34:410:34:46

-still wonder about, and WE still wonder about...

-400 years later.

0:34:460:34:51

..then it's a picture people won't pass.

0:34:510:34:54

They were paintings that really worked, in a sense.

0:34:540:34:58

He attained the highest level that a history painter could attain.

0:34:580:35:02

They really captured you. They tell a story, but it's a never-ending story.

0:35:020:35:09

'Another city, another bike.

0:35:110:35:13

'I was trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

0:35:220:35:26

'I'd come to Amsterdam to try to find out more about the daily life of the artist.

0:35:280:35:34

'Looking for Vermeer as a pastime, bordering on an obsession,

0:35:350:35:40

'has been made easier by the Internet.

0:35:400:35:42

'I went to see Kees Kaldenbach,

0:35:420:35:45

'who's working on a virtual Vermeer house

0:35:450:35:48

'and has a website dedicated to the artist.'

0:35:480:35:51

Kees, I gather you've been painstakingly attempting

0:35:510:35:55

to reconstruct the house on the Oude Langendyk where Vermeer spent most of his career.

0:35:550:36:01

-Indeed, yes.

-Can you just show me what you've done? What have you got here?

0:36:010:36:06

What we see here is the website which contains the full inventory.

0:36:060:36:13

The inventory made after his death?

0:36:130:36:16

Yes. Just a couple of months after he died. By law, an inventory needed to be made.

0:36:160:36:22

It shows us both the objects and the room they were in,

0:36:220:36:26

the name of the room. When we visit the Great Hall, we notice that we have his iron armour and helmet,

0:36:260:36:34

we have a pike, and we have a lead hat.

0:36:340:36:38

A pike? Oh, because he was in the militia?

0:36:380:36:41

He was part of the militia. This was a fact which was only discovered ten years ago.

0:36:410:36:47

So, do you think the world of Vermeer's pictures is grander

0:36:470:36:51

than the actual world he inhabited?

0:36:510:36:54

Absolutely. He lived in a rather large house,

0:36:540:36:59

but he had to share it with loads of people.

0:36:590:37:02

At least four adults, including himself.

0:37:020:37:05

11 children in the year '75.

0:37:050:37:07

The hustle and bustle of birth, pregnancy, midwives, neighbours running in and out -

0:37:070:37:14

because matters of birth and death were very much a neighbourhood event.

0:37:140:37:21

So the picture I'm getting from you

0:37:210:37:23

is very interesting.

0:37:230:37:25

It suggests Vermeer could almost be painting an ideal.

0:37:250:37:30

That may well be right. But what I respond to, visually,

0:37:300:37:37

is not the interior with a certain type of wealth.

0:37:370:37:42

It's the luminosity, the light, the...incredible atmosphere.

0:37:420:37:48

That's what he made. He didn't make a wealthy interior.

0:37:480:37:52

He made something far beyond that,

0:37:520:37:55

and I am gripped to the depths of my soul

0:37:550:37:59

when being face to face by such a painting.

0:37:590:38:03

Vermeer's paintings of women at home alone with their thoughts

0:38:040:38:09

do have a strong spiritual quality.

0:38:090:38:11

In this picture of a pregnant woman holding a balance,

0:38:110:38:15

the painting on the wall is a Last Judgement,

0:38:150:38:19

showing the souls of the damned and the saved.

0:38:190:38:22

It's a moment of solemn contemplation.

0:38:220:38:25

She's thinking that the soul of her unborn child, too, lies in the balance.

0:38:250:38:31

Here, a woman holds a letter in both hands, as if to steady her trembling heart.

0:38:330:38:40

Good news or bad, it's another of Vermeer's moments of suspense, a pregnant pause.

0:38:400:38:47

The faded Delft blue of her dress makes her look like

0:38:470:38:51

a contemporary Madonna in a secular annunciation.

0:38:510:38:55

Vermeer's images of pregnant women are unusual.

0:38:550:38:58

No other Dutch artist painted the subject.

0:38:580:39:02

They seem so perfectly, poignantly tranquil.

0:39:020:39:06

But what lies behind this obsessively recurring dream of domestic peace and harmony?

0:39:060:39:13

I think the answer to that is the key to Vermeer's secret life.

0:39:130:39:17

'In 1662, at the age of 30, Vermeer was elected head man of the Guild of St Luke in Delft.

0:39:240:39:31

'He was at the height of his profession. There's a record of a visit

0:39:310:39:35

'to his studio by a French gentleman diarist the year after.

