Glossary of Art Terms
The Essential Vermeer Glossary: A - C
Samuel van Hoogstraten
(1627 -  1678)
This glossary contains a number of the terms in this site which may not be clear to all readers. Some of these terms are also discussed as they relate to Vermeer's art. Each of the four sections of the glossary can be accessed from the menu top of each page of the glossary entries. In the near future, each word in the site's text which is listed in the glossary will be signaled by an icon that will link directly to that term.
An engraving of Samuel van Hoogstraten , Dutch painter and writer on art. Although Van Hoogstraten painted genre scenes in the style of De Hooch and Metsu and a few portraits, as a painter he is best known as a specialist in perspective and tromp l'oeil paintings. One of his "perspective boxes" which shows a painted world through a peep-hole, is in the National Gallery, London. Only in his early works can signs be found that he was a pupil of Rembrandt. Hoogstraten traveled to London, Vienna, and Rome, worked in Amsterdam and The Hague as well as his native Dordrecht. He was an etcher, poet, director of the mint at Dordrecht, and art theorist. His Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst (Introduction to the Art of Painting, 1678) is an invaluable source for understanding Dutch  17th-century art theory and also contains one of the rare contemporary appraisals of Rembrandt's work.
A - C
Criticism
Academy
The first academy of  art was founded in Florence,  Italy in 1562 by Giorgio  Vasari who called it the Accademia del Disegno. Another academy, the Accademia di San Luca (named  after the patron saint of painters, Saint Luke), was founded a decade or so later  in Rome. Rome's Accademia reflects more clearly the modern notions of an   artistic academy rather than perpetuating what has often been seen as   the medieval nature of the guild system. Although not  initially in direct competition with the local Guilds, the academies tended to eclipse and supplant the guilds in time.
"The curriculum of the Accademia di San Luca was, as least as  far as technique is concerned, designed to combat the abhorrent practices  followed by Caravaggio and the Bamboccianti1 who painted low-life subjects in alla prima painting  technique. The academy's  training programme  included instruction in perspective , foreshortening and anatomy, and it  stressed imitation of the Antique , by way of drawing from  ancient sculpture or plaster casts."2
Academics held that since art was a scientific and intellectual pursuit, and not a craft,  art instruction should be systematic. Drawing was considered to be the essential  requirement for painting. Thus, the manipulation of the so-called porte-crayon was more important than that   of the brush.
The Academia di San Luca later served as  the model for the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture founded in France in  1648. The French Academy very probably adopted the term 'arti del disegno' which  it translated into 'beaux art,' from which is derived the English term 'Fine  Arts.'"3
In the mid 1660s, the Guilds of Saint  Luke , which had been in charge of regulating the local  commerce of artists and artisans, and to a certain degree  the education of their  members, had already had began to lose their hold on painters. Instead,  brotherhoods,  whose membership was restricted to master-painters, began to spring up in  various parts of the Netherlands: Dordrecht in 1642, Hoorn in 1651, Amsterdam in 1653 and   The Hague in  1656.  The Saint Luke Guild in Delft (where  Vermeer was born and spent his entire career) was one of the few guilds in Holland  that comprised the same trades (with  exception of the defunct scabardmakers) in 1550 as in 1750.4
Vermeer began his artistic training most likely  in the late 1640s. It is not  know, however,  either where or with whom he studied. In this  period there are no records which testify his whereabouts. Various   cities and master painters have been proposed. Since his earliest works show   certain affinities with paintings of two established painters, Jacob van Loo and Jan-Erasmus Quellinus , both working in Amsterdam, it may be that he was  sent there to study by his father, himself a member of the Delft guild. Carel Fabritius , considered Rembrandt's finest student,  resided in  Delft but at the  time Vermeer would have begun to study  Fabritius was not yet a registered guild member. Newly accepted guild members had to wait a two years before they were allowed to accepting apprentices. Leonaert  Bramer , a family friend of the Vermeers and one of the most esteemed painters in Delft, has been cited  as a possible candidate but the elder artist's eccentric Italianate style shares very little with anything we see in Vermeer's  work.
One  thing seems be certain, the master of young Vermeer must have  been versed in classical painting since Vermeer's  early works clearly indicated  an awareness of classical art theory and practice.
Aerial Perspective
Oil on panel, 37 x 42.7 cm.
National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.
Aerial perspective is a pictorial convention which permits the painter to create a strong illusion of  distance in a landscape by using paler  colors (sometimes tinged with blue), less pronounced tonal variation and vaguer forms for those objects which are farthest from the viewer, especially  near the horizon. The painterly technique replicates a natural   phenomena that depends on the quantity of  moisture in the air between the viewer and the objects that can be readily observed in natural circumstances. In order to  further enhance the effect of aerial perspective, painters depicted foreground objects  with sharp outlines, brilliant and warm colors in contrast with those reserved for the background.
Aerial perspective had been firmly established mimetic device by the  15th century and explanations of its effects were with varying degrees   of accuracy written by polymaths such as Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci . The landscape in the background of da Vinci's  portrait of Ginevra de Benci provide a textbook example of aerial perspective.
Samuel van  Hoogstraten , a Dutch 17th-century painter and art theoretician, remarked that "it  appears that the air forms a body even over a short distance, and clothes itself  in the color of the heavens." Ernst van der Wetering, ( Rembrandt: The Painter at Work ,  2000)   hypothesized that Rembrandt van RIjn had actually applied  Van Hoogenstraten's insight to the depiction of the group of figures in his masterpiece, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolas Tulp, even though aerial  perspective is normally only associated with landscape painting or great distances.
Vermeer did not make use of aerial perspective in his  interiors although he was  aware that warm colors seem to advance toward the viewer while cool color seem to recede. In three pictures the artist used a strong red  for the figures in the foreground ( The Officer and Laughing Girl , The Girl with a Wine Glass and Girl Interrupted in her Music )  which make them appear closer to the spectator. The only painting in which one might logically expect to find evidence of aerial perspective  is the View of Delft .
Aesthetics
Aesthetics (also spelled æsthetics) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature."
Originally, that which pertains to the beautiful, as conceived variously by  artists and, especially, philosophers with reference to noble aspects of  experience beyond superficial appearance or mere prettiness. The theme  preoccupied philosophers in ancient Greece, but the term itself first appeared  in the 18th century.  The term is still sometimes used to  indicate a certain imprecise distinction between art and life, or as a rough  synonym for "artistic."
"The concept of the aesthetic descends from the concept of taste. Why  the concept of taste commanded so much philosophical attention during  the Eighteenth Century is a complicated matter, but this much is clear:  the eighteenth-century theory of taste emerged, in part, as a  corrective to the rise of rationalism, particularly as applied to  beauty, and to the rise of egoism, particularly as applied to virtue.  Against rationalism about beauty, the eighteenth-century theory of  taste held the judgment of beauty to be immediate; against egoism about  virtue, it held the pleasure of beauty to be disinterested."5
Alla Prima
An  Italian term meaning "first time," a method of oil painting in which a  picture is completed by painting on the entire surface of the canvas all at once rather  than traditional method which required a methodic building of the image piecemeal fashion with successive layers of paint.
The  curriculum of the Italian Accademia di San Luca, (founded in Florence in Italy  in 1562) was, as least as far as technique is concerned, designed to combat the  abhorrent practices followed by Caravaggio and the  Bamboccianti of painting low-life subjects in alla prima mode.
Some artists of Vermeer’s time  practiced alla prima, or what is today called "direct painting." The direct method was just the same deprecated by Gï¿½rard de Lairesse , a painter-gone-blind and one of the most influential art theorists of the time: he referred to the technique as "smudging" and "rummaging." According to de Lairesse, it took "someone with a steady hand and a quick brush to complete his concept at one go…" but still, he described them as "clever characters who to get some recognition by novelties."
Samuel van Hoogstraten, another Dutch painter and art writer, lamented that those  artists who turned to "ras  schilderen" (rapid painting or alla prima) did so for profit and  much as fame as much as for the love of  art. Evidently, economic and artistic  preoccupations were inextricably linked.
The most able practitioners of the alla prima method in the Netherlands were Jan Porcellis and Jan van Goyen , who were exceptionally  successful in attaining high artistic standing with swiftly painted works.  While the paintings of these two artist's were not expensive, they still commanded relatively high  prices proportionate to their scant production costs. Van Goyen is know to have painted more than 1,000 pictures in his life.
In the case of the Great Masters, we should always remember that we are dealing with a preconceived, clearly thought-out pictorial project, where every phase of the painting is executed according to a schedule. Seventeenth-century Dutch painters, especially "fine painters" like Vermeer, generally divided the painting process into four relatively distinct  steps: "inventing" or drawing, "dead-coloring" or  underpainting, "working-up" or finishing  and lastly, retouching.
Paint was applied in layers, each of which varied in consistency, density and transparency. The final optical result depends on the combined effect of these layers and different paint qualities. The rationale behind this system was that, unlike today, the problems of composition, form and color were addressed separately. This step-by-step system, far from stifling artistic inspiration, allowed the most talented painters to "program" masterworks of exceptional artistic level in considerable numbers and sometimes vast dimensions while less talented artists fashioned dignified, well-crafted paintings. As the Dutch art historian Ernst van de Wetering pointed out, the work of art of a Great Master may be likened to a game of chess, in which many moves have to be considered in advance and which a remarkable combination of calculation and creativity is required if the final outcome is to be a success.
See Vermeer's Technique for in-depth information
Allegory
An allegory is the description of a subject in the guise of another subject.  An allegorical painting might include figures emblematic of different emotional  states of mind, for example envy or love, or personifying other abstract  concepts, for example sight, glory, or beauty. These  are called allegorical figures. The interpretation of an allegory therefore  depends first on the identification of such figures, but even then the meaning  can remain elusive.
Allegorical subjects were frequently painted from the Renaissance until around 1800, although  they were probably most often used in engraved frontispieces for books and in  medals. Still life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained   religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted.
Although allegorical subject matter had been one of the principal vehicles of history painters, by the late 1700s, the use of allegory had  already received critical attention. Roger de Plies, art theoretician of the  late 17th century, criticized some painters for their improper use of allegory.
"The  allegorical consists in selecting objects to represent in a painting ...something  else than what they are...The ancient authors...cite numerous examples of  allegories; and since the revival of Painting, Painters had use them rather  frequently; if some of them had done so too often, it is because, ignoring that  the allegory is the kind of language which must be common to several people and  which is based on an established usage,...they preferred...to imagine a  particular allegory which, though clever, could only be understood by  themselves."
"Underlying the essential realism of Dutch art, thus, is an allegorical view of nature that provided a means for conveying various messages to contemporary viewers. The Dutch, with their ingrained Calvinist beliefs, were a moralizing people. While they thoroughly enjoyed the sensual pleasures of life, they were aware of the consequences of wrong behavior. Paintings, even those representing everyday objects and events, often provide reminders about the brevity of life and the need for moderation and temperance in one's conduct. Subjects drawn from the Bible, mythology, and ancient history, likewise, were often chosen for their moralizing messages or for establishing parallels between the Dutch experience and great historical, literary, and political events of the past."6
It is generally held that Vermeer painted three allegorical works: The Art of Painting (where the standing model is presumed to be Clio," the muse of Fame), the Allegory of Faith and the Woman Holding a  Balance , whose precise allegorical meaning  has been somewhat more vexing to decipher. In the Allegory of Faith, the "idealized figure is the Catholic Faith, who adores heaven in the   form of a glass sphere and dominates the globe (its mundane nature seems   suggested by realistic description). In the foreground, the cornerstone   of the church (Christ) crushes a serpent (the Devil) near the apple of   original sin, which required the Savior's sacrifice. On the table, a   crucifix, a chalice, a long silk cloth (perhaps a priest's stole), a   large book (presumably the Missale Romanum), and a crown of   thorns refer to the sacrament of the Eucharist, which was especially   denigrated by Protestant critics of the time. The setting resembles a   small chapel set up in a private house, as Catholic "hidden churches" were in the Dutch Republic."7
According to Daniel  Arasse ("Vermeer's Private Allegories" in Vermeer Studies , 1998)  the Allegory of Faith "is an allegory explicitly declared as such, and the  woman's gesture, the furniture and especially the serpent of heresy crushed in  the foreground indicate; it is a 'public allegory' in response to a  specific commission Vermeer had been given."8
We know that The Art of Painting was intended as an allegory since Vermeer's wife described the painting as De Schilderconst (The Art of Painting).   Vermeer and his wife, Catharina , must have been particularly  attached to this painting since it is known that he had kept it in his studio  till his death and that his wife afterwards went to great lengths to save  it from her  creditors.
