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Costume designer Pauline Loven of Wag Screen who made the short advert said: “We wanted to use easily recognisable paintings that we could reproduce and once we decided to use the Girl with a Pearl Earring we thought Samuel Pepys was the most interesting because if anyone would have been a fan of Twitter like Stephen Fry is it would have been Pepys.”

In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as Boston police officers talked their way into the Gardner museum, bound two guards, and stole artwork valued at $500 million, including three Rembrandts,  Vermeer’s  Concert and five sketches by Degas.

The identity of the thieves and the whereabouts of the artwork remain a mystery. Two decades after a pair of thieves dressed as Boston police officers pulled off  the biggest art heist in history, the FBI is trying to stir up new leads with two billboards on Boston-area freeways that promise a $5 million reward.

The FBI has also resubmitted DNA samples for updated testing, the Associated Press reports.

The Gardner museum is offering the $5 million reward.

Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston, said Clear Channel Outdoor  began running an FBI poster yesterday on two of its digital http://www.gardnermuseum.org/information/theft.asp for more information. The billboards are on I-93 in Stoneham and I-495 in Lawrence.

He said the FBI poster seeking information on the Gardner theft will probably remain on the billboards for at least four weeks. He estimated that 117,000 people pass by the Stoneham billboard and about 81,000 pass by the one in Lawrence daily.

Although I have not yet had the chance to see it, the Kunsthistorisches Museum catalogue of the Art of Painting exhibition is currently on sale at the museum online shop. Below is the URL and a little more information.

Vermeer: Die Malkunst

exhibition catalog 2010, 259 pg., numerous illustr.,
paperback in German
+ 73 S. English Translations of the Essays
Order number: 24770
24,8 x 28cm

price: EUR 29,90

bookshop link: <http://ecomm.khm.at/cgi-bin/khmmuseumsshop.storefront/4b66caaf002f47b22717c1aad84206de/Product/View/24770>

The museum also proposes a number of Vermeer Art of Painting spinoffs like scarfs, shoulder bags, coffee cups, jigsaw puzzles and magnets as well as the more conventional postcards and reproductions.

My Essential Vermeer website gets a pretty lot of traffic, naturally, considering it is dedicated to a single fine artist. It is sobering, but not altogether surprising, to know that any second-tier Hollywood actress, NBA player or recent video game generates infinitely more web traffic than Vermeer, Rembrandt  and  Leonardo da Vinci combined.

To whom it may concern, below is a breakdown of all 37 paintings by Vermeer with the number of page views during December, a slow month. I doubt you could call it a popularity contest in the strictest sense; many people come to study the paintings they need to understand rather than the ones they love.

However, most works are there where I would have expected.  Girl with a Pearl Earring has simply had too much good press not to be number one. The Milkmaid, as it has done for more than 300 years, marvels any one who has ever seen it whether you know it is a Vermeer or not.  The Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window comes in a comfortable third perhaps more for its captivating  image than for the way it is painted. Odd I would say, is the appearance of the Frick Mistress and Maid near the top. Vermeer specialists rarely cast more than a sidelong glance at it because, perhaps, from an iconographical standpoint, there is not a real lot to talk about.

Frankly, I am a bit surprised that the mesmerizing Woman in Blue Reading a Letter and iconic Little Street, are stuck midway down the list. Expectedly, the two London virginal pictures, much fussed over by critics, lack popular appeal. Too the Lacemaker, once the artist’s most recognizable images, is down at 26. Even the newly attributed  and somewhat unfamiliar A Young Woman Seated at the Virginal , now in a New York Private collection, places a bit higher.

I dutifully accept popular verdict  except for the Woman with a Lute, almost last. While I admit the canvas seriously lacks nuance (due its near disastrous state of conservation), it nonetheless overwhelms me every I have the privilege of seeing it again. I find the unspeakable delicacy of the lute player  every more touching each time I find her still tucked away with the greatest care in one of Vermeer’s boldest compositions.

