| An inventory of instruments in the surviving three dozen paintings by Johannes Vermeer of Delft (1632-75) would include three muselar virginals, a harpsichord, three bass viols, five citterns, a guitar, a trumpet and perhaps a recorder. Together with the lion-headed chairs, creased maps, turkey carpets, and floors of checkerboard tiles, they are as essential to an archetypal ‘Vermeer’ interior as his enigmatic young women and the slanting almost supernatural illumination —a light that hallows domesticity with an aura that previously belonged in religious art. Dutch painting of the Golden Age is full of musical instruments and it is perhaps not hard to hear them sounding rough music for the boisterous families and tavern boers of Jan Steen, or playing with greater refinement for the satin-clad juffertjes of Gerard Ter Borch. When we come to Vermeer imagination has to break a deeper silence. |
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