03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Secret Love Letters Remain Sealed in Vermeer Show
As a title for a museum exhibition, 'Vermeer's Love Letters' is a spicy choice. It promises a newly intimate, possibly amorous view of an artist whose life story is filled with question marks. Although Johannes Vermeer was one of the deities of 17th-century Dutch painting, decades of scholarship have failed to unearth even such routine facts as the name of his art teacher (presuming he had one) or the identity of his models. We could be looking at his wife, his daughters, or a good-natured neighbor when we gaze at the women in his paintings, those solitary figures in quiet rooms, making lace or pouring milk into a bowl with rapt concentration.
The show brings together just three paintings, which is plenty in Vermeer's case, especially since they share the intriguing subject of a woman who is writing a letter or receiving one, with the help of a servant. At the center of the show is the Frick's own beloved painting, 'Mistress and Maid,' (ca. 1664-67), which has been moved from its usual spot in the grand, green-wallpapered West Gallery into the brand-new Special Exhibition Galleries. There it is joined by two other Vermeer masterworks, one visiting from Dublin, the other from Amsterdam.
As its trumpet-blare of a title suggests, Vermeer's 'Love Letters' asks that we view the protagonists of the three paintings as sly correspondents caught up in romance, their maids aware of their feelings and consigned to the role of go-between.
But this is a highly speculative and iffy premise. Consider 'Mistress and Maid,' one of Vermeer's larger and more overtly dramatic paintings. A blonde housewife clad in an attractive yellow jacket trimmed in spotted white fur, glances up from her writing table, quill in hand, appearing startled. Her maidservant has entered her room to hand her an envelope — a small but commanding object, a flat, white shape gleaming against a well of shadow.
Who is the letter from? Perhaps it's from a cousin in Amsterdam sharing news of his family's ordeal in the bubonic plague of 1665. Or a local merchant informing the woman that her artist-husband has run up a catastrophic debt by splurging on lapis lazuli, the expensive stone that Vermeer used to achieve a radiant blue. Or perhaps the maid has jotted the note herself to announce that she is quitting her job.
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