Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing
Page 39
29 Johannes’s trajectory as: See Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu, pp. 105–6. More evidence for a stay in Amsterdam is the fact that, shortly after he returned to Delft, Johannes received a visit from another painter, Gerard Ter Borch, who seems to have come to Delft from The Hague to attend the younger man’s wedding (it would have been a short ride on the canal towboat). Although Ter Borch was then living in The Hague, he had been in Amsterdam in the late 1640s and may have met Johannes there. Ter Borch’s work shared stylistic affinities with Vermeer’s, especially in their intimately nuanced interiors, focusing on women alone with their thoughts, sometimes being served by their maids—but Ter Borch was not in Amsterdam long enough to have taken on Vermeer as a formal apprentice. See ibid., pp. 102–3.
30 Even after canvas came: Groen, “Painting Technique in the 17th Century in Holland,” p. 200.
30 the inventory taken: Death inventory translated and reproduced in Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu, pp. 339–40.
30 The fineness of a canvas: See Kirby, “The Painter’s Trade in the 17th Century,” p. 24.
30 It is believed that: See Levy-van Halm, “Where Did Vermeer Buy His Painting Materials?,” p. 139.
30 Even if Vermeer: See Costaras, “A Study of the Materials and Techniques of Johannes Vermeer,” p. 151.
30 He would next brush: See Wadum et al., Vermeer Illuminated, p. 10.
31 For instance, in A View: See ibid., p. 11.
31 In Woman with a Pearl: See Lawrenze-Landsberg, “Neutron-Autoradiology of Two Paintings by Jan Vermeer in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin,” p. 216.
31 The skin has underpainting: Wadum et al., Vermeer Illuminated, p. 13.
31 In The Art of Painting: Costaras, “A Study of the Materials and Techniques of Johannes Vermeer,” p. 152.
31 Next, the final layers: Wadum et al., Vermeer Illuminated, p. 13.
32 Synthetic colors, such as: Swillens, Johannes Vermeer, p. 123.
32 In the early part: Ter Brugghen, Verlichtery kunst-boeck (1616), p. 2, cited in Levy-van Halm, “Where Did Vermeer Buy His Painting Materials?,” p. 138.
32 Half a century later: Van Hoogstraten, Inleyding, p. 222, cited ibid., p. 141.
32 In some cities, vermilion: Ibid., p. 138.
33 Each type of paint had: See Swillens, Johannes Vermeer, p. 127.
33 “Take two parts Quicksilver”: Quoted ibid., p. 125.
33 Crimson madder came: Ibid., pp. 125–26.
34 Mexico, its principal exporter: As Ball points out, the original source of the cochineal in the Middle Ages was Poland. See Bright Earth, p. 96.
34 until Leeuwenhoek examined: See AvL to RSL, Nov. 28, 1687, AB, 7:135.
34 The paint color was sometimes: See Levy-van Halms, “Where Did Vermeer Buy His Painting Materials?,” pp. 139–40.
34 Johannes would use it: See http://www.essentialvermeer.com/palette/palette_carmine.html#.U3vLJMaVvwI.
34 For the color blue: Quoted in Swillens, Johannes Vermeer, p. 122.
34 Johannes stayed away: See Duparc and Wheelock (eds.), Johannes Vermeer, p. 90, and Costaras, “A Study of the Materials and Techniques of Johannes Vermeer,” p. 157.
35 In Johannes’s time: Swillens, Johannes Vermeer, p. 122.
35 In 1649 the inventory: See Levy-van Halms, “Where Did Vermeer Buy His Painting Materials?,” p. 140.
35 The concept of “fine painters”: See Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 560.
35 They could come from: Swillens, Johannes Vermeer, pp. 123–24.
35 Lead white by itself: Ibid., p. 126.
35 The most intense black: Ibid., p. 127.
35 Johannes would have learned: Lawrenze-Landsberg, “Neutron-Autoradiology of Two Paintings by Jan Vermeer in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin,” p. 216.
36 “must have had twenty-seven blacks”: Vincent Van Gogh to Theo Van Gogh, Oct. 20, 1885, www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let536/letter.html.
