(lively music)
Steven: We're in the Kunsthistorisches Museum
in Vienna, and we're looking at Johannes Vermeer's
The Art of Painting, which is a painting
of a painter painting a painting.
Beth: It is, indeed.
He's painting a model, who is going to transform
into the Muse of History, so she is Clio.
We can identify her by what she holds: the trumpet and
the book, and also the laurel leaves on her head.
She's an allegorical figure.
We might think about the Statue of Liberty, for example.
Steven: That idea of a painting's power
to transform is actually cental to this image.
Beth: Doesn't it feel as though we have
a privileged view into the studio?
Look at the curtain that's been drawn back,
that takes up the top quarter of the painting.
We're looking at a scene that
we don't normally get to see.
Steven: If you look at that curtain that's been
drawn back, there's a kind of interesting optical quality.
It's a little bit out of focus.
It shimmers and shines, but the points
of light are a little too big.
It's as if the entire painting doesn't resolve
until you get to what the artist himself
is looking at: that is, his model.
That's where we start to see a clarified focus.
It's almost as if the painting has a depth of field,
so much so that some art historians have suggested
that perhaps he was using a camera obscura.
That is, a kind of simple, early camera without film,
to begin to process the transformation of the
three dimensional onto the two dimensional plain.
Beth: The subject always, with Vermeer, is light.
We don't see the source of the light,
which is behind that curtain, but the light filters onto
the chandelier above, onto the Muse of History,
onto the objects on the table, across the floor,
on the artist's stockinged feet, on the tiles,
catching the brass tacks on that
upholstered chair on the right.
I mean, we can follow its pathway.
Steven: I especially love the way the light catches
the ridging on the map itself and creates
these highlights and shadows.
Beth: And look at the artist.
He's dressed up, too.
He's dressed up the model, but he's wearing something
fancier than the artist would traditionally wear
in the studio, this black vest that has these openings
and slits in it, and this really nice hat.
Steven: And the bright orange leggings.
Beth: This is an image that was obviously important
to Vermeer: it's larger than most of his work;
the artist in it is dressed up.
It was still in his possession at the time of his death.
His wife actually tried to save it from his creditors
who were after his estate, which was heavily in debt.
This is an important painting.
Steven: It reminds me actually of
the painting Las Meninas by Velazquez,
where the artist paints a self portrait.
In that case, we can see his face, but he's dressed
in a very formal manner, in a way that is meant
to place the artist within society,
Beth: Exactly.
and dignify the profession.
Vermeer paints in such a careful and defined way
that we might actually look in, past the frame
of the canvas, and think to ourselves that
we're actually looking into this room.
The fact that Vermeer has depicted an artist painting
reminds us that this is simply a construction,
that this is an artificial image.
Beth: Ironically, this painting has a very ...
Steven: Complex.
Beth: Complex and disturbing history, in some way.
Steven: Vermeer's modest reputation
really dissipated in the 18th Century.
He was forgotten.
But the painting reemerges in the early 19th Century,
and somebody added the signature
of an artist who was better known.
Beth: Luckily, though, a Vermeer scholar, later in
the 19th Century, recognized it as a real Vermeer.
Ever since then, Vermeer's
reputation has only increased.
Steven: By the time we get to the early 20th Century,
this painting is wildly valuable,
but the owner tries to sell it.
The American financier, Mellon, tries to buy it,
and because of export restrictions, laws that
did not allow for important historical or artistic works
to be let out of the country, that sale was stopped.
Beth: The person who does end up
buying it is Adolf Hitler.
Steven: Hitler loved art.
He wanted to be an artist early in his life.
Beth: He amassed an enormous collection of art.
Their idea was to make a museum of
all the great masterpieces of European art.
Steven: The painting was delivered to Hitler,
at his private residence in Munich, and it stayed there
until it was packed away for safekeeping during the war.
Beth: At the end of the war, the painting
was recovered by the Allied Forces
and returned to the museum in Vienna.
It's interesting to me that a painting
that is about the role of art and history,
and the role of the artist in making history
has such a complex and disturbing history itself.
(lively music)