Ambiguity
Something which admits of interpretation in two or more possible senses. In  logical and critical texts, ambiguity is usually something to be avoided  (however, see dissemination), but many creative works capitalize on it quite  effectively.
Since Vermeer's "rediscovery" in the mid 1860s  by Thoré Bürger , his art has inspired an impressive  number of interpretations. Although  Bürger himself had  dubbed Vermeer "the Sphinx of Delft" (for the number of different styles  the artist seemed to have worked in). Lawrence  Gowing (Vermeer, 1952) was the first critic to stress  what he views as a pervading sense of ambivalence in  Vermeer's art so much that the artist's presumed "reticence" becomes the focal point of his penetrating  examination of the artist's oeuvre . Almost  every interpretation of Vermeer's work which followed, in one way or  another, has had to taken into account Gowing's  observations  even though they are  ultimately subjective. In Gowing's words:
"However definite and recognizable the weave of paint  in the style of Vermeer, inside it is something is hidden and compressed. There  is a curious note in many of his pictures. It is to be seen in the vocabulary of  representation that he applies to the simplest form, the fold of a bodice or a  finger. It is a note of ambiguity, a personal uncertainty that one cannot help  feel about the painter. His detachment is so complete, his observation of tone  so impersonal, yet so efficient. The description is always exactly adequate,  always completely and effortlessly in terms of light. Vermeer seems almost not  to care, or even to know, what it is he is painting. What do men call this wedge  of light? A nose? A Finger? What do we know of its shape?  All should be well.  Such might be the constitution of the simplest painters. Yet something keeps us  wondering. What kind of man was Vermeer? Here is the ambiguity. We may examine  the pictures from corner to corner and still be uncertain."
And again, "There is in his thought, the paradoxical accompaniment of its clarity, a deep  character of evasiveness, a perpetual withdrawal."
After the 1950s,  perhaps in reaction to the Van Meegeren debacle of forged Vermeer paintings, critics began to search for more objective ways of  understanding the  intricacies of Vermeer's art. His   pared-down oeuvre was reexamined within the context of Dutch 17th-century painting and in  particular in relation to genre painters such as Gerrit t er Borch , Nicolaes Maes , Gabriel Metsu and Pieter de  Hooch (see Albert Blankert, Vermeer , 1976). A  great number iconographical studies that followed   attempted to unlock   presumed hidden meaning in the artist's otherwise straightforward scenes of daily life.
S ymbolic and emblematic  readings, in theory, should be  a more objective tool  for understanding Vermeer's (and Dutch painting of the period as well)  in that, in order to  be comprehensible,  symbols must be common to many people and based on an established usage. However, after  years of research, no single key for unlocking hidden meaning in Vermeer's  paintings was found.
In the last decades, some Vermeer experts have attempted  to come to grips with the presumed ambivalence in Vermeer's oeuvre in another way. In  1984, Jan Bialostocki was among the first to suggest that 17th-century artists had been deliberately ambiguous in their use symbol. A number of  Vermeer scholars have taken his lead. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. states, "The range of interpretation possible for Vermeer's paintings is part of their poetic qualities." Daniel Arasse later stated that "the uncertainly of meaning is deliberate in Vermeer."
In 1998, Eddy de Jongh , who  was the leading figure of iconographical school as applied to Dutch art, offered a finely balanced analysis ("On Balance", in Vermeer Studies , 2000)  of the progress and the problems that lay open in  the field of iconographical  interpretation of Vermeer's painting. He has noted that even though  there is still great debate as exactly what meaning Vermeer may have  invested in his work, there has been "a remarkable agreement about Vermeer's  artistic stature. Many authors have done their best to capture Vermeer's  exceptional  subtleties in words. 'Done their best,' because there  is a high 'je ne sais quoi' mid-1860s and many critics have done their best to  capture in words the exceptional subtlety of his works. The closer one  gets to the artistic essence (if such a thing exists) the more one thinks  one is fathoming that strange fusion of immobility of and movement, of poised  animation and frozen action, the more one finds oneself stammering. Finally, the  ineffable secret remains thus ineffable." De Jongh has come to the conclusion that  the iconographical vein of  interpretation of Vermeer's painting has run its course even though in his opinion much has been learned from this approach.
The ambiguity in Vermeer's work lay not only in symbolic  and allegorical reading of the painting, but in the dichotomy between of mimetic image and paint.  Looking at Vermeer's The Art of Painting we have an example of the miraculous duality of  painting: at the very same instant we perceive an illusion of reality and the  material evidence that we are in front of a painted illusion.
"Antique"
In his Groot Schilderboek, the Dutch painter and art theorist Gerard  de Lairesse (1640-1711)  distinguished between the two modes of painting which he  called "the Antique" and "the Modern." According to de Lairesse, "the  Antique" persists through all periods while "'the Modern   constantly changes with fashion." Therefore, the  most adapted   subjects of great painting were Biblical, historical, mythological or allegorical themes, represented  appropriate dress and settings and not representations of modern scenes such as  those of Vermeer. De Lairesse believed that viewers would become eventually estranged by contemporary dress owing to continual change in fashion.
In the  1740 edition of de Lairesse’s treatise mentioned above,  Vermeer was cited among other "modern" Dutch masters whose art was destined to perish along with "the old Mieris" ( Frans van Mieris) and "Metzu" ( Gabriel Metsu ).
Antiquity
Antiquity is a broadly applied term which refers to the history and culture of a  period of Western civilization. It is primarily used in an art-historical context to describe Greco-Roman life and art in Europe prior to the decline of  the Roman empire.
The literary, cultural and architectural remains  surviving from Antiquity were particularly valued during the Renaissance. Artists might depict Roman  ruins in the background or use classical inscriptions and Roman lettering within  a picture. They also sought archaeological exactness in dress.
It is generally believed that  from the onset of his career, unlike many Dutch contemporary painters who  considered themselves little more as artisans,  Vermeer seemed to have  comprehended the role of the artist  in its most lofty sense. His  first pictures were large-scale history paintings of religious or mythological subjects . These subjects were  considered the most adapted for  expressing the most noble goal of art:  the elevation of the human spirit. For some reason which has not been explained,  soon after the first large scale history paintings, Vermeer abruptly began to  depict contemporary interiors which,  according to art theorists of the time, belonged to the "modern" mode considered inferior since only  transitory values were expressed.
However,  for modern art historians,  only Vermeer among Dutch "modern" genre interior painters was able to imbue  paintings of daily life with a sense of timelessness and express the moral seriousness  associated with history painting.
The most direct and significant testimony of Vermeer's  elevated concept of art may be clearly seen in his ambitious The Art of Painting . Whether the allegorical message of the painting refers to the  nobility of art or its capacity to bestow fame upon its creator is uncertain, it  is clear that the work displays a knowledge of classical ideals which dominated  European art theory, but which in the Netherlands had lost their hold on the  great part of painters.
Art
The Greek term for Art (τέχνη) and its Latin equivalent (ars) do not  specifically denote the "fine arts" in the modern sense, but were applied to all  kinds of human activities which we would call crafts or sciences. Moreover,  whereas modern aesthetics stresses the fact that Art cannot be learned, and thus  often becomes involved in the curious endeavor to teach the unteachable, the  ancients always understood by Art something that can be taught and learned.
Any simple definition of art would be profoundly pretentious, but perhaps all the  definitions offered over the centuries include some notion of human agency,  whether through manual skills (as in the art of sailing or painting or  photography), intellectual manipulation (as in the art of politics), or public  or personal expression (as in the art of conversation). In any case, many modern art philosophers hold that the definition of art has become so expansive as to be vacuous.
Artist
from:
"The Biography, Saylor.org website, < http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/The-Biography.pdf >
Although visual and stylistic analyses are fundamental to the practice of art history, the most familiar way of grouping art is by artist.  The relationship is so close that common English usage drops the "by" in "a painting by Manet," so that it becomes "a Manet painting" or even "a Manet." In the last, only the small word "a" indicates that the "Manet" being discussed is an object rather than a person.  This assumption of an intimate and important connection between the maker and the made has very practical implications.  It rests on the belief that the actual historical person matters, the person who was born on a certain day and died on another.  Exactly how and why the person matters is what determines how and why the life is important.  This, in turn, will determine the questions considered in a biography.  Like all assumptions of critical analysis, biographical ones should be examined closely.
The identity of the artist has been regarded as one of the most important facts about a work of art for centuries in the West.  Beginning with the Greeks, names of great artists have seemed to be worth recording, and stories about them exist even when their works do not.  Pliny the Elder and Pausanias, two Romans whose writings are among the richest sources of information about Greek art, approached their subjects as today’s art historians do – from the distance of centuries, gathering what was said in older sources without necessarily having seen the original works.52 The first history of art in the post-Classical world, Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, published in Italy in the mid-16th century, also organizes the art in terms of the biographies of its makers.  Since Vasari was a contemporary or near-contemporary of the artists, his vivid anecdotes suggest the authority of personal knowledge.
Even assuming that the identity of the artist is an essential part of understanding a work of art, however, different artists suggest different questions, and different historians write very different kinds of studies.  For one scholar, the artist’s life consists of an orderly succession of opportunities and achievements, with his or her relationship to the works determined by conscious choices made in response to external events.  For another, perhaps even writing about the same person, every scrap of work reveals the genius of the artist, and obstacles that have been surmounted demonstrate the power of the person’s talent.
Art for Art's  Sake
"Art for art's sake" refers to  number of positions related to the possibility of art being autonomous. The  term is usually used by artists and artwriters of the second half of the  19th century: in France the prime promoters of art for art's sake were Charles Baudelaire and  Théophile Gautier; in England, J. A. M. Whistler and Oscar Wilde; in the United  States, Edgar Allan Poe. In the 20th century, the notion has been sharply  critiqued by Walter Benjamin, among others.
As the 19th century  progressed, the exercise of artistic freedom became fundamental to progressive  modernism. Artists began to seek freedom not just from the rules of academic  art, but from the demands of the public. Soon it was claimed that art should be  produced not for the public's sake, but for art's sake.
Art for art's  sake is basically a call for release from was perceived as the tyranny of  meaning and purpose.  It was also a ploy, another deliberate affront to  bourgeois sensibility which demanded art with meaning or that had some purpose  such as to instruct, or delight, or to moralize, and generally to reflect in  some way their own purposeful and purpose-filled world.
In his 1891  essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Oscar Wilde wrote:
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty  comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the  fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist  takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he  ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or  dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.
In the late 19th century, we find art beginning to be discussed by critics  and art historians largely in formal terms which effectively removed the  question of meaning and purpose from consideration. From then on, art was to be  discussed in terms of style — colour, line, shape, space, composition — ignoring or playing down whatever  social, political, or progressive statements the artist had hoped to make in his  or her work.
Thoré Bürger , who is  generally credited for having  recovered Vermeer  painting in the mid 1800s, deeply influenced the perception of Vermeer's art for many decades that followed. Strongly influenced by  nascent leftist politics, Thoré believed that the primary function and value of Dutch art was to reflect the  daily experience of life of common people. The Dutch  made, in Thoré’s eyes, art for a people of common virtues; "l’art pour l’homme" (art for the people).