36 Consequently, the painter: Swillens, Johannes Vermeer, p. 124.
36 This had its own problems: E.g., in The Little Street and View of Delft, as well as the laurel wreath on the model’s head in Art of Painting. See ibid., p. 130.
36 When the painter was finished: Ibid., p. 127.
36 When the apprentice was deemed: Noted in an apprenticeship contract executed in Delft in 1621. Quoted in Levy-van Halm, “Where Did Vermeer Buy His Painting Materials?,” p. 70.
37 The Delft city archives: Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu, p. 99. For the transcript of the document, see p. 308. Liedtke believes, as I do, that by signing this document Thins was expressing that her approval for the marriage was contingent on Vermeer’s conversion to Catholicism. See Liedtke, Vermeer, p. 17.
38 Johannes and his family: Although some writers have described Vermeer’s family as “staunchly Protestant,” his parents never registered as members of the Reformed Church; they probably were Protestants, but not so much as to wish to submit to ecclesiastical discipline. On the situation for Catholics in the Dutch Republic, see Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics during Holland’s Golden Age, pp. 32–33.
38 Restrictions on the practice: See, e.g., Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 515 and passim.
38 Delft had a fairly large: See ibid., p. 380; for total Delft population see p. 621.
39 “[The Catholics] have increased”: Quoted in Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu, 130.
39 Hostility toward Catholics: See Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics during Holland’s Golden Age, p. 124.
39 Although the local government: Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu, p. 131.
39 In 1649 the consistory: Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics during Holland’s Golden Age, p. 124.
39 By the middle of the: Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu, p. 131.
40 “In our Netherlands, God”: Quoted in Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, p. 421.
41 Because of these rights: Ibid., pp. 404–8.
41 After she moved to: Swillens, Johannes Vermeer, pp. 20–21.
41 It was easy for men: See Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 677.
41 “the women are said”: Quoted in Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, p. 402; see also p. 438.
42 This would be followed: Ibid., pp. 444–45.
42 One marriage manual: Cited ibid., p. 424.
42 “can see nothing of”: Quoted in Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 696.
42 Van Hoogstraten would later: See ibid., p. 350.
42 The couple wed on April 20: Their marriage license, dated two weeks after the wedding, records that they were married in Schipluy. See marriage license, DTB Delft 14, inv. 127, folio 48. Twenty years later their daughter Maria was married at the same church.
42 They moved into rented: The marriage license states that they were living “At Markt,” meaning on the Market Square, two weeks after the wedding. See marriage license, DTB Delft 14, inv. 127, folio 48.
43 In a time when paintings: See Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu, pp. 33–34. Portraits, in particular, were known at the time as conterfeytsel. See, e.g., the death inventories reproduced in Biesboer, Collections of Paintings in Haarlem, 1572–1745, passim.
PART 2: FROM THE LION’S CORNER
45 In the baptismal records: See DTB Delft 14, inv. 55, folio 119v.
46 Many brewers were members: Bok, “Society, Culture and Collecting in 17th Century Delft,” pp. 198–99.
47 “Let them freely play”: Johan van Beverwijck, quoted in Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, p. 557.
47 Foreign visitors were: Ibid., p. 485.
47 “they are a little too indulgent”: Aglionby, The Present State of the United Provinces, p. 230.
47 Such anecdotal evidence: Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, pp. 522–23.
47 Many years later Antoni: See AvL to RSL, Oct. 12, 1685, AB, 5:353.
47 Jacob Molijn, then in: No other writers on Leeuwenhoek have mentioned, to my knowledge, the existence of this second painter stepbrother, yet it is clear from the records of the Delft archive that Gerrit Molijn was also th
e son of Jacob Molijn. For the ages of Jan and Jacob, see Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft, pp. 334, 341, and Seters, “Can Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Have Attended School at Warmond?,” p. 4.
48 This branch of the Molijn: According to the entry on Jacob Molijn in WikiDelft, http://www.wikidelft.nl/index.php?title=Jacob_Jansz_Molijn. In the Delft city archives, we find that Pieter Molijn witnessed a baptism in November 1622, buried his wife in July 1624, and then married Geertruijt de Rovere of Amsterdam in May 1627. They baptized a son, Jan, in May 1629. Pieter next appears in the Delft records five and ten years later, as witness to a baptism in 1635 and one in 1639, but it is not clear whether he was still residing in Delft by that time or simply returning for the baptisms, or indeed whether it is the same Pieter Molijn.
