Vermeer’s The Art of Painting (1666-68), now a highlight of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, has long been regarded as his masterpiece. The artist retained the picture for the last years of his life, and it has been assumed that he kept the impressive picture to showcase his skills to potential clients.
It has also been said to be the one painting that Vermeer’s widow Catharina struggled to keep after she was declared bankrupt, soon after the death of her husband in 1675. Catharina had unsuccessfully tried to pass on ownership to her mother Maria, to avoid it being seized. In a 1676 legal document it is recorded as a picture “wherein is depicted the Art of Painting” (in Dutch, Schilderconst).
Allegory or artist’s studio?
But is the Vienna picture really The Art of Painting? Paul Taylor, a specialist in 17th-century Dutch art and a curator at London’s Warburg Institute, argues that the term “de schilderconst” was then used to refer to allegories of painting. However, it is fairly universally accepted that in Vermeer’s composition the woman blowing a trumpet represents Clio, the allegorical muse of history.
Taylor has tracked down 25 descriptions of Dutch pictures from the period which are said to depict “de schilderconst”, and all are simply allegorical personifications of painting, not scenes of artists in their studios. In the Rijskmuseum’s publication, Closer to Vermeer, he also cites Dutch writers and artists of the period who use the term in this way: Karel van Mander, Philips Angel, Samuel van Hoogstraten, Gerard de Lairesse and Arnold Houbraken.
Taylor is therefore convinced that Catharina’s 1676 document refers to another picture, which is now lost. There is a remote possibility that it could still turn up, previously unidentified as a Vermeer.
The Rijksmuseum planned to honour The Art of Painting with its own dedicated room in its 2023 Vermeer exhibition. But in the end the Kunsthistorisches Museum deemed it too fragile to travel.