However, by the early 1900s with the  rise of the modernist school of painting, Vermeer's art began to be  appreciated  for its  formal qualities which  seemed to reflect the revolutionary concerns of avante guard  contemporary painting. Wilhelm Valentiner, expert of Dutch painting,  maintained that Vermeer  focused primarily on the "purely  aesthetic."
Philip Hale, Boston painter and art teacher, was the  first  American to write a monograph on Vermeer in 1913. Hale was deeply  struck by what he perceived as "Vermeer's modernity." According to Hale, "if  ever a man believed in art for art's sake it was he. He anticipated the modern  idea of impersonality in art...he makes no comment on the picture. One does not  see by his composition what he thought of it all."
Some years later, P.  T. A. Swillens a Dutch art historian, whose monograph on Vermeer was  published in 1950, was to have an important impact on the study of  Vermeer, shared Hales' opinions and wrote that the  artist had no interest in the "inner life" of his sitters and that  he "reveals  only what is of value to him as a painter." Vermeer, thus, was not interested in what  intrigued him as a human being or thinker but as a painter.
However, Swillen's  overriding emphasis on the aesthetic content of a picture, which typifies  the concept of art for art's sake may miss one of the  most compelling aspects of Vermeer's work: the emotional intensity of his  figures. Lawrence Gowing only two years after the publication of  Swillens' monograph had already began to expose a new point of  view. While recognizing (Gowing was a painter  himself) Vermeer's extraordinary capacities of pictorial organization,  Gowing believed that when the artist's perfect style is  understood, his painting's "yield their strangely emotional content."
Artists' Travel in the Low Countries
Traveling artists
Filip Vermeylen and Karolien De Clippel
" Rubens and Goltzius in dialogue:          Artistic exchanges between Antwerp and Haarlem during the Revolt"
De Zeventiende Eeuw, < http://www.de-zeventiende-eeuw.nl/index.php/dze/article/view/8236/8626 >
In general, a great mobility existed among early modern artists, more so than we probably assume today. Not only did many of them travel to Italy to complete their training, or migrated in the wake of military conflict and economic hardship, for reasons of religion or lured by better opportunities elsewhere, but in addition, artists would not hesitate to travel great distances on a temporary basis to complete a commission or visit with colleagues, friends or relatives. Artists appear to have been particularly eager to move between towns in the Low Countries. There were many reasons for this, but improved transportation facilities without a doubt acted as a catalyst.
The province of Holland could offer an unrivalled infrastructure in terms of roads and canals, facilitating relatively cheap and safe travel. The Dutch Republic overall was an easy place to get around in thanks to its intricate network of canals and overland connections by coach. Particularly barges provided a comfortable and reliable mode of transportation with regular services between the major cities, a network that would be developed in the course of the seventeenth century. Canals being dug from Haarlem to Leiden and Amsterdam in the 1630s and 1640s respectively greatly enhanced the city’s accessibility, but good connections with Antwerp existed prior to that.
The relative ease with which people traveled within the whole of the Low Countries emanates from travel books which mention timetables, costs and frequency of both overland connections and those via waterways, in addition to suitable inns where travelers could spend the night, and even places of interest in the respective towns. The early modern travel guides were widely disseminated and allowed travelers to plan their trips in an expedient manner. Using these and other sources, Jan de Vries and more recently Gerrit Verhoeven have established that travel on these barges was particularly user friendly. Verhoeven’s research shows that by comparison to other European countries, travel in the Dutch Republic was the cheapest per kilometer. Furthermore, the perceived safety was equally high in the Low Countries, in other words, travelers were far less worried that they would fall victim to robbers compared to elsewhere.
Surely there were impediments to swift travel, besides the fact that it was time-consuming and cumbersome, and it always involved costs. After the re-opening of hostilities in 1621, passports were required once more to cross the frontline, but even then, the archives reveal many instances of artists traveling from South to North and vice versa. For instance, Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) and members of the Teniers family requested passports to travel to the Republic in the thirties and forties of the seventeenth century.
Vermeer is documented to have traveled twice, once to Amsterdam on the part of his mother-in-law, Maria Thins, and to The Hague with a committee of experts in order to judge the value of a disputed collection of Italian master paintings.
No evidence exists that might suggest that Vermeer traveled to Italy as other Dutch painters had done.
Attribute
Mauritshuis , The Hague
In art, an attribute  is an object or animal associated with a  particular personage, often a saint, god or goddess. Christianity has used attributes from its very origins.  In Europe history painting , images of Christian  saints are traditionally identified by an attribute  which they carry in  their hands or which is placed nearby.  Attributes were used so that the illiterate  could recognize a scene. Saint Agnes might carry a lamb, Saint Bartholomew the  Apostle a knife or human skin, Saint Catherine of Alexandria  a wheel or Saint Peter a key or boat. Many attributes are reminders of how a saint was martyred, while others recall important actions or events from their life. 
On the other hand, doves  are attributes of Venus, the goddess of love. Thus,  a painter might identify a nude in his painting as Venus by representing a  dove nearby the figure. A bow and arrows, together with hounds, are traditional  attributes of the goddess Diana. Since she was also goddess of the moon, a painter  could identify  a particular figure in  his composition as Diana by placing a crescent moon in crescent in her hair,  like the yellow clad figure in Vermeer’s Diana and her Companions .
Authenticity
Authenticity in art has a various meanings related to the  ways in which a work of art is considered authentic. The most important refers  to the correct identification of the author of a work of art. Another refers to  the degree sincerity, genuineness of expression or passion the artist puts into  the work. Authenticity may also refer to the viewing experience, which, for a  modern visitor to a museum may be entirely different from context what the artist  intended. It is doubtful that a fully authentic experience is possible to  recapture.
In modernity, authenticity has acquired a deeply moral dimension  although such an intense interest in authenticity is relatively recent and largely  confined to the western world. In the medieval period, and even the Renaissance  and Baroque, authenticity was not as important as it is today.  Prior to the Age of Enlightenment and the Renaissance , most artwork was produced by unknown craftsmen. Signatures were  rare. However during the Cinquecento  artists began to develop their own  recognizable styles rather than attempt to copy a prototype as closely as  possible.
The determination of authenticity, once the province of connoisseurs ,  is now determined by museum curators, with the aid of conservators who are able  to provide curators with objective information. Art-historical documentation,  stylistic connoisseurship, and technical or scientific analysis, which  complement each other, are the three necessary aspects of best practices for  authentication and attribution.
However, to speak  of "authenticating" a  work of art through scientific analysis gives a false impression of what  science can accomplish. "Any scientific analysis of art, cannot establish the  truth of provenance, just as science cannot prove any particular hypothesis to  be true. Expert analysis can only ‘de-authenticate’ a work by proving it  anachronistic or incoherent as to style or substance."9 Once a forgery has been exposed, no matter how  highly the work was praised when it was thought to be "authentic" there is rarely any interest in evaluating the work on its own merit.
"Because of the increasingly litigious environment in the art world, and the  high costs of defending opinions of authenticity, it is becoming more difficult  to get artist’s foundations, authentication boards and independent experts to  render opinions. One high-profile example is the Andy Warhol Foundation which  recently announced that it is disbanding its authentication board. Other  artist’s foundations are reviewing their liability in the event of disputes  over the authenticity of specific works. These cases are impacting the creation  of catalogue raisonnés, the authoritative catalogues that document an artist’s  production of works over a lifetime. Consequently, provenance, the history of ownership  of an artwork, is more important than ever as an element of authenticity."10
With the advent of powerful digital technology, computational tools may be able  to provide new insights into and techniques for the art and science of art  authentication. Fractal analysis  and various  computational techniques have been applied to the analysis and classification  of "craquelure," the crack lines that appear over time in a paintings. Nevertheless, "objective scientific  truth" is a practically unattainable goal. Scientific facts are still dependent  upon their reading and interpretation.
Using high-resolution digital scans of the original works, various  computational techniques for authenticating works of art are under development,  specifically paintings and drawings. A statistical model of an artist,  including pen or pencil stroke patterns and other elements that represent an  artist's style or aesthetic signature, is built from the scans of a set of  authenticated works which are compared against other works. This signature may  be utilized to discover consistencies and inconsistencies within a single piece  of artwork or among works by the same artist,.  Similar methods, called stylometry,  have been used to identify characteristics of works  of literature and music such as  the  subtle choice of words or phrasing and cadence that are characteristic of a  certain writer.
It is common knowledge that the " fear of authenticity  lawsuits has a dampening effect on opinions in the art world.  Scholars, curators, dealers and other experts  are often unwilling to pronounce on authenticity, for fear of being used for  product disparagement, negligence, breach of contract, or defamation - by a  seller or owner.  This fear is aggravated  by the fact that a scholar authenticating a work may not ethically charge a fee  related to the work’s value, even though the seller may be risking a lawsuit by  giving an expert opinion."11
Specialists use the following terms to identify the level of  authenticity of a given work of art (some of the information below is drawn  from "Categories for the Description of Works of Art", Edited by  Murtha Baca and Patricia Harpring, The Getty Research Institute website,  2009 < http://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/cdwa/14creation.html >).
"by" - The term "by" is not usually seen in catalogues. The  listing of the artist’s name in bold letters and without qualifiers generally means that  the piece is accepted as the work of the named artist.
"attributed to" (a named artist) - On the basis of style,  the piece is believed to be by the hand of the artist, but with less certainty than the  above category.
"formerly attributed to" - A term used to refer to an attribution that             had been accepted in the past, but is no longer generally held to be             valid.
"probably by" - A term used to express minor uncertainty regarding the             attribution, generally indicating a slightly stronger probability than attributed to.
"follower of" - Use for a work by an unknown artist or architect               whose style is strongly influenced by the named artist or architect,               and who is living at the same time as or shortly after the named artist,               but is not necessarily his or her pupil.
"circle of" - A term use for a work by an unknown artist who appears               to be associated with the named artist, he or she is living at the               same time as the named artist, and probably had some contact with               him or her, but not is necessarily his or her pupil.
"school of" - A term used  for a work by an artist or architect whose               style is influenced by the named artist or architect or by the associates               of the named artist, who is living at the same time or shortly after               the named artist, but is not known to be a pupil or direct follower               of the named artist.
"studio of" (a named artist) - A term used for a work by an  unknown artist working for a named studio that called itself an atelier,  generally reserved for those studios located in France, or in Britain after the  18th century.
"atelier of" (a named  artist) -  A term used for a work by an  unknown artist working for a named studio that called itself an atelier,  generally reserved for those studios located in France, or in Britain after the  18th century.
"workshop of" - A  term that indicates authorship by an unknown individual working directly for the  named master, probably under his supervision. The distinction between "workshop of," and "studio of" typically depends upon the  historical period in which the artwork is created. "workshop of" is  used for groups of artists working under a master's name, generally in a system  of apprenticeship common from ancient times until the nineteenth century.
"school of" (a named artist) - An artwork is considered to  be by the hand of an artist closely associated with the named artist, but not  necessarily a pupil.
"style of" or "follower of" (a named artist) - A direct copy  of a known work of the named artist by any unknown hand and produced at any  time after the production of the original.
Axis
An implied or visible straight line in painting or sculpture in the center of a  form along its dominant direction.  In painting, the axis is used to give  structure and stabilize the picture much as the spine does in the human body.
Vermeer was very conscious of the stabilizing impact of  vertical axis’ in his compositions. In the Woman with a Water  Pitcher , the woman’s leaning position is steadied by an  axis which follows the vertical left-hand border of the map and runs directly  through the center of the water pitcher. This visual anchoring gives the  woman's momentary gesture an air of permanence and balance.
Background
See also, spatial depth and overlap .
From the picture plane (the surface of the painting) moving into the  picture the different areas are called the foreground, the middle ground and the  background respectively. If an artist has attempted to give an impression of  space receding into the picture, then parts of that illusory space will seem  closer to the viewer and other parts further away. The background is the  furthest away.