48 Both the father, Jacob Molijn: Montias has discovered that they both paid relatively high taxes, which means that they had high incomes (Artists and Artisans in Delft, p. 126n).
48 Gerrit worked with his father: See ibid., table A2, notes.
48 In 1608 he was commissioned: “Om te stellen tot onderscheyt voor die screten waer die mens ende die vrouwen gaen,” see ibid., p. 148.
48 In 1643 Antoni’s older sister: See Dobell, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His “Little Animals,” pp. 21–23.
48 Around the time of her: See Seters, “Can Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Have Attended School at Warmond?,” p. 5. Much of the information we have about Leeuwenhoek’s early life comes from Boitet’s Beschryving der stadt Delft (Description of the town of Delft) (1729).
48 Warmond was known: See Israel, The Dutch Republic, pp. 689 and 1021.
49 Some Catholics in: See ibid., p. 689. However, Seters notes that there were six boys of the Reformed religion boarding with the school’s headmaster (compared with thirty Catholic boys), and he believes Leeuwenhoek was one of the six, and not Catholic. See Seters, “Can Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Have Attended School at Warmond?,” pp. 8–9.
49 The headmaster of the school: See Seters, “Can Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Have Attended School at Warmond?,” pp. 8–10.
49 Attached to the Bagijnhof: Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu, p. 129. The priests associated with the Bagijnhof were imbued with Jansenist doctrines more compatible with Protestant tenets than were the doctrines taught by Jesuits; but they were still Catholics.
50 The sheriff’s role was: See Seters, “Can Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Have Attended School at Warmond?,” p. 9.
50 He agreed to accept Antoni: Seters, “Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in Amsterdam,” p. 36.
50 Later, during the English-Dutch: Ibid., p. 38.
50 By the late seventeenth century: See Osselton, The Dumb Linguists, p. 5.
50 “If thou wilt see”: Quoted in Mijers, “Scottish Students in the Netherlands.”
51 Because the Dutch Republic had: An unusually large number of Scottish students were attending universities in the Netherlands for a kind of “study abroad” year: between 1680 and 1720 over one thousand were registered, though many others would attend classes without formal inscription in the university. On Scottish students in the Dutch Republic in this period, see Mijers, “News from the Republick of Letters.”
51 as well as with his wife: Seters, “Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in Amsterdam,” pp. 38–42.
51 Davidson would most likely: See “A History of the Scottish Languages, Parts 7 and 8,” http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php/arts-and-culture/3980-a-history-of-scottish-languages-parts-7-and-8, accessed May 5, 2014. A separate Scots language, as well as Gaelic, was spoken in the northern parts of Scotland. However, from the middle of the sixteenth century Scots began to become increasingly Anglicized. After the Reformation, Bibles printed in English were the vehicles for greater and greater acceptance of the English language in Scotland. This trend was codified by the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when the Scottish king James VI became King James I of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and English became the official language of the three countries. Scottish merchants and businessmen in the Dutch Republic would have spoken either English or Dutch in conducting their affairs.
51 By 1653, when Antoni: A deed signed in 1653 authorized Leeuwenhoek to conduct Davidson’s business and have the right to sign documents in his name while he is absent from Amsterdam. See Seters, “Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in Amsterdam,” p. 45.
51 A young man like Antoni: See Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 328; population figures are from 1647.
52 Even the size: Boucher, http://courses.umass.edu/latour/Netherlands/boucher/index.html.
52 “où l’on puisse jouir”: Quoted in Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 3.
52 Immigrants from all over: Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, p. 582.
52 There were only thirty-seven: Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 1015.
52 Other “open” industries: See Lucassan and Prak, “Guilds and Society in the Dutch Republic,” pp. 63–64.
53 The city became the hub: Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 556.
53 Sometimes, Amsterdam took: Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, p. 231.
53 “Where else on earth”: Letter to Balzac, May 5, 1631, in Descartes, Correspondence, p. 32.
53 Drapers like Davidson: As recorded by Melchior Fokken in 1662; see Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, p. 301.
