Vermeer in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie: How Cupid came into view – culture

First of all, there is one loss to be lamented: it concerns a painting by Vermeer van Delft. And that’s not only tragic because there are only 37 pictures of Vermeer in this world. This is also tragic because it hits the Dresden Gemäldegalerie again, which in a completely different but in a certain way related case already featured a famous painting by Holbein the Elder. J. has lost. The “Dresdner Holbeinstreit” was exactly 150 years ago these days, but it still has repercussions today. Since then, it has been the case that it is not just what you see in a painting that matters, but even more what is hidden under the color. Just as a reminder: There was a version of Holbein’s “Madonna of Mayor Meyer” in both Dresden and Darmstadt, and one was more magnificent than the other. A comparison was made at the beginning of September 1871, and the experts decided on the basis of stylistic criteria that the Darmstadters had the original and the Dresdeners a copy. Later, when X-ray technology was invented, it was confirmed that the original had discarded variants under the surface. The copy, on the other hand, only showed the final state, then lost the nimbus of a northern counterpart to Raphael’s Sistine Madonna and since then – identified as a forgery by the hand of the baroque painter Bartholomäus Sarburgh – has been a bit ashamed of itself.

Until recently there was a wonderfully quiet painting by Vermeer in Dresden with the title “Girl reading a letter at the open window”. Since this painting was also placed under an X-ray machine at the end of the 1970s, the museum’s educational staff seldom forgot the remark that a picture of a God of Love had been found above the girl’s shoulder, which means that one knows what the letter from Girl’s trade. This not only said that this was definitely an original by Vermeer, but also what kind of a fine and sensitive person this Vermeer must have been if he had noticed the loquacity of his inner-picture comment and fortunately corrected this error again. Even schoolchildren could tell from the reading girl that her letter had not been from the tax office. Most of the time there was chuckling at this point, and then the tour continued to all the Dutch petty masters, who also liked to draw illusionistically aside curtains in front of their domestic scenes. (In this way, at least with school children, the other Vermeer in the collection could also be handled well, a not-so-youth-free brothel scene with the title “At the matchmaker”.)

Correcting the correction gives the image something nightmarish

Now it is over. Because in 2017 a restoration came to the conclusion that the overpainting of the picture in the picture only had to be done by someone else after Vermeer. That in turn led to the correction of the correction. That is why the delicate letter reader now has a bulky, giant baby on her shoulder and gives her picture something decidedly nightmarish. It has been found that it is more of a “Cupid” than an “Amor”, so it is about physical love, not just platonic. And with emblem books from Vermeer’s time, one can also prove the importance of the masks that Cupid tramples on the picture: What is meant are the techniques of deception in order to achieve the desired goal in such love affairs. The actual creator of this Cupid was also determined, it was probably Caesar van Everdingen, because a “Cupid” from his hand belonged to Vermeer’s mother-in-law, and Vermeer also has him in the background in “Young lady standing at the virginal”, today in London quoted. There is even a suspicion as to who could be responsible for the later overpainting of the “Girl Reading a Letter”: In Dresden, they have the Belgian Jean-Baptiste Slodtz in their sights, because he was speculating on a job at the Saxon court to whom the picture was made by his art agents Paris was proposed as a work by Rembrandt. There were good reasons for this, because Vermeer was no longer a household name outside of Holland in the 18th century, while Rembrandt was revered and coveted. But Rembrandt would almost certainly not have painted such a penetrating baroque emblem as a comment in his picture.

The fame of the painting was due not least to the mysteriously empty wall surface

Apparently this was seen as a quality flaw back then and “corrected” it accordingly, which was at least not insignificant for the further career of the painting. So it ended up in the elector’s private apartments, but as Rembrandt, without Cupid. Even if it had not served the transformation into an alleged Rembrandt, this correction would be at least as valuable as the work of a good reader on the manuscript of an author who cannot hold his ink. The fame of Vermeer’s painting was not least due to the mysteriously empty wall surface that pushed the letter-reading girl with an almost existential force to the bottom left out of the center of the picture.

Whether the fascination for this “openness” of the painting was not more a wishful thinking of the modern age is now being asked rhetorically in Dresden in order to justify the exposure, which is obviously not undisputed internally. The correct answer should actually be: only if modernity is allowed to begin shortly after Vermeer’s lifetime. The decision in favor of an “original intention” of the artist is inevitably one against the traditional painting with all the sediments of its reception history and of course has something of the always somewhat simple-minded zeal of those who, for example, only tolerate Bach’s compositions on the instruments of his own era, as if it didn’t owe its musical survival essentially to romanticism.

The great Vermeer suddenly shows itself to be a tiny bit less subtle than everyone thought

But now – also with reference to such original sound fetishists – the decision had just been made in Dresden to expose Vermeer’s original condition again. And now one can at least state in the result that the quotation of a slightly less good painter by a good painter can also turn a good picture into a slightly less good one. The stiff-legged love god brings the composition out of its interesting imbalance into a balanced, but also somewhat boring balance and, above all, makes it flatter in terms of content than it was before. In other words, the great Vermeer suddenly shows itself to be a tiny bit less subtle than everyone thought. Thank goodness – but you have to add it. Otherwise the wealth of tricks and the profound beauty of his painting would be unbearable.

So finally to the big on the other hand:

On the other hand, there is a happy win to be announced. First of all, there is now a virtually newly discovered painting by Vermeer, at least one that has not been seen in this way for several centuries and that you first have to look into. Second, to celebrate this new Vermeer, they have set up a special exhibition in the Dresden picture gallery that will not be seen again anytime soon. They were able to collect no fewer than ten paintings by Vermeer, almost a third of the world’s total; something like this is of course a generational event that guarantees long queues in front of the Semper building of the gallery. What you get to see for around four months after the opening in the presence of the Federal Chancellor and the Dutch Prime Minister is also really beguiling. Incidentally, this is expressly not just because of Vermeer’s spectacular painting maneuvers, spatial constructions and focus-blurring games. This is not only because of the strangely modern appearance of many of his self-absorbed women who ponder, play music or just read, although an additional show in winter is supposed to show where Edward Hopper got such things from.

It is also decisive that many of Vermeer’s contemporaries are used to investigate central motifs that flow together in his “Letter Reader”: In addition to sexual relationships and gods of love as a picture in the picture, these are reflections, Persian carpets that serve as tablecloths – and, last but not least, reading Letters from women, which should have a lot to do with the pictorial absence of men and the social history of a sea-trading nation. When in doubt, not only hearts but livelihoods depend on what is written in these letters. After Vermeer, of all people, was recently proclaimed a propagandist of queer issues in Amsterdam, he turns out to be more of a straight representative of what could be described as quite heteronormative citizen acts. But Dresden’s decision to relocate Vermeer’s work in his own time tends to deprive him of many of the access needs of his posterity.

For them, however, the restorer Sabine Bendfeldt had already done years ago what Sarburgh had done with the Holbein: She had painted a very faithful copy of the “girl reading a letter”, old condition, without Cupid. The picture gallery should ideally buy the one now, keep it and hang around until the new original Vermeer is perhaps even more convincing than the original old one.

“Vermeer. On pausing”, Picture gallery Dresdenuntil January 2, 2022.