1. Girl with a Pearl Earring  – 3,892
2. The Milkmaid – 2,481
3. Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window  -  2,058
4. Girl with a Wine Glass – 1,623
5. Mistress and Maid – 1,589
6. Woman with a Pearl Necklace – 1,524
7. The Astronomer – 1,513
8. Woman with a Water Pitcher – 1,477
9. The Lover Letter – 1,473
10. A Lady Writing – 1,465
11. The Art of Painting – 1,459
12. The Geographer – 1,410
13. The Concert – 1,377
14. View of Delft – 1,331
15. Officer and Laughing Girl – 1,326
16. St Praxedis – 1,316
17. Woman in Blue Reading a Letter – 1,301
18. The Procuress – 1,276
19. The Little Street – 1,253
20. Girl with a Red Hat – 1,181
21. The Music Lesson  – 1,172
22. Diana and her Companions  – 1,158
23. A Young Woman Seated at the Virginal - 1,131
24. Girl Interrupted in her Music – 1,131
25. Woman Holding a Balance – 1,121
26. The Lacemaker – 1,041
27. Christ in the House of Martha and Mary – 1,015
28. Allegory of Faith – 960
29. Lady Wring a Letter with her Maid – 958
30. Guitar Player – 955
31. Maid Asleep – 924
32. A Lady Standing at the Virginals – 890
33. A Lady Seated at the Virginals – 918
34. Study of a Young Woman – 913
35. Woman with a Lute  – 832
36. Girl with a Flute – 798
37. The Glass of Wine – 788

Following the claims (September 2008)  of the heirs of Jaromir Czernin concerning the ownership of  The Art of Painting by Johannes Vermeer, the Kunsthistorische Museum of Vienna has launched a web page to inform those interested in the current state of discussion. Here is the link:

<http://www.khm.at/en/kunsthistorisches-museum/news/news-detailview/?newsID=318&cHash=70c96ebc3b>

Get background information at the NGA study, The Art of Painting: The Painting’s Afterlife

Get a review of current events at Restitution And Remorse by Natascha Eichinger on the Vienna Review.

A hitherto unrecorded and unpublished painting by Cesar van Everdingen,  A Girl Holding a Balance of Plums, was recently sold at Sotheby’s for a tidy sum. Artdaily.com has it that the work was “subject of considerable bidding battle this evening. It saw interest from six potential buyers who competed strongly and whose determined bids took the price to 1,161,250 GBP, which was 16 times the pre-sale estimate of 50,000-70,000 GBP.” Luckily, the painting can be inspected with the zoom feature on Sotheby’s website accompanied by valuable background information.

To modern sensibility, bred on the precept that only the blunt and the rough can possibly signal sincerity, Cesar Van Everdingen’s elegant paint handling and sometimes aloof subject matter does not always excite non-specialists. And yet, his superlative technique and enviable sense of pictorial synthesis was held in high esteem in Vermeer’s time, higher than Vermeer’s. But what does Van Everdingen have to do with Vermeer?

Critics have long pointed to Van Everdingen’s hand for the large-scale, idiosyncratic Cupid that appears in three works by Vermeer, its boldest appearance being in the Lady Standing at the Virginal (it also starred in the  Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window but was later painted out by artist himself). However, Vermeer’s interest in Van Everdingen may have gone beyond citing his Cupid as a convenient iconographical prop. Walter Liedtke, in his recent complete catalogue of Vermeer, points out a stylistic kinship between the extraordinarily economical treatment of the head of the mistress in the Frick and Van Everdingen’s classicist  Still-Life with a Bust of Venus in the Mauritshuis.

