Before setting off on the train to Delft, about an hour's journey time, I ran a quick errand in Amsterdam. Just a few minutes after 10am, when most museums open, I stopped by Nieuwe Kerk to buy an
museumkaart. Since I am under 24 I was able to purchase it for the student's price - €22.50. With the card one has free access to something like 400 participating museums throughout the Netherlands. In just one day my card was nearly half paid off. This was my first time in Amsterdam in the morning. Shops were just preparing to open and the tourists were just beginning to emerge. I bought a coffee right by Nieuwe Kerk and drank it on a bench in Dam Square where the pigeons were scarce and a man was playing the bag pipes outside the visitor's entrance to the Royal Palace.
I bought a sandwich at the station and ate it on the train. After arriving and stepping off the platform I followed some young but well-dressed businessmen who said they were going to the Town Hall and I could find my way to all the sights and museums from there. But I got distracted along the way when I came upon a street-lined canal full of stands selling antiques. Of course I found something to buy to remember my day in Delft before it had even begun.
Vermeer Centrum
Sadly no paintings by Johannes Vermeer remain in his home city of Delft. However, the Vermeer Centrum is still worth a visit. I love his paintings but I knew very little about him aside from the story presented in the film
Girl With a Pearl Earring (which I highly recommend.) Over the course of about an hour here I discovered that I'm not the only one to know so little about him. There are no letters by his hand left to study so his "voice" is only accessible through his paintings, which are rather difficult to study even for art scholars. He only created between 40-60 in his lifetime which is an usually small body of work.
The Centrum was built on the same spot where the Guildhouse of St. Luke once stood. All artists and craftsmen (including glassmakers, potters, and booksellers) in Delft were required to join this guild, which was established to protect their trade but also provided a network of influence and friendship for its members. The exterior of the Centrum is a recreation of the guildhouse's original exterior for which no expense was spared. Outside the building the arms of the city and the bust of the Classical painter Apelles stood as symbols of the guild's purpose. Cornelis de Mar and Leonart Bramer (who I will discuss later) were commissioned to decorate the boardroom. Vermeer's father was a weaver, inn owner, and art dealer so he was also a member of the guild. Inns and taverns were common places for artists to meet. Thus, it is believed that the time spent in his father's inns (The Flying Fox and Mechelen) was how Vermeer was first exposed to the art world.
One of the biggest unsolved mysteries concerning Vermeer is the identity of his mentor. The Centrum listed sixteen candidates and provided evidence for the three most likely: Leonert Bramer, Christiaen van Couwenbergh, and Gerard ter Borch. Bramer caught my interest since he spent seven years in Italy where he was known as "Leonardo delle Notte" because his paintings were almost always set in the dark and only lit with artificial light. He was an important member of the guild and was head several times. He was a teacher when Vermeer received his training. He was a regular visitor to Mechelen and was probably a family friend of Vermeer's wife. His paintings were set in Classical antiquity or told Biblical stories. The Museum Het Prinsenhof, which you will read about further on in this entry, has a few of his works.
17th century Delft had a busy art market where ordinary citizens, not the Catholic church, were the customers and patrons. Paintings could be bought in an open market and it is estimated that each house had around seven paintings hanging on the walls. Artists began to leave Delft after 1650 because the market became attractive elsewhere but the atmosphere and appreciation is still present to this day. The city reminded me a bit of Florence, so I felt a certain affinity the more I learned about it's Golden Age.
Since Delft has direct access to the sea it was an affluent city dependent on trade. The Dutch East Indies and West Indies companies both had establishments in the city. Mapmakers were regarded as painters for their craft was just as important and required just as much skill. The maps of Joan Blaeu and Pieter Gross, famous cartographers, appear in some of Vermeer's paintings. The presence of globes and maps were key elements in the development of Delft's unique worldview.
So, I learned all of that on just the main floor of the Centrum. The scene was set for the next floor, which was a recreation of his studio and focused on analyzing his technique and style.
Nearly all painters of the Golden Age used
Emblemata, a text which described hundreds of emblems and their symbolism, to include messages, morals, or stories in their works. Vermeer is described as "a painter of quiet encounters" who "tempts the observer to join him in being inquisitive." He didn't use such emblems. Therefore, as I have already mentioned, there is a lot of guesswork involved in interpretating his paintings. His figures always fill the center space of his paintings but they are never in the foreground. There is always something in the way. This is called
répoussoir. Infrared technology has enabled scientists and scholars to view the paint layers beneath the visible surface. For example, "A Maid Asleep" was first a man with a hat and a small dog. Another common element of paintings were
tronies, specific types of figures that appear again and again in various paintings: the virgin girl, the comforting mother, the warrior, ect. Vermeer, however, created photographic portraits of real people who appear exactly as they are: maids, noblemen, noblewomen, ect.