Although rarely  discussed, the prosaic white-washed wall which set the stage for the artist’s  quite little dramas are crucial components of Vermeer’s interiors. These walls  not only mark the furthest limits of picture’s implied three-dimensional space  but silently orchestrate the mood of each scene and establish the broader  scheme of illumination by which the chiaroscural and chromatic relationships of  the architectural features, figures and movable objects can be appropriately gauged. In  Vermeer's interiors the background wall, which establishes the three-dimensional limits of the scene. His walls are always  parallel to the picture plane.
In  Lawrence Gowing's words these walls "retain a certain flavor of subtle deception." The fact that the  background is parallel to the picture plane aids  the artist in achieving a more accurate illusionist effect of depth since the  painting's implied three dimensional spaces are easier to calculate for the spectator. Too, the  many so-called pictures-within-a picture and maps which hang on these walls  permit the artist to bond the figures within a geometrical structure of   the canvas and create a sense of rational order.
Other  interiors painters, such as Pieter de Hooch , who was active in Delft and most  likely  anticipated Vermeer in his depictions of upper middle-class interiors, situated the background wall parallel to the picture plane as Vermeer  did. Only rarely do we find the background walls of Dutch interiors set obliquity to the picture plane, with a usually disturbing affect. Some Delft painters of church interiors of the 1650s placed the picture  plane at an oblique angle to the walls of the  church. Their compositions achieve a less  formal, but more dynamic effect.
Badger Brush
The badger brush is  flat fan shaped brush which is used to smooth out layers of paint and to  create almost imperceptible transition of adjacent tones . However, the paint is not applied  with the badger brush. Over-use of the badger brush creates a  mechanical, rubbery effect. The badger brush is also used to spread out thin glazes of transparent  paint over a  dry monochrome underpainting . Fingers, the palm of the hand and birds' feathers and were also used to smooth  out visible brush strokes and blend paint..
It is probable that Vermeer did not use the badger brush as much  as many of his contemporaries who painted in the fijnschilder style. By contrast, his earlier paintings in the are built  up with relatively thick layers of paint with visible brush strokes throughout.  Perhaps Vermeer used the badger brush for the  modeling of the sitters' faces, especially in the  mid-1660s, and in particular, the Girl with a Pearl  Earring .
Balance
Pictorial balance is  arrangement of parts aimed at achieving a state of equilibrium between opposing  forces or influences. Balance may be  achieved by various conventional methods  including symmetry and asymmetry. Renaissance painters such as Raphael ( Le  Stanze della Segnatura )  and Leonardo ( The Last  Supper ), balanced some of their works around a rigorously conceived  symmetrical design. Raphael placed the most important figure in the middle of  the composition , with balancing figures on each side,  a standard arrangement for all classically balanced pictures. The doubling of  the figures not only gives the main subject importance, but contributes to the  peaceful atmosphere and the solemnity appropriate of religious felling and  decorum.
One of the most distinctive characteristics of Vermeer’s  painting is balance. However, the artist usually did not employ symmetry as a  means to balance his compositions as did Raphael and other painters of the  Renaissance. The great part of his of his compositions are organized around  perpendicular lines which divide the canvas into simple areas of light and dark  so that the planimetric organization of the canvas can be more easily assimilated  and understood. Such a simplified organization of the  painting’s two dimensional composition contributes to an overall sense of repose,  permanence and purposefulness.
There is no evidence  that  Vermeer panned his compositions using a predetermined compositional scheme. It is likely that he first  determined the poses, positions and  attitudes of his sitters , as well as the  objects which surround them with in a chosen environment.  Afterwards, he  carefully manipulated each of these compositional elements as well as the distribution of the main masses of lights and darks in order to achieve an essentially intuitive balance.
In a recent lecture, Vermeer, Lairesse and Composition,12 the art historian Paul  Taylor ( click here for an interview ) has advanced a rather unsettling hypothesis regarding the way Vermeer composed  his pictures. Bluntly put he argues that the concept of compositional balance,  nowhere mentioned in period art literature, was simply "unavailable" to the  seventeenth-century Dutch artist. "Although Dutch authors wrote at some length  about composition, ordinantie, they  never suggested that ‘visual balance’ was a part of the concept as they  understood it."
Bamboccianti
The Bamboccianti were northern genre painters active in Rome from about 1625 until the end of the 17th century. Most were Dutch and Flemish artists who brought existing traditions of depicting peasant subjects from 16th-century Netherlandish art with them to Italy,  and generally created small cabinet paintings or etchings of the everyday life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside.  Many of the artists were also members of the so-called Bentvueghels  (Dutch for "Birds of a Feather").
The  paintings of the Bamboccianti have been traditionally interpreted as a realist "true portrait of Rome and its popular life" "without variation or alteration" of what the artist saw. Typical subjects of the Bentvueghels include food and beverage sellers, farmers and milkmaids at work, soldiers at rest and play, and beggars,  or, as Salvator Rosa lamented in the mid-17th century, "rouges, cheats, pickpockets, bands of drunks and gluttons, scrubby tobacconists, barbers, and other 'sordid' subjects." In contrast to their painted topics, the works themselves sold for high prices to esteemed collectors.
Banquet  Piece - Banketje
A banquet piece—a banketje—is a still life painting  that features a lavish arrangement of expensive foodstuffs and serving pieces.   A typical banquet piece might include such luxury items as lobsters, oysters,  exotic fruits, and decorated pies in raised crusts.  Banketje translates literally from the Dutch as "little  banquet."
Willem Claesz Heda , one of the greatest Dutch still life artists, was  noted particularly for breakfast and banketje pieces. Claesz is believed to have pioneered the development of the monochrome banketje still life quietly restrained works composed in sober tones yet imbued with an extraordinary sense of naturalism.  Claesz relied on a monochrome palette to present the subtlest refinement of color and tone.
Baroque
The word itself is elusive; it does not accurately define or even approximate  the meaning of the style to which it refers. The origins of the word baroque are  not clear. It may have been derived from a medieval philosophical term connoting  the ridiculous or the strange, or from the Portuguese "barocco" or the Spanish "barueco" to indicate an irregularly shaped pearl.
Once a term of  disapproval, "baroque" generally means a taste for extravagant forms,  often heavy ornamentation, and dynamic effects, whether in architecture or in  other media.  The baroque period in art history is from about 1600  to about 1750. The term covers a wide range of styles and artists. In  painting and sculpture there were three main forms of Baroque: (1) sumptuous  display, a style associated with the Catholic Counter Reformation and the  absolutist courts of Europe (Bernini, Rubens); (2) dramatic realism  (Caravaggio); and (3) everyday realism, a development seen in particular in  Holland (Rembrandt, Vermeer). In architecture, there was an emphasis on  expressiveness and grandeur, achieved through scale, the dramatic use of light  and shadow, and increasingly elaborate decoration. In a more limited sense the  term Baroque often refers to the first of these categories. Conventional wisdom  has it that baroque emotionalism was a response to the last meeting of the  Council of Trent (1563), which fought the developing Reformation by enjoining  artists to show spiritual truths as realistically and expressively as possible  in order to keep viewers faithful to the Church of Rome.
Bentveughels
Bentvueghels   (Dutch for "Birds of a Feather") were members of a tightly knit club of Dutch artists in Rome, known as Schildersbent. The members of the group gathered in a building they believed to be the ancient Temple of Bacchus (but was in fact the Mausoleum of Constantia near the Sant’ Agnese), and were notorious for their drinking excesses. In 1720, Pope Clement XI ordered that the group had to be dissolved.
The Bentvueghels were frequently at odds with Rome's Accademia di San Luca ("Academy of Saint Luke"), which had the purpose of elevating the work of "artists" above that of craftsman. For this reason, before setting off for Italy, artists would first try to become members in their local Guild of Saint Luke so they would have papers to show on arrival. Travel to Italy became a rite of passage for young Dutch and Flemish artists after publication of Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck in 1604.
Often encompassing a difficult, and in many cases dangerous journey, artists would spend years getting to Italy, using their artistic talents to pay their way. Many never made it all the way to Italy, and many never attempted the trip back once they got there.
Binder
The substance in a paint which holds together (binds) the pigment and makes  the paint stick to whatever it's painted on. Usually and unctuous natural drying  oil such as linseed, walnut or poppy  oil . (see medium) .
Precious little is know about the binders in Vermeer's paints. It is generally believed that he used linseed and walnut oil  although like all Dutch painters, he must have known stand oil as well.  The value of  stand oil for fine painting has long been recognized and it seems that it was  commonly employed by Dutch and Flemish painters. No traces of stand oil have  been found in the works of Vermeer but this is probably due to the fact that  specific tests must be performed to detect it and most of Vermeer’s canvases  have not been examined in depth.
Bourgeois
Originally related to burgher (i.e., a citizen of a burg) and now  generally taken to mean a typical middle-class person with middle-class moral,  economic and other values. Bourgeois can be both an adjective and a noun; in the  latter case, strictly speaking, it means a male. When a female is meant,  bourgeoisie is the term used. Bourgeoisie means the middle class in  general.
"Vermeer's paintings of the1660s and early 1670s present the  bourgeois domestic interior as a space for polite social ritual and  introspective quiet. These paintings have come to define the image of the Dutch  middle class: prosperous, private, morally upstanding, and self-aware. This  picture of bourgeois accomplishment accords well with the aims and ambitions of  the Dutch citizen elite, however difficult they were to attain in practice in  the bustle of urban life, Some of Vermeer's paintings hint at this tension;  others paint it away. It animates his paintings of women writing, reading, and  delivering letters, which never quite tell us just what is being written or  read."13
Brush
(It. penello, old English pencill or pensill)
The tool used to apply paint to a surface, often consisting of a gathering of  bristles held together by a ferrule attached to a handle. The bristles may come  from hairs of a variety of animals including boar, squirrel and badger as well  as synthetic. Red sable hairs are often considered the finest. Different shapes  are desirable for different paint types and techniques. Large relatively  indistinct areas of paintings such as the sky were often painted with rugged  flat or round tipped hog's hair brushes. The  details were obtained with finely  hand shaped pointed sable brushes. Feathers were also used to smooth out areas  of paint to remove visible brushwork. Badger  Brushes were commonly used to smooth out areas of paint and subtly blend  adjacent areas of different tones.
Each artistic medium  prescribes the way in which the features of a given object may be most  advantageously represented. For example, a round object can be satisfactorily  represented by a thin pencil lie. The velvety blacks of engraving make it  adapted for chiaroscural effects. Oil painting (the most flexible and  all-inclusive medium) with the brush can represent almost any kind of object.  In the course of painting history, artists gradually favored the so-called "painterly" style. Crosshatching, the only means for rendering precisely in the  tempera medium, favored in the medieval times, was immediately discarded for  the dry graphic effect it tends to produce. Unhindered by  the difficulties of working with an inadequate medium, the artist’s brush could  flow as his mind and eye and knowledge directed. Without the distractions that  are caused by any technical limitations, he was free to give his entire attention  to the expression of his ideas and the exercise of his abilities.
Curiously, brushes  had evolved little over the centuries and only in the 19th century when artist’s  materials underwent drastic changes, did painters’ brushes change as well. In  general, painters no longer made their own paints and began to rely on colormen  who, in order to ensure shelf-life, added extra materials to paints (fillers) making  them much thicker. The soft pliant round brushes used by the Masters to work  their thinner, more liquid pigments, were no longer practical. For the  application of a dense pigment, stiffer brushes became a necessity and brushes  made with hog-bristle became more popular.
During the recent restoration of the View of Delft , fragments of coarse hog’s hair was found embedded  in the paint of the sky area. The artist had evidently used as sturdy brush  adapted to vigorously apply  thick impasto paint.
Brushwork
Brush work or brush handling refers to the  characteristic way an artist applies paint onto a support with a brush.  Brushwork not only intends the movement of the brush but  the thickness  or thinness of the paint applied.