0:39:350:39:40

'The artist said he had no paintings to show, so they went to a baker

0:39:400:39:45

'who owned a Vermeer which had cost him 600 guilders.

0:39:450:39:49

'The Frenchman thought it overpriced.

0:39:490:39:52

'The fact that Vermeer had no stock may be because he worked to commission.

0:39:520:39:57

'Or perhaps he wanted him out of the house quickly.

0:39:570:40:01

'Because the evidence we have today suggests it wasn't necessarily a happy place.

0:40:010:40:06

'That year Maria Thins' past caught up with her in the form of her unruly son, Willem,

0:40:060:40:13

'the boy who bared his arse at her in Gouda,

0:40:130:40:16

'who now bursts back into the household.

0:40:160:40:20

'The year is 1663.

0:40:270:40:29

'We don't know where Vermeer was,

0:40:290:40:32

'but Catharina was at home with their three girls, pregnant again.'

0:40:320:40:37

-Is this another notary's book?

-This is a notary's book, yes.

0:40:370:40:41

This is a testament of people who were there when Willem Bolnes

0:40:430:40:49

misbehaved in the house of his mother.

0:40:490:40:52

He said very ugly words as well,

0:40:520:40:55

which could not be repeated.

0:40:550:40:57

'"Old Popish swine" and "she-devil" were two of the phrases they permitted themselves to record.

0:40:570:41:05

'Bolnes was in a rage.'

0:41:050:41:07

The violence of the father seems to have been repeated in the violence of the son.

0:41:080:41:14

Willem Bolnes thrust at his highly pregnant sister, Catharina.

0:41:150:41:22

And he thrust at her with a stick at the end of which there was an iron pin.

0:41:220:41:28

'According to witnesses, Tanneke Everpoel, the kitchen maid,

0:41:320:41:36

'put herself between the pregnant Catharina

0:41:360:41:40

'and the stick-wielding Willem.'

0:41:400:41:43

What happened to him?

0:41:450:41:46

Is this an attempt to get him sectioned?

0:41:460:41:49

-Yes. He was put away on these sort of testimonies.

-I'm not surprised, really.

0:41:490:41:55

'Willem was in fact committed to a private house of correction, run by a man called Hermanus Taerling.'

0:41:550:42:03

The fact that Vermeer isn't in this document and doesn't sign it

0:42:040:42:08

doesn't mean he doesn't care, he just wasn't present,

0:42:080:42:12

-so he can't witness the things Willem did.

-Right.

0:42:120:42:16

I think a few months after this happens we have a record

0:42:160:42:20

-I read in another document that Willem has a wound or injury.

-Yes.

0:42:200:42:24

And he has to go to hospital.

0:42:240:42:27

Do you think that could have been Vermeer who gives him a clout?

0:42:270:42:31

Well, it is a nice thought.

0:42:310:42:33

But I think Bolnes was hit in the house of Taerling, where he was confined.

0:42:330:42:41

-No, Vermeer went and got him, didn't he? He gave him a bop, eh?

-It's nice to think so.

0:42:410:42:47

BOTH CHUCKLE

0:42:470:42:49

'Willem Bolnes, violent son of a violent father,

0:42:510:42:55

'repeating the patterns of the past, spent the rest of his life in the house of correction.

0:42:550:43:01

'I went to see the paintings in the Rijksmuseum to test a theory

0:43:020:43:07

'that Vermeer painted away the pain of reality.'

0:43:070:43:11

They're luminous, compared to the others. The painted light is so extraordinary.

0:43:110:43:17

It's a very beautiful, diffuse light. You see the way it reflects

0:43:170:43:23

and how he depicts the textures, with the little dots in the bread.

0:43:230:43:28

It feels as if the bread is crumbling. On the other hand,

0:43:280:43:32

you also see the little dots of reflection in the cloth.

0:43:320:43:36

My own theory about this picture is straightforward.

0:43:360:43:40

Isn't it possible that it was painted just after

0:43:400:43:43

Willem Bolnes attacked Vermeer's wife and mother-in-law,

0:43:430:43:47

and a maid called Tanneke Everpoel, perhaps this woman, stepped in?

0:43:470:43:52

-And he would have painted it as a kind of homage to the valiant maid?

-Yeah, why not?

0:43:520:43:58

Well, I think that's a slightly 19th-century view, as well,

0:43:590:44:04

that the personal life of an artist would have a direct influence on what he would paint.

0:44:040:44:10

Don't you think it's interesting that a man with such a tempestuous personal life

0:44:100:44:16

should paint such fantastic images of calm?