54 Delft, in the grip of: See Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu, p. 138.
54 At the time that Antoni: Indeed, during the second half of the seventeenth century, only about 80–200 brothel keepers and prostitutes were prosecuted by the Amsterdam magistracy annually. See Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 696.
54 Some of the women: See Van de Pol, “The Whore, the Bawd, and the Artist,” p. 3.
54 The apprentice was expected: See Phillips, Well-Being in Amsterdam’s Golden Age, p. 48.
54 Those in the cloth trade: Epstein, “Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship, and Technological Change in Pre-Industrial Europe,” p. 701 and 701n65.
55 For instance, the “Dutch Loom”: See ibid., p. 706n80.
55 The draper’s apprentice: See ibid., p. 668n13.
55 It provided the only way: The Dutch tradition of using lenses in the cloth industry has been cited as a reason for the particular openness to the use of lenses in science in the Netherlands. See Wilson, The Invisible World, pp. 217–18.
56 When it was found: D. Brewster, “On an Account of a Rock-Crystal Lens and Decomposed Glass Found in Nineveh.” One recent scholar has gone so far as to suggest that the lens might have been used for astronomical observations. See David Whitehouse, “World’s Oldest Telescope?,” BBC News, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/380186.stm, accessed Oct. 1, 2012. For more on ancient lenses, see Sines and Sakellarakis, “Lenses in Antiquity.” They believe the Nimrud glass is a lens with magnifying properties, but not of enough optical quality to be used for precise observations. Brian Ford dismisses the claim that this is a lens at all. See Single Lens, pp. 13–14.
56 Aristophanes, in his play: Sines and Sakellarakis, “Lenses in Antiquity,” pp. 191–96.
56 Precious stones ground: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 37.10.
56 When the ability to: Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope, p. 10.
57 At the time there was: Ibid., p. 11.
57 By the mid-fifteenth century: See Burnett, Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest, p. 9. See also Panek, Seeing and Believing, pp. 24–25.
57 In his book On the: Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, 5.1.780b–781a.
57 In the sixteenth century: Others had more explicitly discussed the use of lenses, sometimes in conjunction with mirrors, to see distant objects. For example, Della Porta, in his Magia naturalis, had mentioned a device that has sounded to some to be a proto-telescope. Van Helden, however, argues that Della Porta was speaking about a device to improve faulty vision, a version of spectacles. See Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope, pp. 14–15.
58 Only by about 1600, then: Ibid., pp. 11–12.
58 So both the idea behind: Possibly there were very weak tele
scopes by the end of the sixteenth century in Italy—but these were so weak that they were considered “a hoax” (as Della Porta put it) or “a feeble thing” (as Raffael Gualterotti wrote to Galileo). See ibid., p. 19. Van Helden notes that there is a sense in which telescopes existed before anyone, even their inventors, realized it.
58 Sachariassen told Beeckman: Ibid., p. 8.
58 Around the time Janssen: Ibid., p 24. Elsewhere, in writings from the time, his name appears as Miotti. See Howell, Epistolae Ho-Elianae.
58 We know that on September 25: Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks, p. 2, and Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope, pp. 25–26.
59 Whoever he was, we know: Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks, p. 10.
59 From the tower: See Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, p. 6.
59 “From now on I can”: Quoted in Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope, p. 25.
59 Before two more weeks: Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks, pp. 2–3.
59 Wisely, the States General: Huerta, Giants of Delft, p. 33.
59 Indeed, by this time: Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, p. 6.
59 The States General instead: Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope, p. 20.
60 Metius was granted: Reeves, Galileo’s Glassworks, pp. 2–3.
60 By then the instruments: Ibid., pp. 4–5.
60 In 1617 Galileo’s: See Burnett, Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest, p. 5.
61 This meant he would need: Huerta, Giants of Delft, p. 130n43.
61 In this way Galileo limited: Van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope, p. 26.
61 Galileo had been calling: Panek, Seeing and Believing, p. 55.
61 After a lavish banquet: Huerta, Giants of Delft, p. 35.
61 At the dinner: Panek, Seeing and Believing, p. 55.
61 “a certain insect”: J. Wodderborn, Quator problematum (1610), translated and quoted in Fournier, “The Fabric of Life,” p. 45.
62 “inserting the points”: Quoted in Huerta, Giants of Delft, p. 126n35.