Period  art literature of the Netherlands testifies that in the 17th-century brushwork was considerably appreciated in itself, even though  one of the most important art theorists of the time, Gérard de Lairesse , exhorted  painters to use paint as "evenly and lushly" (gerlijk en  mals) as possible. He wrote,
PENCILING [brushing]], or the management of the pencil [brush], is  two-fold, and the two manners resulting very different from each other; the one  is fluent and smooth, the other expeditious and bold; the former is  proper for neat and elaborate painting, and the latter for bold compositions,  as large as the life. But he who practices the former manner, has this  advantage above the other, that being accustomed to neatness, he can easily execute  the bold and light manner, it being the other way difficult to bring the hand to  neat painting; the reason of which is, that, not being used to consider and  imitate the details of small objects, he must therefore be a stranger to it; besides,  it is more easy to leave out some things which we are masters of than to add  others which we have not studied, and therefore it must be the artist’s care to  learn to finish his work as much as possible.
It is ridiculous to hear the disciples of great masters  boast, that, by copying large pictures, they shall certainly acquire a great  and firm manner, with a fat and bold pencil; and therefore are induced to  disrelish every thing that is neat and elaborate; but, after all they can say,  it is certain, that he who can pencil best, will study that manner which most  exactly exhibits the different natures of the objects which he is to represent;  and there are no other pencilings of advantage to a painter.
But further, to convince any one, that a great and bold  style of penciling contributes nothing to the art, let us place a work thus  painted at a due distance, and then see whether the penciling makes it look  more natural: this one advantage it may perhaps have, it may bring in more  money; since so rapid a master can dispatch double the work of another, if the  vigour of his imagination be equal to the expedition of his hand. Each branch,  however, has a peculiar penciling adapted to the nature of the objects to be  represented; as the landscape painter, in the leafing of the trees; the cattle  painter, in the expression of wool and hair; the ornament painter, in foliage, branching, &c. and the flower-painter, in apparent thinness of texture.
One of the  best examples of the even and smooth type of brushwork can be observed in the works  of the 17th-century Dutch painter Hendrick ter Brugghen (c. 1588-1629).  This overlooked-master possessed one of the most sophisticated techniques in the  Netherlands,  so much that Rubens had acquired several of his works for his personal  collection. Furthermore, we know that when the great Flemish master visited  the Netherlands  he paid a visit to Ter Brugghen neglecting the studio of the young, upcoming Rembrandt.  Closer to Vermeer in brush handling were Pieter de Hooch, Gabriel Metsu, Frans van  Mieris, Gerrit ter Borch and Gerrit Dou, all of whom of which possessed subtly distinctive brushwork. While De Hooch's brush work is characteristically clumsy, except in a handful of works executed in Delft, the brushwork of Gerrit Dou is so refined that individual brushstrokes cannot be  distinguished except with the aid of a magnifying glass.
Our  present-day appreciation of painting technique has been strongly influenced by  the 20th-century expressionist understanding of art. It is now a matter of course that, when art lovers draw close-up to paintings, they do so with the  intent of "reading" the artist’s handwriting. Instead, most period  discussions evidence that the principal characteristics of paintings executed  in the  so-called "rough manner," where  brushwork is evident, was that they had to be viewed from a distance. The  apparent looseness would be read as a convincing, coherent image, superior to  one executed in the fine manner. Rembrandt himself, explicitly warned a client  from viewing his painting from too close a range. Period texts approached  visible brushwork in relation to the illusionistic, rather than the  stylistic   quality of the painted image. By varying brushwork, the painter strove to  emphasize the sense of "hereness" of the scene and extend the range of optical  qualities or textural substances of each object of his composition.
Vermeer’s brushwork varied throughout his 20-year career. His earlier religious and genre paintings  display  surprisingly broad  application of paint. By the mid 1660s,  however, all traces of vigorous brush work  have disappeared in favor continuous modeling and an almost enamel-like surface. In the later paintings, Vermeer's brushwork again  becomes visible assuming a curious calligraphic aspect while the actual paint  layer remains extremely thin.
Although Vermeer never sought the microscopic detail and  mirror-like smoothness of the fijnschilders ,  even his most evident brushwork is extremely subdued in respects to  the  gestural brush handling of the great baroque masters such as  Rembrandt, Velásquez and Rubens. When Vermeer's brushwork is  evident, rather than reflecting emotional states of its maker, it tends  to be impersonal in nature aiming at a simplified description of optical and  textural qualities of what is being represented. Perhaps only in some  details (see the marble veining of the spinet in A Lady Seated at a  Virginal ) his latest paintings can we detect spontaneous  gesture, which however was usually confined to the movement of  the fingers.
Without fear of exaggeration, we might say  that the exquisite still life of The Milkmaid is  among the most satisfying technical passages in Western easel painting. Both  the  texture of the fractured bread crust and wicker basket of the still life are  captured with directness and at the same time astounding sensitivity. The play of light  is recorded with such fidelity that it seems to emanate from within  the canvas itself. Even the most competent realist painter may scrutinize this  passage for hours and still not comprehend exactly how it was created. The thick  impasto of the white-washed wall is enlivened by energetic brushwork that mimics  the unevenness of the wall’s surface. The maid’s head seems to be sculpted with  the tiniest of chisels rather than painted with a  brush.  Tiny dabs and dashes of lead-tin yellow, ochre and a dark mixture of dull brown  translate into the robust shape and gnarly texture of the young maid’s humble  garment. In some of the most delicate passages, paint seems to have been "patted  on" with the tip of the brush rather than brushed out horizontally upon the surface of the canvas.
Soon after these  first dazzling performances in painting technique, Vermeer’s brush-handling  becomes far more controlled, more "gentrified" in compliance with the new haute bourgeoisie themes. The Glass of Wine marks the break between the early "material" paint surface and the "spiritual" surfaces of the following period. Here,  conspicuous signs of paint would be at odds with the lacquered furniture and  satin. We might even say that Vermeer’s controlled brushwork parallels the  controlled, ritualized behavior of the protagonists of these works. Paint is applied smoothly  in thin translucent layers.
Form is  suggested rather than described: brushstrokes all but disappear. There are  passages, such as the head of the Woman in Blue Reading a Letter ,  which are so exquisitely modeled that no trace of brush can be perceived. Modeling  is subtly blurred and the whole seems to be painted with something less  substantial than unctuous paint. It is hard to believe that the uplifted eye of  the mistress in the Mistress and Maid is nothing more  than an exquisite smudge, a nebulous cloud of medium-dark paint which miraculously  tells the viewer all he needs to know about the young woman’s thoughts.
Burgerlijk
Burgerlijk is the Dutch word for "burghers." Though  it is notoriously difficult to assign firm class divisions to Golden Age Dutch  society, the burgerlijk was a roughly middle class  grouping to which Netherlanders of a wide range of professions—from modest  artisans to well-to-do regents—belonged.
Cabinet Painting
A cabinet painting (or "cabinet picture") is a small painting, typically no larger than about two feet in either dimension, but often much smaller. The term is especially used of paintings that show full-length figures at a small scale, as opposed to a head painted nearly life-size, and that are painted very precisely, with a great degree of  finish. From the 15th century onwards wealthy collectors of art would keep such paintings in a cabinet, a relatively small and private room (often very small, even in a very large house), to which only those with whom they were on especially intimate terms would be admitted.
Later such paintings might be housed in a display case, which might also be called a cabinet, but the term cabinet arose from the name (originally in Italian) of the room, not the piece of furniture. Other small precious objects, including miniature paintings, "curiosities" of all sorts (see cabinet of curiosities), old master prints, books, small sculptures and so on, might also be in the room.
Most of Vermeer's paintings were considered cabinet  paintings. One of his pictures, Woman  Holding a Balance ,  listed in the  posthumous 1696 Dissius auction in Amsterdam (which included in  all 21 paintings by Vermeer) is described as being" in a  box." Most likely this box served as a protective device for the  most precious works.
Camera Obscura
The camera obscura is an ancestor of the photographic camera. The Latin name of this device means "dark chamber," and  the earliest versions, dating to antiquity, consisted of small darkened rooms  with light admitted through a single tiny hole. The result was that an inverted  image of the outside scene was cast on the opposite wall, which was usually  whitened. For centuries the technique was used for viewing eclipses of the Sun  without endangering the eyes and, by the 16th century, as an aid to drawing; the  subject was posed outside and the image reflected on a piece of drawing paper  for the artist to trace. Portable versions were built, followed by smaller and  even pocket models; the interior of the box was painted black and the image  reflected by an angled mirror so that it could be viewed right side up. The  introduction of a light-sensitive plate by J.N. Niepce created photography.
This mechanical means of recording images is known to have been employed by Canaletto, Vermeer and  other Dutch painters of the time, including Torrentius (Johannes van der Beeck). It has also been hypothesized that Carel Fabritius ,  employed the camera obscura as an aid for their  painting.
It has been long supposed that Vermeer used the camera  obscura as an aid for his paintings although scholars are still in  disaccord as exactly to what extent he relied on the device.  In recent years there is a tendency  to  accept that he did so systematically.
Although the question of if and how Vermeer might have  employed the camera obscura has been heatedly debated for decades, in 2002  Philip Steadman put doubts to rest clearly demonstrating that this device was  indeed an integral, and I would add, indispensable part of Vermeer’s studio  practices and artistic ends. This does not mean that Vermeer could not have painted his motifs without a  camera obscura, he certainly could have. His talent was notable and there were  countless Dutch paintings to learn from, but without the aid of the camera his  paintings would not have displayed those peculiar optical characteristics and  nuances of daylight that had gone unnoticed by any other artist of his time and  make his work so highly treasured today.The camera obscura, a veritable compositional machine, permitted the artist to explore  the planimetric organization of his motifs as the world carefully constructed in the artist's studio laid itself flat on the  device’s screen. It permitted him to calculate the spatial intervals between figure and ground with  extraordinary precision and freedom that pencil and paper do not permit. Only  in this manner could the figure be so ingeniously bound to the environment.
It is almost impossible to imagine the effect of  camera’s image had on an artist so sensitive to the sense of sight as Vermeer.  Contemporaries who knew the device were stunned by its seemingly magical powers  to display nature even as it moves. Constantijn Huygens , a key  figure of Dutch artistic culture who had contacts with some of the most  important Dutch painters of the time and seems to have been aware of Vermeer's  work as well, bought a camera obscura in 1662 in London. He wrote: "it produces admirable  effects by reflecting on a wall in a dark room. I cannot describe its beauty in  words, but all painting seems dead by comparison...." Huygens took the  camera obscura back the Netherlands  where he enthusiastically recommended it to painters. Samuel van Hoogstraten , a Dutch painter  and art theorist stated: "I am certain that seeing this projections in the  dark will give the vision of young painters no small light, for beside  acquiring knowledge of nature, one sees here what on the whole or in general a  truly natural painting ought to have." For Vermeer the camera presented  alternatives hitherto unexplored venues in pictorial illusionism.
Click here for a four part study of Vermeer and the camera obscura and here for an enlightening  interview with Philip  Steadman, the author of the highly debated book, Vermeer's Camera: The Truth Behind the  Masterpieces ..
Caravaggism
Caravaggio's style consists of a rejection of idealization in favor of a  seeming realism vividly depicted in contemporary costumes and settings. Solidly  defined figures are represented with expressive and often violent gestures, in  unusual and dramatically arresting groups composed within a shallow foreground  space. His pictures are realized in a powerful chiaroscuro which emphasizes the three-dimensional form.  His method of painting was regarded as revolutionary. Instead of following the  traditional procedure of working from drawings and sketches (no drawings by Caravaggio exist),  it is believed he painted directly from the  model making changes  as he advanced. As a consequence, his works succeed in creating an immediate and  sometimes startling effect on the beholder.