0:44:160:44:19

It's fascinating. You walk around

0:44:190:44:22

and you suddenly see a small Vermeer and it gives a sense of relief and tranquillity.

0:44:220:44:28

But in the background, a mad brother-in-law with an iron pin, attacking women.

0:44:280:44:34

And we know he had 11 children. Actually, probably 13, but we know there were 11.

0:44:340:44:42

So it must have been quite a busy house.

0:44:420:44:45

Children hardly ever appear in his work. They do appear in this picture. Is this...?

0:44:450:44:52

Is this the only painting in which we see children in Vermeer's art?

0:44:520:44:57

Yeah. They are probably playing on the street. We don't know exactly

0:44:570:45:02

because they're so intent on their own action.

0:45:020:45:06

That's something which is typical for Vermeer. His characters are nearly always unaware of us

0:45:060:45:14

as spectators. It's an amazingly, I think, intimate view of a... yeah, a portrait of a street.

0:45:140:45:21

It's nearly voyeurism. We're looking onto a scene and they don't know we're there.

0:45:210:45:27

He creates all these little accidents,

0:45:270:45:31

they're almost like snags, rough edges in the texture, and they catch your eye.

0:45:310:45:36

-Like that fantastic bit of paint.

-That makes you accept it as reality.

0:45:360:45:41

Because you recognise it in its imperfection.

0:45:410:45:45

It gives it more mystery because he doesn't give you information bang in your face.

0:45:460:45:52

-And the woman doesn't have a face.

-No, he didn't really need to paint it, because it's not about her.

0:45:520:46:00

This is fantastic. Different kinds of stains.

0:46:000:46:03

This is amazing, because here you have, as I interpret it,

0:46:030:46:08

so many people have sat on this bench

0:46:080:46:11

that you have the dirt and the discolouring on the wall behind the bench.

0:46:110:46:17

Like grease on an antimacassar. Accumulated human presence. Fantastic.

0:46:170:46:22

"What a fine piece of work is a home," Vermeer seems to say,

0:46:240:46:28

dwelling on every detail of bricks and mortar.

0:46:280:46:32

By the mid-1660s, with his troublesome brother-in-law locked up

0:46:330:46:38

and the scandals of his own family safely in the past,

0:46:380:46:42

Vermeer was at the peak of his fortunes.

0:46:420:46:45

Thanks to the wealth of his mother-in-law

0:46:450:46:48

and his patron, he could paint what he wanted.

0:46:480:46:51

Perhaps his own life seemed nearly as perfect

0:46:510:46:55

as the dream world of his art.

0:46:550:46:58

But then came the fall.

0:46:580:47:00

In 1672, the French army of Louis XIV invaded,

0:47:030:47:08

and, crucially for Vermeer, the Dutch art market collapsed.

0:47:080:47:13

'Vermeer can now be traced in the archives

0:47:140:47:17

'because he seems to be conducting more business for mother-in-law Maria Thins.

0:47:170:47:22

'She now wanted to claim a legacy that her great-grandfather had left to the Charity Chamber in Gouda.

0:47:220:47:30

'She sent her son-in-law to get it.

0:47:300:47:32

'The young man who hadn't been good enough for her daughter now enjoyed her complete trust.'

0:47:320:47:39

I'm the verger, not to be confused with "virgin".

0:47:390:47:42

'Even though Maria Thins now lived in Delft,

0:47:420:47:46

the family still had wealth and influence here in Gouda.'

0:47:460:47:50

Here, in window No.9, in the lower part,

0:47:500:47:54

is Mr van Hensbeek, great-great-grandfather

0:47:540:47:58

of Catharina Bolnes, the wife of Jan Vermeer. You see him with his wife,

0:47:580:48:03

his coat of arms, his four children,

0:48:040:48:07

and the other little children are the orphans of the orphanage next door.

0:48:070:48:13

-Which he paid for?

-Yeah.

-He was a rich guy.

-He also sponsored the orphanage.

0:48:130:48:18

Can you explain to me this Dutch policy

0:48:180:48:21

of flooding the land when invaders come?

0:48:210:48:24

What's the process, how does this work?

0:48:240:48:27

It's very simple. It's our national trick.

0:48:270:48:31

In times of danger, we just open the gates of the dykes and let the water come in.

0:48:310:48:36

Mind you, we are living two metres below sea level.

0:48:360:48:40

That's why Dutchmen have wooden shoes. They walk on water.

0:48:400:48:44

We did it when the Spanish were here, when the French came,

0:48:440:48:48

and tried it with the Germans, but it didn't work as they came with planes.

