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September 21, 2006
Vermeer
If I could own any great painting in the world it would be any painting by the Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer. There is no artist whose work touches me as deeply. Each of his canvases contains worlds within worlds, true narratives -- yet at the core of each canvas there are elemental mysteries.
The subjects of his greatest paintings are portraits of women, and each woman is simply luminous as she withholds a central portion of her soul -- hiding a secret that we the viewer can only guess at.
Vermeer's technical mastery, his astonishing brushwork has never been equaled, and scholars still debate his use of the camera obscura.
His use of color is seemingly modest, yet when closely studied, quite astonishing. Proust, in his monumental million word novel, In Search of Lost Time, rhapsodizes over a tiny patch of yellow wall in Vermeer's "View of Delft."
Here is the best link I've found about Vermeer's work, where you can delve as deeply as you want into this greatest of masters small output of thirty-six works.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at September 21, 2006 09:57 AM
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