Caravaggio pushed the figures up against the picture plane and used light to   give the figures a sense of immediacy. His style was widely  imitated  quickly spreading throughout Europe. As a  contemporary critic noted, "a characteristic of this school [of painting] is to  use a focused light source from high up, without reflections, as though in a  room with a [single] window and the walls painted black. In this fashion the lit  and shadowed areas are very light and very dark and give enormous  three-dimensionality to the painting, but in an unnatural fashion neither done  or even conceived before by such artists as Raphael , Titian , Correggio , or  others." What was at issue was not a descriptive naturalism , but a provocative insistence  on the physical reality of the scene portrayed.
Vermeer's ties with Italian painting, all but abandoned today, had been  strongly suspected in the first half of the 20th century. Some   scholars believed that he had traveled to Italy in his early formative years.  However, no proof has ever surfaced in regards. Just the same, the Delft artist may have been  aware the lessons of Caravaggio through the Utrecht Caravaggists: Honthorst, Terbrugghen and Van Bijlert.
John Montias has hypothesized that the young Vermeer may have passed his  period of apprenticeship with the elderly Abraham  Bloemaert , a not so distant relative of his future  mother-in-law, Maria Thins. Thins had in her private art  collection a number of  paintings from the Utrecht school, some of which Vermeer portrayed  on  the back walls of his own compositions. Although Bloemaert had never  himself been to Italy, some of his former students had gone to Rome, where they  were strongly influenced by the Caravaggist school of painting, and when they  came back to Utrecht they familiarized him with the new school. Afterwards,  Bloemaert painted some pictures that  display characteristics of  Caravaggio's style.
Often  cited in reference to Vermeer's  supposed familiarity with Italian painting, in May 1672,  he took part of a  committee of artists which was called to The Hague (at the time he was the head  of the Delft Guild of Saint  Luke ) which had been charged to judge the authenticity  of a dubious art collection of  Italian master paintings offered to the Grand  Elector of Brandenburg. According to Vermeer and his colleagues, the paintings  were not Italian at all, on the contrary, "great pieces of rubbish not  worth much."
Canvas
See also thread count .
Closely woven cloth, usually linen, used as a support for  paintings. A painting itself may also be referred  to as a canvas, naturally if that paintings is on canvas.
Although canvas as a support for painting was know to the  ancients, it became widely used in Italy for oil painting by the end of the 15th  century. Until then, both tempera and oil painting had been done primarily on wood panels . The word canvas does not  refer to any specific material in the field of textile fabrics, it is applied to  number of closely woven materials of relatively course fibers. Linen is  preferred for its superior strength; it tears with great difficulty. It  is also less hygroscopic than other fabrics which instead draw moisture from the  air and, upon drying, throw it off and are in a sort of continual expansion and  contraction in which the dry pigment cannot participate. This causes the paint  to crack severely.
In Vermeer's time, canvas was not made specifically made for the fine arts but principally for bed sheets, sails and clothing.
It is now held that many, if not most, 17th-century painters did not  prepare their own canvases but bought them ready-made (stretched on a wooden frame or "chassis" grounded and primed) from specialized artisans.  Their dimensions may sometimes be associated with local units of measure. The width  of a roll of cloth was governed by the width of the 100m: most looms in Twente  and Brabant, the main sources for canvas in the Northern Netherlands were two  ells (ca. 138 cm) wide, whereas 100m widths of Italian canvases tend to range  between 106 and 110 cm.
Vermeer used fine woven linen canvas for his  paintings. For example, The Woman Holding a  Balance is painted on a plane woven linen with a thread  count of 20 x 16 per square cm. Since many of Vermeer’s paintings are  similar in dimension and proportion to the canvases of many Dutch artists, it has been conjectured that he too may  have prefer use pre-prepared canvases rather than face the laborious task of  preparing them by himself.
Catalogue Raisonné
The typical catalogue raisonné is a monograph giving a comprehensive catalogue of artworks by an artist  either in a particular medium or all media. The essential elements of a catalogue raisonné are that it purports to be an exhaustive list of works for a defined subject matter describing the works in a way so that they may be reliably identified by third parties. They may provide some or all of the following:
Title and title variations
Bibliography/Literature that discusses the work
Essay(s) on the artist
Full description of the work
Signatures, Inscriptions and Monograms of the artist
Reproduction of each work
List of works attributed, lost, destroyed and fakes
Catalog number
Other terms that may be used in place of catalogue raisonné are:  Oeuvre, Catalogo Razonado, Catalogo Ragionato, Catalogo Generale, Opera Completa, Werkverzeichnis, Leben und Werk, Complete Works
and Critical Catalogue
The most recent catalogue raisonné of Vermeer's work is Walter Liedtke's, Vermeer: The Complete Painting, 2008
Chiaroscuro
This is an Italian term which literally means "light-dark." In paintings the  description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the  volume and modeling of the subjects depicted. Although chiaroscuro is  often used in association with Caravaggio's strongly contrasted paintings, the  term also may be used to describe any relationship between light and dark in a  painting. Artists who are famed for the use of chiaroscuro include Leonardo da  Vinci and naturally, Caravaggio .  Leonardo employed it to give a vivid impression of the three-dimensionality of  his figures, while Caravaggio used such contrasts for the sake of  drama.
Vermeer's use of chiaroscuro was closely linked to the  objective description of light's activity although it also played an important  part in the organization of his compositions .
Chronology
In reference to the art of painting, the order in which an artist executed his  works.
Since the "recovery" of Vermeer's art in the mid 1860s,  determining  both the exact number of works and the chronological order  in which they were painted,  has been particularly vexing. Only one (or perhaps  two if the date on The Geographer is authentic) of his paintings bears a date; the early Procuress (1656).
The present chronology of Vermeer's paintings has been  principally fruit of stylistic analysis and comparisons to works of other  Dutch genre artists whose paintings show stylistic similarities and whose  dates are more reasonably established. Some indications of the  dates of Vermeer's pictures have been proposed by analyzing the dress and hair styles of his sitters .
Since Vermeer experimented with different styles of  painting, the problem of dating his works is even more complicated. Arthur  K. Wheelock Jr., one of the most authoritative Vermeer scholars,  believes that owing to  stylistic and technical inconsistencies, a chronological order for Vermeer's paintings cannot be  definitively determined. Nonetheless, Vermeer's  paintings are generally grouped in three or four  relatively distinct periods.
Even though exact date of all but three dated works ( The Procuress , The Astronomer and The Geographer ) painting must be  considered hypothetical, their sequential order has remained much the same as it  has been since the 1960s and 1970s when Vermeer's oeuvre had been  begun to be systematically studied with greater attention towards  historical  and scientific evidence. This task was considerably facilitated by the fact that  Vermeer's oeuvre had been definitively purged in the early 1950s of a number of fakes and  false attributions .
For more information on the chronological order of Vermeer's paintings, click here .
Cinematic
Pertaining to devices, usually visual, characteristic of films and  filmmaking.
Classic - Classical
These terms are so frequently confused that the following distinction may not  hold true in all cases: strictly speaking, "classic" means of the highest order  or rank, whereas "classical" means characteristic of Greek and Roman antiquity  and things made in emulation thereof. For example, Picasso's Guernica (1937) may  well be a classic, but it is hardly classical. That is, it may have a certain  staying power in history based on any number of assumptions, including quality,  but it does not exhibit any characteristics associated with various classical  schools, like rationalism and impersonal execution. On the other hand, Gérard's  Cupid and Psyche of 1798 is classical, in some  respects, but it is hardly a classic.
Vermeer's  finely balanced paintings have been perceived as  possessing characteristics of the classical style  (see Arthur Wheelock, Johannes Vermeer , with  contributions by Albert  Blankert , Ben Broos and Jørgen  Wadum ,  1995, p. 27). Walter  Liedtke, curator of Northern Painting of the Metropolitan Museum of Art  and of  the Vermeer and  the Delft  School exhibition, instead sees that there is  no evidence at all that Vermeer pursued classicist ideals. He  believes that the underlying sense of order  and repose in Vermeer's work derives from local artistic  traditions of Delft.
In regards, Lawrence Gowing  wrote in  1950: "Vermeer's design is usually considered to be classical in kind, a  deliberate ordering  of space and pattern, and in general the classical designer  makes his deliberation visible, as do Piero and Poussin , in the smallest forms he represents. Vermeer's representation is  of the opposite kind, the kind which abhors preconception and design and relies  entirely on the retina as its guide..."
Classicism
Classicism represents a return to the formal idiom of Greek and Roman   antiquity. In the 15th and sixteenth centuries, classical examples began to  be followed on a massive scale. Since that period, the Renaissance, classical  subjects and forms have become an integral part of Western art and architecture.  Classical art long formed the standard against which all forms of art—visual  art, architecture and literature—were measured. Most discussions of Classicism  refer to the period of 1770 to 1850. This is often known as Neoclassicism, to  distinguish it from earlier forms of Classicism.
Color
The following entry is drawn from:
Maund, Barry, "Color", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) < http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/color/ >
The visual world, the world as we see it, is a world populated by colored  objects. Colors are important in both identifying objects, i.e., in locating  them in space, and in re-identifying them. So much of our perception of  physical things involves our identifying objects by their appearance, and  colors are typically essential to an object's appearance, that any account of  visual perception must contain some account of colors. Since visual perception  is one of the most important species of perception and hence of our acquisition  of knowledge of the physical world, and of our environment, including our own  bodies, a theory of color is doubly important.
One of the major problems with color has to do with fitting what we seem to  know about colors into what science, particularly physics, tells us about  physical bodies and their qualities. It is this problem that historically has  led the major physicists who have thought about color, to hold the view that  physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily and naturally  take objects to possess. Oceans and skies are not blue in the way that we  naively think, nor are apples red, (nor green). Colors of that kind, it is  believed, have no place in the physical account of the world that has developed  from the 16th Century to this century.
Not only does the scientific mainstream tradition conflict with the  common-sense understanding of color in this way, but as well, the scientific  tradition contains a very counter-intuitive conception of color. There is, to  illustrate, the celebrated remark by David Hume:
Sounds, colors, heat and cold, according to modern  philosophy are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind.14
Physicists who have subscribed to this doctrine include the luminaries:  Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, Newton,  Young, Maxwell and Helmholtz. Maxwell, for example, wrote:
It seems almost a truism to say that color is a sensation; and yet Young, by  honestly recognizing this elementary truth, established the first consistent  theory of color.15
This combination of eliminativism—the view that physical objects do not have  colors, at least in a crucial sense—and subjectivism—the view that color is a  subjective quality—is not merely of historical interest. It is held by many  contemporary experts and authorities on color. S. K. Palmer, a leading  psychologist and cognitive scientist, writes:
People universally believe that objects look colored because  they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is  blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is  red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken.  Neither objects nor lights are actually ‘colored’ in anything like the way we  experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual  experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of  those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of  objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these  physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we  perceive. 16
C0lor Harmony
Color harmony can be cautiously defined as a successful  combination of colors, whether it pleases the eye by using analogous colors, or  excite the eye with contrast. The interrelation between colors is strongly  modified by other pictorial factors. Each painter has his preferred color  harmonies. Primary colors are usually believed to  have positive psychological connotations. Secondary colors composed of two  primary colors, present more ambiguity of meaning. The symbolic significance  of color is generally believed to be universal although in many cultures each color has both  positive and negative associations.
In practice, color harmony is unpredictable at best. John  Ruskin warned the painter: "Every hue throughout your work is altered by every  touch that you add in other places; so that what was warm a minute ago becomes  cold when you have put a hotter color in another place, and what was in harmony  when you left it, becomes discordant as you set other colors beside it." In  Vermeer’s time, in regards to color harmony,  the art theorist and painter  Gérard de Lairesse lamented in his Groot Schilderboek (1707)   that "It is remarkable, that, though the management of the  colours in a painting, whether of figures, landscape, flowers, architecture, &c. yields a great pleasure to, the eye, yet hitherto no one has laid down  solid rules for doing it with safety and certainty... "and of color harmony, " … good Union  and Harmony, is not, to this Day, fixed on certain Principles. Meer Chance is  herein our only Comfort." Because of the extreme instability and reciprocal  independence, it is not surprising that attempts to scientifically  investigate color harmony have essential confirmed been largely fruitless and have  furnished only simple harmonies more adapted for nurseries and commercial  enterprises rather than for the practicing artist.