0:48:480:48:54

In the Second World War.

0:48:540:48:55

We have a window, window No.25, called The Relief Of Leiden.

0:48:550:49:01

This is during the Spanish occupation,

0:49:010:49:04

and half the window is full of water, with inundation.

0:49:050:49:10

And there you can see in very detailed scenes, how we did the trick.

0:49:100:49:15

If you look in one particular panel in the window, you see some big wheels.

0:49:150:49:20

That's how we opened the heavy doors

0:49:200:49:23

of the gates in the dykes.

0:49:230:49:25

When the Dutch decided to flood their own land in 1672

0:49:340:49:39

it had a disastrous effect

0:49:390:49:41

on the Vermeer family because, as luck had it,

0:49:410:49:44

the land owned by Maria Thins in Schoonhoven

0:49:440:49:48

was right in the middle of the area worst affected.

0:49:480:49:51

She lost almost all the revenues,

0:49:510:49:54

and the Vermeer family fortune went from bad to worse.

0:49:540:49:58

One might ask why Vermeer didn't leave Delft and go to Amsterdam,

0:50:030:50:08

which was richer. The answer may be his patron.

0:50:080:50:11

He had no reason to leave.

0:50:110:50:14

And that is why the death of this patron in 1673,

0:50:140:50:18

two years before his own death,

0:50:180:50:20

must have been such a catastrophe for Vermeer.

0:50:200:50:23

No market, no patron.

0:50:260:50:28

But even that wasn't the end of it.

0:50:280:50:32

Travelling on business for Maria Thins,

0:50:320:50:34

he's guilty of a final, uncharacteristic

0:50:340:50:37

act of betrayal.

0:50:370:50:39

In Amsterdam

0:50:410:50:43

he apparently collected a debt that was due to his mother-in-law,

0:50:430:50:49

and may have pocketed the money.

0:50:490:50:54

For a man who had always been submissive, compliant, modest,

0:50:560:51:01

perhaps woman-worshipping and admiring,

0:51:010:51:05

this must have been a terrible thing for him to do.

0:51:050:51:08

What was Vermeer thinking of? And what was he planning to do

0:51:080:51:12

with the money he'd filched? Invest it in some speculative scheme?

0:51:120:51:18

Cover his debts with one lucky punt?

0:51:180:51:21

We'll never know.

0:51:210:51:23

What we do know is that his plans went awry. He was discovered,

0:51:230:51:27

and five months later he would be dead.

0:51:270:51:30

I wonder if it was the guilt that finished him off?

0:51:300:51:34

'By chance we do have an eyewitness account of Vermeer's death,

0:51:360:51:40

'told by his beloved Catharina to a Gouda notary,

0:51:400:51:45

'written down and still preserved after all these centuries.'

0:51:450:51:50

-Is this the one?

-Yes.

0:51:500:51:51

"Catharina Bolnes, widow of the late Johannes Vermeer..."

0:51:510:51:55

'In these pages of spidery handwriting, the last act

0:51:550:51:59

'of Vermeer's personal tragedy unfolds.

0:51:590:52:03

'Catharina says that,

0:52:030:52:04

'"Owing to the burden of his children,

0:52:040:52:07

'having nothing, he lapsed into decay

0:52:070:52:10

'and decadence, which he so took to heart that, as if fallen into a frenzy..."'

0:52:100:52:16

-And then what happened?

-And then in a day-and-a-half, he dies.

0:52:170:52:21

That's that. Poor Vermeer.

0:52:220:52:25

'So at the end, Vermeer, who had kept the world at bay so effectively,

0:52:330:52:38

'so obsessively, even, found it crowding in on him.

0:52:380:52:42

'And I wonder if he hadn't painted himself into a corner.

0:52:420:52:46

'His marriage to Catharina, the household of Maria Thins,

0:52:460:52:50

'the patronage of van Ruijven - all gave him his freedom as an artist,

0:52:500:52:55

'to keep the everyday world of children,

0:52:550:52:58

'noise, dirt and even violence at bay.

0:52:580:53:01

'But these things became a prison in the end,

0:53:010:53:04

'and when the lack of income threatened his wife and children,

0:53:040:53:08

'and he betrayed the trust his mother-in-law

0:53:080:53:12

'had placed in him, when he saw no way out, he was devastated.

0:53:120:53:16

'THAT was the madness of Vermeer.'

0:53:180:53:20

They brought Vermeer's body to the Old Church on 15th December, 1675,

0:53:290:53:34

and they laid it to rest in the family grave the next day.