To be sure, Van Everdingen’s  A Girl Holding a Balance of Plums is a big brash  picture. At first glance it is about as unVermeer-like as you can get. Yet her outrageous hat which projects a suggestive shadow just over her eyes and her seductively parted lips may not be lost on those who know Vermeer’s  Girl with a Flute.  Dutch painters produced countless numbers of such works intoxicated  as was the whole country by exotic whares that swelled Dutch ports. (Van Everdingen’s hat is from Brazil where Vermeer’s is obviously of Oriental extraction). If one wishes to push the case beyond the literal, the challenging rendering of the hat’s geometrical design could have stirred Vermeer attention, fascinated by the curious perspective of the decorative stripes on his own oriental hat.

Since art-history detective work is neither one of my talents nor ambitions, I gladly  leave further comparison to those more qualified.

The Young Vermeer

The Hague, Mauritshuis
May 12 – Aug 22, 2010

Dresden, Old Masters Picture Gallery
Sept 3– Dec 28, 2010

Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland
end of 2010 – Feb. 2011

Although Vermeer’s art has been consecrated by numerous special exhibitions for decades, until now, no single exhibition has focused on the myriad questions of painter’s artistic formation and early works. Hence, The Young Vermeer, which will travel from The Hague to Edinburgh and lastly to Dresden, will be the first chance to view Vermeer’s formative early works in close proximity and shall no doubt will be a milestone in Vermeer studies. All three venues feature Vermeer’s Diana and her Companions, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and The Procuress. These three works have been completely restored so they can be appreciated in all their youthful intensity. The Dresden venue will also comprise their Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window.

An exhibition catalogue will provide visitors with in-depth investigation to this subject by distinguished experts of Dutch art.

The Dresden venue of the exhibition seems to be particularly rich. An ambitious educational project, based on recent investigations of the Dresden Vermeer Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window will include a full-scale, scientifically elaborated reconstruction of the room represented in this early masterpiece. The reconstruction will to be presented to the public next week. A website, currently under construction but already rather promising, will further explore Vermeer’s masterpiece.

Moreover, the educational project includes a 20-minute film which focused on the early Vermeer paintings and the Dresden paintings (The Procuress and Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window).  Numerous lectures during are planned as well as an anthology, comprehending short literary texts by different authors dealing with the Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window.

Due to its uniqueness, the Young Vermeer exhibition has already begun to stir international attention assuring widespread interest. As details come available, they will be reported on the Flying Fox.

Love takes form in strange ways.

One of them is looking at seemingly inconsequential paintings representing frivolous damsels in the corner of a room made by a little-known man who lived briefly and died poor in a very different world some 350 years distant from our own. Traveling around the world to see them all is another.

Perhaps one of the most curious, but frequent, emails I receive as the author of Essential Vermeer website is from people who have made it one of their life-quests to see “all the Vermeers.” A few travel as couples, a few keep me informed of their progress.

Mike Buffington  recently wrote me about his “mission to see all the Vermeers.” He is at 30 now. A trip in April will put both he and his brother at 35. I admire Mike’s youthful dedication and understand his need to picture himself next each one he has seen.

When I saw my first Vermeer many years ago  it was very hard to leave.

This week, The Art Newspaper will reveal how a painting that supposedly was made by Hans van Meegeren, one of the most successful forgers of all time, dates, is now believed to have been painted in the 17th century.

The work in question, The Procuress, has been housed at the Courtauld Institute in London since 1960 when it given as a donation from Professor Geoffrey Webb, a specialist in historic architecture. Webb had no illusions concerning its authorship; he believed that it was a forgery by Van Meegeren recovered after the War in Van Meegeren’s chalet in Nice. Scientific examination at the Courtauld confirms that the picture could date from the 17th-century since the canvas is old but more significantly, there is no evidence that any modern pigment was used. See an image of the painting here.

Two other versions of  The Procuress already are present in public museums. The first is owned by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which, however, lists it as a copy. Another emerged in 1949 from an English private collection and was auctioned at Christie’s before being bought by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Scholars now believed this one to be the original by Dirck van Baburen.