One reason for the difficulty in  understanding of relationships  of color in painting  is that it is near impossible to isolate the interrelationship of colors amidst  the many factors which contribute to the overall perception of a work of art,  including where and how the colors are disposed on the picture plane and the objects with  which they are associated.  Nonetheless,  the art historian
Eugene Clinton  Elliott  has pointed out that, "…in the  stylistic similarities of schools and artistic epochs, and in the relative  consistency of changes from one period to another, there would seem to be some  underlying agreement among artists as to how color is to be used." He isolated  five essential factors which contribute   certain stylistic uniformity in the use of color.
"First, there are certain formal principles, such as  the traditional symbolism of particular colors, upon which an artist may base  his choice. Second, metaphysical assumptions, taking specific form in any given  age, may at least partially determine the relationship of color to other  pictorial elements. Third, the understanding of color may be modified by  changes in the scientific theories of color. Fourth, pedagogical considerations  in transmitting knowledge of craft may prejudice the choice or dictate a  certain approach to the use of color. And fifth, the limitations and  possibilities of technique, as defined above, as they are given or preferred at  any time, may further restrict the painter in his choice."17
The relative availability of pigments (the coloring agents  of paint) suited for oil painting is rarely  taken into a account by the layman in regards to the coloring of Renaissance  and Baroque painting. But it is highly probable that painter of those times though  as much in terms of availability, workability and cost  if his pigments  as much as any eventual aesthetic or  expressive effect their effective colors might have. This becomes more clear  when we understand that, for example, Vermeer had at his disposition only a  few, perhaps no more than five so-called strong colors (vermillion, lead-tin  yellow, natural ultramarine, red madder and verdigris, the latter of which,  however,  he employed only rarely.  Essentially, Vermeer’s base palette was formed no more than a dozen pigments,  mostly lackluster earth colors. In some works he seems to have used less that  five or six. Painters of the time possessed none  of the  brilliant oranges,  purples, or key pigments  such as cobalt blue, Prussian blue to say nothing of the whole line of  brilliant cadmiums available on the shelf of any medium stocked art supplies store.  Thus, the  possibilities of color  harmonies of Baroque and earlier schools of painting were drastically  conditioned by the simple scarcity of pigments, pigments which instead  were at the fingertips of painters belonging  to art movements  from the Impressionist  onwards.
It must also be remembered that seventeenth-century concepts  of color had much to do with creating pictorial depth as with how they might  harmoniously combine. The symbolic value of color was discussed in the  seventeenth-century by art writers but it is impossible to understand if the  multitudes   of Dutch painters who were principally concerned with capturing the  illusion of reality would have been much concerned with this aspect of color,  which instead might have been useful for the history painter whose aim was to  transmit didactic, moralizing messages. Karl van Mander wrote about the  importance of colour for understanding objects, and the relationship of colour  to light and darkness and the  power of  colour—for example the intense reactions brought
upon by the red of blood—as well as the role and symbolism  of colour in various cultures, as well as the fine colours produced by unusual  stones and expensive gems. Curiously, "Gerard ter Borch’s step-sister, Gesina  ter Borch (1631-1690), who, along with her brother Harmen (1638-1677), compiled  a list of colours and their symbolic associations in the mid-to-late 1650s. The  list of thirteen colours and their symbols appears at least four times in the  material preserved in the Rijksprentenkabinet, twice on folio pages written by Harmen  that Gesina incorporated into her Poetry Album, once on the last folio  of the family scrapbook, signed and dated by Gesina 1659, and once on the verso  of one of Gesina’s drawings.
"In the sheets penned by Harmen appropriately coloured hearts  introduce each line. The hearts refer to the types of symbolic associations  given to the colours, those related to love. Hence, for Gesina and Harmen light  blue means constancy, green means hope, black steadfastness, grey spitefulness  or dissimulation, white pureness, blue jealousy, carnation revenge or cruelty,  pink love, yellow gladness or joy, seagreen instability and unsteadfastness,  brown discretion, prudence and truth. Finally, ash gray means sorrow and  suffering.."18
Vermeer’s colors were generally cooler than those of his  contemporaries. The warm brown hues which dominated artists’ palettes in  southern Europe are normally felt as friendly,  while cool hues remain emotionally distant. More than one critic has pointed  out that only a handful of great European Masters, including Velásquez and  Piero della Francesca (c.1420-1492), adopted cool palettes. This statement may  have been exaggerated to make a point but there is no doubt that Vermeer was  particularly careful in maintaining the fresh­ness of light grays and blues. He  even introduced small quantities of blue pigment into the gray paint striving  for the airiest gray possible which would capture the vibrancy and sparkle of  the legendary Dutch light.
Thumbing through a catalogue of Vermeer’s work, we notice  that the costume of nearly every key figure is painted with red, blue or  yellow. Only one important figure, the writing mistress in A Lady Writing a  Letter with her Maid, is painted in a muted green. All of the red-clad figures  were made early in his career. The secondary figures are usually rendered in  dull or secondary hues: olive green, dull brown or black. By rendering the  principal figures with bright, positive colors, the ob­server is signaled  where he must look first. They are immediately distinguished from the secondary  ones thereby reinforcing the narrative clarity of the painting. Whether  Vermeer’s color strategy was arrived at through logic or intuition, the end  effect is as effective as it is simple.
Color Temperature
See also turbid medium effect .
Aside from the rather straightforward juxtaposition of large areas of complimentary color to create spatial depth and visual excitement, the Great Masters were able to take advantage of color temperature in a far subtler and perhaps unexpected manner, particularly when handling the all important flesh tones. Color could also be exploited to model, substantiate and enhance the sense of form’s volume. This tool was of special importance for painting flesh since strong modeling and strong chiaroscural schemes tend to destroy the subtlety of form and the flesh’s natural translucency.
"Essentially, the depiction in paint of three-dimensional objects (faces, hands and so on) requires alternating use of warm and cool colors: the shadows themselves are warm, half-tones are cool, lights are warm and highest lights cool again. If this sequence is not observed, the illusion of depth and roundness will not be successful.
"The actual painting of the cool half-tone could be done in two basic ways. Either it could be painted directly between light and shadow as a band of colour containing cool, blue-toned pigments; or it could be achieved - and Rubens's later paintings are perhaps the most outstanding example of the method - by exploiting the so-called turbid medium effect. A light colour painted thinly over a warm dark tone will appear cooler than if painted over a lighter tone. Thus, by underpainting the shadows and half-tone areas with a dark color and then overlapping it with the warm translucent color of the general lights, the cool half-tones are produced automatically."19
Things closer to us are more saturated, things farther away tend to become more gray or blue or cool. Just by juxtaposing a warm and cool color next to each other we can generate the impression that one is in front of the other.
The cooling or graying of a skin tint is tantamount to saying that it is getting farther away. The cool color in between the skin tones and the shadow helps define the turn that the form is taking as it sinks into shadow. After all, it is the turn of the form that causes the shadows, not the position of the light which remains fixed.
Complementary Colors
Pairs of colors that have the maximum contrast and so, when set side by  side, intensify one another. Complementary colors are located directly  across from each other on the color wheel. Complementary pairs contrast because  they share no common colors. For example, red and green are complements, because  green is made of blue and yellow. Green and red, blue and orange, and yellow and  violet are complementary colors.
As Vincent Van Gogh noted, blue and lemon yellow, accompanied by gray, are characteristic of  Vermeer's palette much as gray and pink were of Velásquez's.  Vermeer's typical blue pigment, ( natural ultramarine ) has a very strong red undertone, while his characteristic yellow  ( lead-tin  yellow ) tends to be slightly green, making them  almost complimentary.
Even when the  somber hues dominated the Dutch palettes in the decades prior to Vermeer’s  activity, most painters found it difficult to resist the seductive power of a  patch of bright color, draperies being the main choice. Although hardly any  bright pigments were to be had, artists learned how to produce an exceptional  range of lavish hues through multi-layered techniques and calculated  juxtaposition of adjacent colors. Instead, Vermeer worked principally with the primary  colors: blue, red and yellow which in every composition establish the principal  chromatic harmonies of his art. Measured areas of these primary colors are  enclosed by areas of low-key grays and browns that lend them their unique  character.
Vermeer’s  strong colors were more restricted than those of many fellow genre painters. He  used orange and purple only in his first his­tory paintings.
Composition
See also ordinantie .
Composition is the term given to a complete work of art and, more  specifically, to the way in which all its elements work together to produce an  overall effect. A "static composition", for example, might stress horizontal and  vertical accents, closure at the edges of the painting, and subdued co lour and  tonal contrasts, to give an effect of orderliness and repose. A more "dynamic  composition", such as Rubens's Peace and War, on the  other hand, might be based on intersecting diagonals, a lack of closure,  vigorous contrasts of color and light and dark accents, stressing movement,  activity, conflict.
One of the main purposes of a composition is to present the theme. and  enhance its meaning.
The idea of pictorial  composition was born in the Renaissance. For Leon Battista Alberti , whose commentary De pictura (On Painting, 1435) guided  the evolution of European painting for centuries, composition was the second  and most important rule of art
Before  Alberti, composition was seldom (if ever) discussed in connection with painting, and he  devotes more attention to it than to any other topic. Manuals written by  craftsmen focused on the materials, media, and shop techniques of artists.  Alberti defined compositions so:
"Composition is the rule of painting by which the  parts are brought together to for a pictorial work. The greatest work of  painting is not a colossus, but historia.  For the praise of ingengo is greater  in historia, than in colossus. The  parts of historia are bodies, parts  of the bodies are a members, a part of a member is surface. Thus, the prime  parts of the works are surfaces, because from them come members, from members  come bodies, and from those come the historia,  indeed the ultimate and absolute work of painting."
For  Alberti, composition follows "circumscription," the rule for drawing  outlines, and precedes "the reception of light," the rule for  applying colored pigment.
Certain aspects of Alberti’s definition is somewhat obscure  even to disciplined art scholars. But what he seems to have meant is that all  the parts of a painter’s composition derive from the historia, the subject  matter of painting, and are interdependent. Sheer size or marvelous ingengo (ingenuity,  i.e. painterly skill) of a colossus, probably a reference to works of medieval  and Classical past, are inferior to the works of historia which instead, presents  related and measurable parts. Ingengo,  therefore, should not only cause the spectator to marvel at the artist’s  creation, but make him reason about it.
More specifically, Alberti thought the historia should  contain a variety of bodies and colors to please the viewer’s mind. The painter  should take great care to include different character types, movements,  clothing and gestures to create a graceful richness. All the actions performed  by the figures should be meaningful both in relation to each other and in  relation to the observer. If all this is not clear, one should imagine how  he might go about depicting tens of slaughtering, screaming and dead figures in  order to get the across the moralizing message a  rape of the Sabine.
Vermeer was perhaps one of the  greatest painting composers of all times. His compositions are finely balanced yet never static. Although one tends to  perceive more readily the perpendicular elements of Vermeer’s compositions,  strong diagonal lines often enliven his compositions  enhancing theme and expressive content.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. has  drawn attention to  the importance of composition as a prime vehicle of Vermeer's artistic  aims. Wheelock, states that "the compositional refinements in Vermeer's  paintings are so exquisite that it is difficult to understand how he achieved  them. His mastery of perspective does not  account for the sensitive arrangement of the figures or for the subtle  proportions he established between pictorial elements." His comment on  Vermeer's  use of composition in Music Lesson ,  perhaps Vermeer's most architecturally structured work, is revealing. "The  expansive space of this elegantly appointed interior seems to reverberate with  the same music being played at the virginal . Contrasting patterns of  shapes and colors create major and minor accents that parallel the  structure of the music. As with music, the composition has a  focus, in the instance the vanishing point of the perspective system that falls  with great insistence on the woman's left sleeve."
