Vermeer: The Complete Works
by Arthur K. Wheelock
from Harry N. Abrams
Following the blockbuster exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., this book presents the complete works of the great Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Oversize, full-page color plates of each of Vermeer's 35 known masterpieces capture the luminosity and the remarkable originality of the paintings and make this the next best thing to actually having attended the sold-out show. 68 illustrations, including 44 in full color.
Johannes Vermeer
by Arthur K. Wheelock
from Yale University Press
In this strikingly beautiful book, leading Vermeer scholars examine the life and works of this seventeenth-century Dutch master, analyzing his evolution from a painter of religious and mythological images to an artist who explored the psychological nuances of human endeavor.
I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century's Greatest Forger
by Frank Wynne
from Bloomsbury USA
Vermeer's Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown Apprentice
by Benjamin Binstock
from Routledge
Johannes Vermeer, one of the greatest Dutch painters and for some the single greatest painter of all, produced a remarkably small corpus of work. In Vermeer's Family Secrets, Benjamin Binstock revolutionizes how we think about Vermeer's work and life. Vermeer, The Sphinx of Delft, is famously a mystery in art: despite the common claim that little is known of his biography, there is actually an abundance of fascinating information about Vermeer's life that Binstock brings to bear on Vermeer's art for the first time; he also offers new interpretations of several key documents pertaining to Vermeer that have been misunderstood. Lavishly illustrated with more than 180 black and white images and more than sixty color plates, the book also includes a remarkable color two-page spread that presents the entirety of Vermeer's oeuvre arranged in chronological order in 1/20 scale, demonstrating his gradual formal and conceptual development. No book on Vermeer has ever done this kind ofvisual comparison of his complete output. Like Poe's purloined letter, Vermeer's secrets are sometimes out in the open where everyone can see them. Benjamin Binstock shows us where to look. Piecing together evidence, the tools of art history, and his own intuitive skills, he gives us for the first time a history of Vermeer's work in light of Vermeer's life.
On almost every page of Vermeer's Family Secrets, there is a perception or an adjustment that rethinks what we know about Vermeer, his oeuvre, Dutch painting, and Western Art. Perhaps the most arresting revelation of Vermeer's Family Secrets is the final one: In response to inconsistencies in technique, materials, and artistic level, Binstock posits that several of the paintings accepted as canonical works by Vermeer, are in fact not by Vermeer at all but by his eldest daughter, Maria. How he argues this is one of the book's many pleasures.
Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces
by Philip Steadman
from Oxford University Press, USA
Philip Steadman's remarkable book Vermeer's Camera cracks an artistic enigma that has haunted art history for centuries. Over the years, artists and art historians have marveled at the extraordinary visual realism of the paintings of the 17th-century Dutch painter Jan Vermeer. The painter's spectacular View of Delft, painted around 1661, and the beautiful domestic interior The Music Lesson seem almost photographic in their incredible detail and precise perspective. Since the 19th century, experts have speculated that Vermeer used a camera obscura, an early precursor of the modern camera. However, conclusive proof was never discovered, until now. In Vermeer's Camera, Steadman proves that Vermeer did indeed use a camera obscura to complete his greatest canvases. Part art-historical study, part scientific argument, but mainly a fascinating detective story, Vermeer's Camera argues:
Vermeer had a camera obscura with a lens at the painting's viewpoint. He used this arrangement to project the scene onto the back wall of the room, which thus served as the camera's screen. He put paper on the wall and traced, perhaps even painted from the projected image. It is because Vermeer traced these images that they are the same size as the paintings themselves.Steadman painstakingly develops his argument through careful study of the history of the camera obscura, an exploration of 17th-century optics, and a detailed study of the light, optics, perspective, and measurement of a series of Vermeer's paintings. He goes to remarkable lengths to reconstruct Vermeer's studio and its furnishings, down to the angle of the light from its windows. The science is complex, but always clearly explained. This is not an attempt to reveal Vermeer as an artistic "cheat." Steadman convincingly argues that "Vermeer's obsessions with light, tonal values, shadow, and colour, for the treatment of which his work is so admired, are very closely bound up with his study of the special qualities of optical images." Vermeer's Camera is a wonderful book that shows the ways in which, during the 17th century, art and science went hand in hand. It offers an enlarged, rather than reduced, perspective on Vermeer. --Jerry Brotton. Amazon.co.uk
Art historians have long speculated on how Vermeer achieved the uncanny mixture of detached precision, compositional repose, and perspective accuracy that have drawn many to describe his work as "photographic." Indeed, many wonder if Vermeer employed a camera obscura, a primitive form of camera, to enhance his realistic effects?