This bit of news may be relevant to Vermeer studies since it is well known that Vermeer included just such a procuress motif  in the background of two of his compositions, The Concert and the Lady Seated at the Virginals. Baburen’s Procuress, or a copy of the original, probably corresponds to one in the 1641 inventory of Vermeer’s mother-in-law, Maria Thins, described as “a painting wherein a procuress points to the hand.”

Have you seen Vermeer Milkmaid at the MET? Then why not share your impressions, thoughts, questions and comments  here?

Bets are that you don’t know Caesar van Everdingen. Vermeer did.

Art historians have posited that Vermeer used a now-lost, large-scale Cupid by Caesar Van Everdingen a good 4 times as a backdrop for his own compositions. The most explicit rendition, impossible to ignore, glares out from the late Lady Standing at a Virginal. The other three are more discreet.

In the Maid Asleep, Cupid’s foot dangles in the upper left-hand where we can see the corner of a picture with an ebony frame. If you know he is there, you can see him standing erect in Girl Interrupted in her Music although pretty much obliterated by time and restorations. And had it not been for x-ray photography, we would have never known he hung in all his glory, dominating the background wall of Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window.

Chances are Vermeer’s Cupid is the one mentioned in the inventory of his widow’s possessions in 1676.

Knowing how exacting Vermeer was in aesthetic matters, the modern viewer might wonder just what Vermeer had in mind. To our tastes Van Everdingen’s Cupid is simply too big, too confrontational, too rhetorical and too nude to have anything to do the values we prize in Vermeer’s art. Historians usually have no problem skimming over aesthetic valuations of the painting that no longer exists. Far more comfortable is to take Cupid as a symbol which 300 years ago meant, and still means, love to anyone.

In common with so many forgotten or underestimated artists, Van Everdingen occupied an important place in the art of his own time. The century-long refusal of critics and connoisseurs to look at his type of art shows signs of coming to an end.

It could not have escaped a young, ambitious painter like Vermeer that Van Everdingen was a superb technician, not only with detail and brushwork, but with his ability to paint portraits, mythological and allegorical pictures in a broad, yet crisp and polished style. His outstanding strength was his ability to simplify complicated forms and convey the sense of volume and surface with great pictorial economy. His treatment of light evokes the fullness of nature; even his shadows are colorful and pleasant to look at.

In his later years, when Vermeer pursued a more classicist agenda, Van Everdingen’s painting became more relevant than just being a convenient prop.

Luckily there are some excellent high resolution images of van Everdingen’s work on the net.

My preferences goes to:

Cupid with a Glass Ball
Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf
http://www.museumkunstpalast.de/mediabig/1845A_original.jpg

Winter
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/images/aria/sk/z/sk-a-4878.z

Bacchus with Nymphs and Cupid
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
http://www.oogvoornaakt.nl/

(this images is a bit laborious to access but very worth the while)

1. click on the “Bekijk alle naakten” link to the lower-right
2. scroll the multiple images to reach the far left-hand border
3. click on the farthest left-hand painting in the second row from the top
4. click on the medium size image of the paintings that appears which brings up an extraordinarily detailed image and use your mouse to explore the painting.

Let’s be frank, since the internet began to reach out in the 1990s, the fine art community has made little headway on the web. Art with a capital “A” lags and it lags badly. Serious monographic sites of great artists are exceedingly rare and art collections and institutions are dutifully present but, save exceptions, not much more.

One area where progress is being made is in digital imagery. Major collections and museums are slowly but surely presenting their finest works with various Flash applications such as Zoomify allowing the viewer to scan with ease over good quality images. Some are carefully tucked away where the average viewer will never chance.

Obviously, we cannot expect to experience the impact of a work of art from the computer monitor no matter how high the image’s resolution may be. But zoom-viewing permits close-quarter, detailed observation that can provide its own pleasures and food for thought. Most importantly, considering that we will never, ever in our lives see 99% of these pictures where they are physically housed, high-quality, internet zooms constitute an illuminating resource and not merely eye candy for the curious.