Aside from specific paintings, Vermeer is recognized for his use of light and color. The light source is always natural and comes from one side through a window in his studio. It doesn't simply have a direction but it emits the feeling that it is falling. The figures and objects in the room are all softly effected. In this way Vermeer evokes a sense that the light itself is being emitted from the painting.
Even though the Centrum doesn't have any of his originals, I walked out feeling much wiser and more connected to him and his Delft. As I moved away hazingly I realized that I was inadvertently wearing the precise shades of blue and yellow which he used frequently.
Musuem Het Prinsenhof
With a deepening understand of Delft and Vermeer I made my way towards a history museum which I wasn't particularly interested in visiting but my love for museums drew me onwards. And I am glad it did because my historical perspective of Holland blossomed here. I took notes at the Vermeer Centrum but there were so many rooms here that it would have taken me hours to write everything down.
The museum is in the same building that was used as a convent and as William the Silent's residence during the second half of the 16th century. He was a nobleman who led the Dutch resistance against the Spanish rule over the Netherlands, which at the time was a collection of provinces. The revolt began with the Beeldenstorm, where severe iconoclasm swept through the Low Countries as a protest to King Phillip II of Spain's devout Catholicism and his attempts to suppress the spread of Protestantism. What is now known as the Eighty Years War began. In 1584 William was assassinated by a Catholic Frenchman when he was descending the stairs of his home. Over the centuries there have been multiple re-modelings of the staircase but the museum has attempted to recreate it as best as possible according to various drawings and references. The bullet holes are still visible in the wall.
The rooms on the upper floors were organized according to the different aspects of daily life, society, art, and history of Delft's Golden Age. There were paintings by Leonart Bramer. Paintings which appear hanging on the wall in Vermeer's paintings. Paintings of Delft's "anatomy theater" which included such details as peeled back skin, exposed intestines, an open ribcage, and fascinatingly calm facial expressions on all the observers surrounding the surgical table.
There was a wedding reception in the courtyard just outside and at one point, I believe in the room about Delft Blue (the famous handpainted blue porcelein), one could hear Michael Jackson's "I'm Bad" being played for the guests. Ironically appropriate for a museum about a Dutch rebel who is also sometimes credited as the "father of the country."
Museum Lambert van Meerten
I did not pick up a brochure here (I am not even sure there were any) and there weren't any placcards in English. So, basically I just walked through this house with very little idea about the family who owned it other than the fact that Lambert was a rich art collector.
Oude Kerk (Old Church)
Although the official date of creation for this church is 1246, it is said there was a wooden church on this spot as early as 1050. The church's patron saint is St. Bartholomew, after the name of the original builder, Bartholomew van der Made. The tower, which is 75 meters high and consists of five spires, is reminiscent of Flemish architecture. It was last restored in 1995 but it is still sagging and doesn't stand completely up right. Sort of like the leaning tower in Pisa. The church was a victim to the aforementioned iconoclasm so it was never expanded to create a cross basilica shape. In 1654 Delft's gunpowder magazine exploded and the original stained glass windows were destroyed in the blast. The windows currently sitting in the frames were installed between 1949-1961. All windows, except two, display Biblical subjects. The windows flanking the tower show William the Silent and Queen Wilhelmina. Vermeer was buried in the floor of the Oude Kerk.
Nieuwe Kerk (New Church)
In 1351 a beggar claimed to see a vision of the Virgin Mary and a wooden church was built where she supposedly appeared. In 1420 it was taken down to be replaced with a brick basilica. Not even fifty years after construction was complete, in 1536, the tower was struck by lightening and the roof collapsed. In 1566 iconoclasm stripped the interior of its original furnishings and Catholic decor. The roof collapsed again in 1654 with city's gunpowder explosion.
However, the church is still in use today. It holds the tombs of William the Silent, because at the time of his death Breda, where the burial vaults for the House of Orange were located, was still in the hands of the Spaniards.
Other places of interest in Delft which I did not visit include: Legermuseum (Army Museum), Museum Nusantara, Museum Paul Tetar van Elven. Delft also has a great website here with excellent information for visitors.
