Jan Sluijter's Vermeer, Fame, And Female Beauty

In the article "Vermeer, Fame, and Female Beauty: The Art of Painting," Eric Jan Sluijter claims the predominant interpretation of the work puts "many scholars on the wrong track," (Sluijter, 265). Instead, he proposes Vermeer was focused on fame, rather than history. Sluijter supports this argument by providing historical context and comparisons.

Art of Painting was painted by Johannes Vermeer from 1666-1667 in Delft, Netherlands. This work follows the Dutch tradition of close observation of the natural world and interior scenes. However, this painting is a bit of an anomaly in Vermeer's work because of its large scale and use of allegorical symbols. These attributes are more characteristic of his earlier work, yet this painting has more
in common, visually, with his later work. As Sluijter notes, Art of Painting is also a self-portrait, making this piece especially unique.

The largely debated female figure is the subject of the first part of Sluijter's article.
Scholars identified the woman as having attributes of the muse, Clio. These attributes include the laurel wreath on the model's head and the trumpet. Sluijter focuses on Clio as the muse of fame, honor, and glory, while most scholars say she is the muse of history. Using this definition, Sluijter interprets Clio as proof of Vermeer's belief that painting brings honor and fame. This differs from other interpretations that Art of Painting is evidence of paintings duty to record history. A history-centered interpretation lends itself to reinforce the hierarchy of painting genres, with history painting at the top. If this was truly Vermeer's belief, one would see more history paintings in his body of work opposed to the genre paintings that compose most of his oeuvre. Sluijter uses this quote from Adriaen van de Venne to support his conclusion, "Art creates Fame and Fame proclaims her glory,"
(267).

Sluijter argues Vermeer would have been preoccupied with honor and fame due to the writings about artists produced at the time. Books about painters were of much importance to artists at the time and Sluijter believes Vermeer would not be an exception. The author makes connections between Vermeer and his contemporaries who were meditating on fame and honor in relation to painting.

The next argument Sluijter tackles is the interpretation of the map in the background of the Art of Painting. Many scholars use this to further the belief that Clio represents history by arguing the map is "referring to times past," (Sluijter, 269) because it was created around thirty years before the Art of Painting and was no longer accurate. Sluijter argues that the accuracy does not matter so much because the united Netherlands was "embedded in the minds of contemporaries," (Sluijter, 271). This statement disputes the idea that the map is a reference to history yet does not make a compelling argument for the actual purpose of the map.

At this point in the article, Sluijter shifts from his analysis of Vermeer and fame to his discussion of female beauty as it is represented in 17th century painting. Sluijter combines the ideas with the argument that Vermeer has achieved glory and honor by perfecting the illusionism of female beauty. Sluijter works with the understanding that perfecting the form of a young woman is the height of painting. Unfortunately, the author does little in the remaining four pages of the article to tie the discussion back to Vermeer. Instead, he analyses the works of other artists such as Maarten de Vos, Joost van Winghe, and Willem van Haecht. Though Sluijter makes smart comments on the theme of female beauty in paintings, he has strayed away from the Art of Painting, which should have been the framework from which to discuss this topic. This deviation and its placement, at the conclusion of the article, weakens Sluijter's argument against scholarly interpretations of history as the subject of the Art of Painting. This brings into question the choice of the author to include female beauty as a topic in this piece that could have been stronger without.

The article was convincing in that it laid some sensible arguments for fame and honor to be the subject of the painting.
One of the most compelling pieces of evidence used by Sluijter was the comparison between the Art of Painting and the Allegorical Portrait of an Artist (Rachel Ruysch) by Michiel van Musscher. These two works have no similarities visually: there are different styles, different scales, and different compositions. However, these works are thematically similar in that they both depict the artist and their art. Here, Ruysch is being crowned with the laurel wreath, connecting the artist to the muse Clio. This comparison strengthens Sluijter's argument that fame and honor is the correct interpretation of Art of Painting by showing the attributes of Clio in a context of an artist and not in a setting of
history.

Sluijter's approach to analyzing Art of Painting differs slightly from the approach used in class due his use of deep historical context of literature at the time. In class, we rarely compare symbols through multiple works. Instead, we focus more on the compositional elements of artworks.

Through historical arguments based on the cultural context in Vermeer's time and a strong comparison with another painting, Sluijter disputed the widespread belief that the subject of the Art of Painting is history. His interpretation of Clio's attributes in the context of 17th century Netherlands concludes that the subject of the painting is the desire for fame and honor though the art of painting.