The following Zooming-in columns  will report some of the most interesting zooms on the net, with hopefully, some interesting comments.

I'm sorry about my online absence, but i'm back! And with a whole new site re-style!
I tested everything and it looks like it all works, but if you happen to find something that isn't right, links not working, pls let me know! There are still some small things i want to tweak, like font color, maybe sizes, small things.
I also hope the colors look as good on your screen as they do on mine. I'm so frustrated with different screencolors, so i'm hoping you're seeing the site as i designed and intended it. Let me know what you think!

This is one of the first drafts of the new banner. I thought it might be interesting to show how it kinda evolves into what is up on the screen now. I liked placing the little angel girl prominently on my site, but then my Love said that the pink Ismoyo girl shouldn't disappear. And he was right. Plus the fact that all my promo items have the ismoyo girl on them and i really don't feel like having to change it all, or to not be consistent (angel girl on site, pink girl on all other outlets).

Here the ismoyo girl returned. It's starting to look 'right' but the circle behind the girl is missing something.

Tada! Made some changes, took things away, added new things (cute sewing notions, so ismoyo!). As you can see, the circle behind the girl has been replaced with a pink jewelry setting which i also used for some buttons on the right side here.

Oh, if you have some time and feel like browsing, don't forget to check out the updated Links page! It was about time i gave it a once over. Want to see where i hang out online? It's there! If you feel left out, was expecting to see a link to your site or blog, don't feel hurt, i might have accidentally forgot to add. Leave me a comment/email and i'll fix it!

Glad to be back here, hope you're still here with me!

Made these embroidered storage jars for a some sort of personal project i'm working on. Could get quite interesting.

And Monsieur Le Bun invited me over to supercutekawaii for a croissant and some cute conversation. C'est tres jolie!

One of the paybacks of 9+ years of making the Essential Vermeer website is the constant influx of correspondence. Scholars and specialists inform me of their thoughts and writings, museums directors about their exhibitions and web initiatives. I receive suggestions, constructive criticism, books, articles and even proposals for collaboration from all over the globe.

Alongside public figures, there are people whose names I did not know who generously express their opinions and raise questions on about every facet of Vermeer and web publishing one could imagine. They send me images of their own paintings or a dusty canvas found in the attic hoping it’s  a Vermeer, posters, postcards, poetry and every now and then, a donation to keep the site going and growing.

The other day, a friend of the Essential Vermeer, Drew, established an absolute first.  After some email correspondence about his Vermeer travels and the newly attributed Young Woman Seated at a Virginal which just popped up at the MET, Drew went to view the work directly. He  pulled out his iPhone, snapped a digital photo and emailed it to me as he was standing in front of the painting.

Sometimes I wonder.

What would Vermeer have said about someone blasting an iPhone image of his painting instantaneously from one part of the globe to another he had never met? How would have he reacted if he new some of his 36 surviving works fly on jumbo-jets over oceans, mountain ranges and the Siberian tundra to be ogled by thousands of viewers who spend hours in line at exhibitions dedicated to his art in places called museums?  What would have he though if he could thumb through the lavish, band-new Vermeer: The Complete Paintings written by Vermeer specialist Walter Liedtke?

In my opinion Vermeer would have taken in all the technology with an wide, wide grin.  He would have loved the stuff. And he would have been delighted although sometimes puzzled at what has been written about himself and his work. Perhaps he would have needed a bit more time to comprehend how many people on the earth are knit together by his tiny canvases.

When i signed up for twitter not too long ago, i really didn't expect that there were people out there interested in my tweets. But there are. And i appreciate every one of you! As a work at home freelancer, Twitter became sort of my watercooler office moment. A place to take a short break, catch up on what others are up to, get feedback or just a quick chat about the weather. I tweet twitter!

Twitter mosaic found on the Tigerprint blog. Get your own mosaic for your blog right here!