0:53:340:53:38

The grave, like many things in his life, had been paid for by his mother-in-law.

0:53:380:53:43

The Vermeers had buried three of their children there.

0:53:430:53:48

The youngest was removed, the body put on top of the painter's coffin

0:53:480:53:53

before being replaced and covered with earth.

0:53:530:53:56

'After his death came a reckoning. The inventory was made, and an executor appointed by the city.

0:54:050:54:12

'His widow paid off the family's bread bill, about two years' worth, with two paintings.

0:54:120:54:18

'Maria Thins tried to hold on to Vermeer's favourite work by saying it was hers.

0:54:180:54:24

'But the executor was implacable, and the picture was sold at auction.

0:54:240:54:29

'His fears for his family were justified. The Vermeers' social climbing was over.

0:54:290:54:35

'One of the only grandchildren we can trace was an illiterate weaver.

0:54:350:54:40

'Which leaves us with his art,

0:54:410:54:44

'these precious few paintings that seem to bestow a sacramental quality on the everyday.

0:54:440:54:50

'I needed to go back to The Hague for one last look.'

0:54:500:54:54

I've only just realised what's happening in this picture.

0:54:560:55:01

I've looked at it many, many times, and I've never understood

0:55:010:55:06

why the roofscape is painted with this extraordinary, granular

0:55:060:55:10

textured pigment that seems to glitter, especially under a raking light.

0:55:100:55:16

Almost like the texture of sandpaper.

0:55:160:55:19

Well, I suddenly realised today that - duh! - it's been raining.

0:55:190:55:24

The storm has passed, but it's BEEN raining.

0:55:240:55:27

So what we get is sunlight shining onto

0:55:270:55:30

this beautiful, glittering city.

0:55:300:55:34

I think it's also perhaps the key to what Vermeer may have meant by it.

0:55:350:55:41

I think that the picture could be

0:55:410:55:45

a kind of celebration of the moment, in a bigger sense,

0:55:470:55:51

when the storm has passed.

0:55:510:55:54

It's this window onto a peaceful world.

0:55:540:55:58

When I think about what the documents tell us about Vermeer's life

0:55:590:56:05

and his family background,

0:56:050:56:07

I think of this culture in struggle -

0:56:070:56:11

a kind of rat race where everyone's trying to get on, trying to make good.

0:56:110:56:16

Grandpa Vermeer with his counterfeiting scheme,

0:56:160:56:20

Grandma Vermeer, the "out-dragger", running lotteries,

0:56:200:56:24

trying to make a buck, trying to climb up the ladder of social success.

0:56:240:56:29

There's war, there are floods. I can't think of a more turbulent world

0:56:290:56:35

than the one which produced this picture.

0:56:350:56:38

What could be LESS turbulent than this picture?

0:56:380:56:41

There are no floods here, no dykes being broken,

0:56:410:56:45

no soldiers invading, no hucksters trying to fool you, no...

0:56:450:56:50

It's a picture of...

0:56:500:56:52

perfect, perfect tranquillity.

0:56:550:56:59

A radiant vision of peace.

0:57:000:57:02

Something which,

0:57:040:57:06

in Vermeer's world,

0:57:060:57:08

was fantastically precious.

0:57:080:57:10

To him personally,

0:57:120:57:14

but to the culture as a whole.

0:57:140:57:16

And that's why I think this is such a great painting, because it does what art does -

0:57:160:57:22

it gives you what you can't actually have.

0:57:220:57:26

And in the end...

0:57:300:57:32

..for Vermeer...

0:57:340:57:36

the flood-waters would rise

0:57:360:57:38

and he would sink...

0:57:400:57:42

..but he left us this, and that's what counts.

0:57:420:57:45

MUSIC: "Mad World" by Gary Jules and the Group Rules

0:57:510:57:55

# All around me are familiar faces

0:58:000:58:04

# Worn-out places, worn-out faces

0:58:040:58:10

# Bright and early for the daily races

0:58:100:58:15

# Going nowhere, going nowhere

0:58:150:58:22

# And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad

0:58:220:58:27

# The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had

0:58:290:58:33

# I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take

0:58:330:58:39

# When people run in circles

0:58:390:58:41

# It's a very, very

0:58:410:58:45

# Mad world

0:58:450:58:47

# A mad world

0:58:500:58:52

# Mad world. #

0:58:560:58:58

Subtitles by ITFC Ltd for BBC Broadcast - 2003

0:59:000:59:03

E-mail us at [email protected]

0:59:030:59:07

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