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Late last year a friend who was carrying out detective work on my behalf in Delft made an enthralling discovery: he had found in the archives the previously unknown location of the house where the painter Johannes Vermeer’s chief patrons lived. It was a golden key to his work — and one that confirmed my suspicions about the world within which the artist moved.
Vermeer’s patrons, Maria de Knuijt and her husband, Pieter Claesz van Ruijven, lived at a house called the Golden Eagle, which they filled with his most famous paintings. The house stood on the Oude Delft canal in the heart of the old town, directly in front of the church of a once proscribed religious movement — the Remonstrants, evangelical Christians who modelled their lives on Christ’s apostles or female followers such as Mary Magdalene.
Maria and Pieter were both Remonstrants; she was also part of a radical splinter group known as the Collegiants, and regularly hosted their meetings at the Golden Eagle. Vermeer’s pictures for that same house reflected their most deeply cherished beliefs, none more so than Girl with a Pearl Earring, the true significance of which can now, at last, be revealed. The sitter has been variously, and wrongly, identified as a servant, a character from mythology and Vermeer’s eldest daughter. The truth is rather more poignant. • Vermeer — the riddle of the mysterious Dutch master is solved at last In 1696, 21 years after the artist’s death, the paintings that had hung in the Golden Eagle were dispersed at auction, with three tronien or “character portraits”, the last lots to be sold. Lot 38, the first of the trio to go under the hammer, was advertised as the best of them. Described in the auction catalogue as “a tronie in antique dress, uncommonly artful’’, this picture can be confidently identified as Girl with a Pearl Earring, now in the collection of the Mauritshuis museum in the Hague. The girl portrayed is certainly wearing an “antique dress’’, in the form of an oriental turban fashioned from scarves of yellow and ultramarine blue, of the kind in which Dutch artists of the period were apt to clothe biblical characters. The Little Street, Johannes Vermeer’s painting of his patrons’ home in Delft ALAMY The picture is so beautifully painted that its every last detail proclaims Vermeer’s uncommon artfulness. The expression on the girl’s face is hauntingly immediate, the artist’s treatment of light and shade beguilingly delicate. The painting of the highlights in her limpid light brown eyes is brilliant — so too the reflections trapped in the pearl of otherworldly size that she wears as an earring. Not only does the girl seem on the point of utterance, she has the air of someone about to say the most urgent thing she has ever said. It is a picture of a moment preserved in stillness but also full of motion. The girl’s feelings are shifting and turning; she is also turning around to look someone in the eye. She has only just realised who that someone is. To understand the painting we need to know three things: the identity of the real-life girl who sat for it; the identity of the character in the Bible whose part she plays; and the identity of the person to whom she turns as if to speak. The first two are fairly easy to establish. Once they are known the third becomes clear. Girl with a Pearl Earring has a reputation for being insolubly enigmatic, but in truth it is one of Vermeer’s most straightforward pictures. Its messages are piercingly direct. • Brain scans reveal appeal of the Girl with a Pearl Earring The painter shows us a girl of about 12. Vermeer’s eldest daughter, Maria, was born in 1654 but why would he paint a biblically inspired portrait of his own child for the house of his patrons? Considering that the picture was made for them, it is a fair assumption that the sitter was someone they knew and cared about. There is only one plausible candidate: their daughter, Magdalena van Ruijven. Magdalena was born in October 1655, so would have reached the age of 12 in the autumn of 1667. Assuming that she, like her parents, participated in the Collegiant movement, she would likely have solemnised her commitment to Christ at that age, possibly undergoing baptism by full immersion at the summer gathering at Rijnsburg the following year. Vermeer’s portrait of her in character may have been painted to mark that rite of passage. It could have been done either before or after the baptism itself so was probably completed sometime in 1667 or 1668. If the girl who sat for the painting is Magdalena van Ruijven, which figure in the Bible might she reincarnate? Again, there can only be one answer. Magdalena had been named for Mary Magdalene, like her grandmother before her. There seems to have been a family tradition of venerating Mary Magdalene, to judge by the fact that one of the first pictures commissioned from Vermeer by Magdalena’s mother, A Maid Asleep, was directly inspired by her legend. So Girl with the Pearl Earring brings us face to face with Magdalena van Ruijven in the persona of Mary Magdalene, follower of Christ. Tom Wilkinson as Vermeer’s patron Pieter Claesz van Ruijven, with Scarlett Johansson as the maid and ‘girl with the pearl earring’ in the 2003 film ALAMY Towards whom does the girl in the picture turn with such depth of feeling? The answer to the last of our three questions is to be found in the passage in John’s Gospel where Mary goes to Christ’s tomb in search of his body, a text close to the hearts of many Collegiant women. Girl with the Pearl Earring is an imaginary representation of the Magdalene as she appears in the words of its final verse: … She turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Vermeer conjures up Mary Magdalene in this instant, as she turns back towards the gardener whom she has just understood to be Jesus Christ. The look on her face expresses dawning recognition and wonder, mingled with awe, humility and love. • Read more art reviews, guides and interviews There is the suggestion of tears recently shed in her bright, liquid eyes. The pearl at her ear is impossibly large because it is no simple jewel but a reflection of the state of her soul, bursting with joy and irradiated with divine light. She is the first person in history to see the risen Christ, to speak with him, to grasp the sheer scale of all that his presence embodies. Once she has got over the sublime shock of it, she will tell the rest of the world what she has been given to know. To have been christened Magdalena was to have been charged with preserving that meeting in the memory. Vermeer’s picture was there to summon and sustain that moment daily, directing Magdalena’s prayers and placing her always in the presence of Christ. The picture would also have spoken powerfully to those who visited or prayed at the Golden Eagle. It is a kind of challenge: if we are looking at her, and she is looking at Jesus, then we must be standing in his shoes. Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found by Andrew Graham-Dixon (Allen Lane £30) is published on Oct 23. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
Andrew Graham-Dixon gives a lecture on Vermeer at Friends House, London, on Oct 23. For tickets go to andrewgrahamdixon.com