In Vermeer's Camera, Philip Steadman traces the development of the camera obscura--first described by Leonaro da Vinci--weighs the arguments that scholars have made for and against Vermeer's use of the camera, and offers a fascinating examination of the paintings themselves and what they alone can tell us of Vermeer's technique. Vermeer left no record of his method and indeed we know almost nothing of the man nor of how he worked. But by a close and illuminating study of the paintings Steadman concludes that Vermeer did use the camera obscura and shows how the inherent defects in this primitive device enabled Vermeer to achieve some remarkable effects--the slight blurring of image, the absence of sharp lines, the peculiar illusion not of closeness but of distance in the domestic scenes. Steadman argues that the use of the camera also explains some previously unexplainable qualities of Vermeer's art, such as the absence of conventional drawing, the pattern of underpainting in areas of pure tone, the pervasive feeling of reticence that suffuses his canvases, and the almost magical sense that Vermeer is painting not objects but light itself.
Drawing on a wealth of Vermeer research and displaying an extraordinary sensitivity to the subtleties of the work itself, Philip Steadman offers in Vermeer's Camera a fresh perspective on some of the most enchanting paintings ever created.
Vermeer, 1632-1675: Veiled Emotions (Basic Art)
by Norbert Schneider
from Taschen
How to Paint a Vermeer
by George Deem
from Thames & Hudson
A witty, profound homage to Western art and an escorted tour of the masterworks beloved by all.
Ranging over hundreds of years—and countless styles—with breathtaking virtuosity, George Deem has repainted the history of Western art. Deem's special gift is to paint, with witty sympathy, his own "revisions" of famous works, revisions that look like the originals but transform them in some way.
Now, in the most comprehensive collection of his work ever assembled, the amazing scope of Deem's devotion to his subject, art itself, can be seen. The greatest American and European artists are represented; their work, at first glance, seems uncannily perfect. Here is an exquisite Vermeer, looking so much like the original that it takes a moment to realize there is no woman holding a water pitcher in the corner of the room. And here is Cubist Cache, Deem's tour de force imagining of what Parisians do with their cubist art when they go away on vacation.
As a special feature the book includes a die-cut, ready-to-assemble version of Deem's quotation of Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, a cube in which we view the famous picnic from all four sides and from above.
This is the perfect gift book for art lovers. On one level it offers a delightful excursion through the famous paintings that everyone loves. On another, we marvel at the virtuoso display of artistic technique, in which no style or era can resist Deem's fond embrace and witty act of quotation. And finally, here is a body of work that, in affirming the richness and variety of its subject, reaffirms the pleasure we take in painting. 80 color illustrations.
The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer (Cambridge Companions to the History of Art)
from Cambridge University Press
The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer offers a systematic overview of the artist's life and work that will be useful to specialists, students, and the general public. Its eleven essays include studies of the artist's development and approach to painting, women as a subject in Vermeer's work, the role of Catholicism in Vermeer's life and art, and the artist's reputation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, among other topics. Collectively, these essays provide a balanced and enlightening examination of many different aspects of Vermeer's art.
The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer offers a systematic overview of the artist's life and work that will be useful to specialists, students, and the general public. Its eleven essays include studies of the artist's development and approach to painting, women as a subject in Vermeer's work, the role of Catholicism in Vermeer's life and art, and the artist's reputation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, among other topics. Collectively, these essays provide a balanced and enlightening examination of many different aspects of Vermeer's art.
Vermeer
by Gilles Aillaud
from Overlook Hardcover
The mystery underlying Vermeer's use of light and perspective has led to an almost cult-like appreciation of this in many ways mystifying artist. Vermeer profiles the life and works of the distinguished seventeenth-century artist, analyzes him within the context of other artists of the period, and examines how his social origins and domestic environment shaped his work.
Though he was a modestly successful painter/art dealer who was well-respected in Delft, Vermeer never gained much of a reputation outside his hometown and was forgotten almost entirely after his death. In the nineteenth century he was "rediscovered," and since the beginning of the twentieth has been considered one of the finest painters ever.
In this impressive and informative work, the artist's origins and home environment are revealed and his paintings are displayed and discussed within the context of time alongside a history of the influences and repercussions of this master's art.
This lavishly illustrated and beautifully bound edition includes reproductions of all of Vermeer's paintings, many of the works of his contemporaries, and documents relating to his life and city, Delft.
I Was Vermeer
by Frank Wynne
from Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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