Cool Colors
In color theory, colors are described as either warm, cool, or neutral. A  very cool color generally is one which contains a large amount of blue, as  opposed to a warm color, which will contain more yellow. In theory, cool colors  seem to recede in space, as the distant mountains or hills tend to appear light  bluish, and the closer ones will be more green or brown (warmer). In  landscape paintings, artists often paint the distant hills in this pale blue  color; and it is generally thought that cool colors will recede into space in  any painting. However, color is a complex element, and colors often misbehave -  it is usually best to go on a case-by-case basis, because colors are influenced  greatly by what colors they are next to, appearing "warm" in one setting, and "cool" in another.
Vermeer's  palette , as well as those of many Northern painters, was  generally cool in tone, especially when compared with the warm  palettes of Italian masters which was further enhanced by the use of  reddish grounds of their canvases. However, significant passages of  vibrant  unadulterated red are present in Vermeer's earlier compositions while large  masses of subdued red are present in the depictions of the oriental carpets  found in many of his works. Various shades of blue and cool grays,  often composed of lead white and black are dominant,  complimented by patches of his characteristic lemon  yellow, which has been revealed to be a widely used pigment called lead-tin  yellow.
The  relative coolness of  Vermeer's palette is not always apparent in reproductions,  particularly in older ones. Cool colors are more negatively effected than  warm ones by layers of aged yellow varnish. Luckily, recent  restorations of many of Vermeer's paintings have  restored the chromatic brilliance of many passages and the  original overall cool effect of his pictures since layers  old varnish have been removed. The recent restoration of Vermeer's early Procuress provides an excellent example.
Connoisseur - Connoisseurship
See also Liefhebbers  van de Schilderkonst (Lovers of the Art of Painting)
Connoisseurship is deeply rooted in the past. Etymologically, it derives from the Latin cognoscere (to know), and conceptually, it dates back to ancient Greece, where   people began valuing art for its aesthetic merits, rather than for its   imagined superpowers to placate deities. By the Renaissance it was a commonplace to  value artworks for the skill they exhibited rather than the materials used. The  underlying shift then is from artwork to artist, and it follows that the  connoisseur's interest in `fine' art is an interest in the skills and practices  used.
A connoisseur, then, is generally thought of as a person of refined sensibility and discriminating taste. Assuming  that specific connoisseurs were genuinely in possession of special knowledge,  they could identify artists with an authoritative discrimination that all but  escaped the run-of-the-mill viewer. Connoisseurship has implied  secure standards of judgment. Although connoisseurship is a perfectly legitimate  method within art history, its occasional tendencies towards pretentiousness  have become a favorite target of popular writers and the media in general.
"After waning in the Middle Ages, it regained currency in the Renaissance with a market that included paintings and drawings. The 18th century was a Golden Age, as connoisseurship entered the English lexicon (in 1719 via painter -collector Jonathan Richardson as "connoissance") and developed into an intellectual discipline with philosophers like Voltaire penning elegant discourses. More than a century of fine-tuning ensued, with methodologies echoing forms of literary criticism: e.g., "legislative" (judgment based on a priori canons), "scientific" (judgment based on objective criteria), "expository" (explanation without judgment), and "impressionistic" (personal responses with or without judgment). Approaches ranged broadly from striving for scientific objectivity (Giovanni Morrelli’s morphological analysis) to those engaging in subjective appreciation (Anatole France’s "adventures of a soul among masterpieces").
"Though widely regarded far into the 20th century as essential for collecting, curating, and critiquing, connoisseurship suffered attacks early on. Enlightenment commentators worried that it was easily corrupted by market forces and unduly focused on establishing financial value, rather than on loftier artistic aspects (still true today). Such tendencies spurred protracted debate, but connoisseurship never withered until the 1960s, when champions of Marxism, Feminism, Relativism, Postmodernism, and Multiculturalism began to discredit it as elitist, sexist, unscientific, and irrelevant to socio-political-economic studies of art, among other harsh pejoratives. Today, connoisseurship is largely relegated to identifying valuable works (mostly by long-dead artists) in service of commodification, rather than art appreciation."
from: Carol Strone, "Reconceiving Connoisseurship", Fine Art Connoisseurship, Spring 2010. < http://www.eskff.com/uploads/Files/Carol_StroneReconceiving_Connoisseurship.pdf >
Click  here for an informative website on connoisseurship.
Perhaps one of the greatest failures of modern  connoisseurship is related to the Han van Meegeren case of false Vermeer's. In  1937, Abraham  Bredius (one of the most authoritative art historians and connoisseurs of  the time who had dedicated a great part of his life to the study of Vermeer) was  approached by a lawyer who claimed to be the trustee of a Dutch family estate in  order to have him look at a rather large painting of a Christ with his  Disciples. Shortly after having viewed the painting, the 83 year old art  historian wrote the Burlington Magazine, the "art bible" of the times: "It is a  wonderful moment in the life of a lover of art when he finds himself suddenly  confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master, untouched, on the  original canvas, and without any restoration, just as it left the painter's  studio! And what a picture! Neither the beautiful signature "I. V. M. in  monogram) nor the pointillès on the bread of the Christ is blessing, is necessary  to that we have a - I am inclined to say the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of  Delft...." No doubts were advanced since Bredius' opinion was taken as gospel in  the art world so much that he had been nick-named "the Pope."
The work  was by the hand of Han van Meegeren, a mediocre Dutch artist who had lived and  worked in almost complete obscurity. In the years preceding World War II, Van  Meegeren had falsified a number of Dutch masters including  Vermeer. Van  Meegeren  fakes passed unobserved (perhaps with a certain justification,  they had escaped serious scrutiny since they emerged during World War II) but  were nonetheless sold for dizzying prices. After the end of the war, in a state  of general incredulity, Van Meegeren claimed that he was the author of the Christ with his  Disciples in order to clear himself of Nazi  collaboration charges. One of the false Vermeer's which had been sold illegally  to the Nazi chief Hermann Göring had been traced to Van Meegeren. The entire world was shocked  by the trial which received international coverage.
The deep doubts concerning the international art  establishment raised by the Van Meegeren case resulted in years of a much needed  self-examination. Art historians, connoisseurs, museum directors and  unscrupulous dealers had all been involved. Contemporary methods of evaluating  the work master painters required a profound reconsideration. The idea that an  elite group of connoisseurs could determine the value of a work of art solely on  aesthetic criterion  alone was dealt a lasting blow.
Content
See also " meaning' ."
There is no clear consensus on what the content of a work of art is.  However, it usually refers to the meaning or message contained and  communicated by a work of art, including its emotional, intellectual, symbolic,  thematic, and narrative connotations.
For many years after Vermeer's "recovery" in the mid 1850s,   it was believed that the primary function of his art and that of 17th-century Dutch  painters art as well, was to reflect the daily experience of life of common  people. By the early decades of the 20th century with the rise of the modernist  school of painting, his work began to be appreciated  principally for their  abstract qualities which seemed to reflect the concerns of avante guard  contemporary painting.  In recent years, a great many studies have focused on  Vermeer's use of iconography in an  attempt to understand his art from the vantage point of his own  contemporaries. However, no general agreement has been reached in regards and  the question of the precise iconographical  meaning of his paintings remains  open.
Although there exists no supporting documented evidence  in regards, a number of scholars, including Robert Huerta and Mariët Westermann  have begun to systematically  relate Vermeer's art more specifically to the philosophical and scientific  ferment of  his times. Huerta  points out that the conceptual and methodological  links between the Delft painter Vermeer and his near neighbor and exact  contemporary, the microscopist Antony van  Leeuwenhoek . He argues that Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura parallels Van Leeuwenhoek’s pursuit of the "optical way," and embodies a profound philosophical connection between these investigators.  Vermeer’s informed observations enabled him to confront the same issues as other  natural philosophers regarding the interpretation of unfamiliar images presented  by instrumental systems (viz, the telescope, microscope, camera obscura).  Obviously Philip  Steadman's close examination of Vermeer's use of the  camera obscura has done much to support Huerta's ideas.
Westermann points the parallels between the most  systematic philosopher of human-awareness, René Descartes , the unparallel rate of literacy in the Dutch  republic, the proliferation of first person statements - private diaries,  journals, soul searching poems and letters - and the underlying vein of  self-awareness of Vermeer's sitters. In Westermann's words: "What all of his  writing and reading  women have in common ...is the capacity for absorption in a  text, and thus for independent thought. This mental ability is not merely  figured by the theme of writing and reading  or by averted gazes" but through  Vermeer's "thoughtful compositions" which "stand of the mental activity of his  actors."
Contraposto
Italian term, meaning to represent freedom of movement within a figure, as in  ancient Greek sculpture, the parts being in asymmetrical relationship to one  another, usually where the hips and legs twist in one direction, and the chest  and shoulders in another. Michelangelo who  drew inspiration from classical sculpture used contraposto to express mankind's inner struggle.  He  understood that when a figure's body was represented as moving in two directions  a evokes tension. The body represents instinctual impulses while the  head embodies the higher function of the mind and spirit. The effect is  particularly pronounced in Michelangelo's work since the entire body, which is  often represented nude, is portrayed.
Vermeer employed contraposto in the pose of Girl with a Pearl  Earring although in a very subdue manner. The young girl's head  turns towards the viewer while her body is directed in another. Vermeer's aim  was not to express the universal struggle between the flesh (the body) and the  spirit (the head), a theme with deep religious moral overtones, but a more  private one of the uncertain relation between the painter and his model. Through  the tension created by the opposing positions of the head and bust alone,  Vermeer has made us aware of the tension of the young girl's psyche.
Contour
A line around a shape in a work of art , its nature  depending on the artist's concept and intention. The problems of  rendering edges are fundamental in the art of pictorial representation.  Primitive painters almost universally made, as amateurs still make, their edges  too sharp. Their work, as a consequence, whatever its merit may be, looks hard.  In medieval painting, contours were initially regular, flat outlines; in the  course of the 14th century they acquired more sense of spatial effect, and  appear to be alternately more and less emphatic. Leonardo da  Vinci was perhaps the first painter to study edges systematically, making  the separation of his masses distinct where it appears sharp; soft, where in  nature it looked blurry and indeterminate (see sfumato ).  Later, the effect of contour in  painting and graphic art became particularly important to artistic movements in  which line and draughtsmanship was a prominent factor.
During  the course of Vermeer's pictorial evolution, he  became more concerned with the qualities of contour and edge. In his first  interiors most of the edges are uniformly sharp, even to the point of  brittleness. This trait is one that commonly accompanies an enthusiasm for  artificial perspective .  However, in his successive works, edges are more varied, no doubt, consequence  of intense observation either with or without the aid of the camera obscura . In the  mid 1660s, contours  become  suffused  especially in the deeply shadowed  areas where all detail is lost. In the very late years, the artist returns to sharp contours and highly  contrasted lighting effects.
Perhaps the most startling use of edge to convey material  quality is found in the string of pearls which lie on the table of  the Woman Holding  a Balance .  In this painting, Vermeer demonstrates his ability in  varying the quality of contours according to the nature of the objects  portrayed.  If carefully observed, the outer edges of the pearls  have barely been delimited. Only the globular forms of the highlights of  light pigment tell us where each pearl is located. The lack of contour allows each pearl to blend in with its surroundings and suggests  the its characteristic  transparency whereas the globular  highlights inform us of its   reflective quality and  spherical form.
Contrast
Generally, the exhibition of difference or juxtaposition of dissimilar  elements in a work of art, as in the contrast of colors  and textures. Tonal contrast is simply the difference between the light and dark  areas in a painting. The greater the difference the more attention the area  attracts.  Contrast is a very effective tool for creating interest in specific  areas of a composition . High contrast can draw  attention to an area, while low contrast discourages such attention.
Contrast cannot exist alone. It is a quality derived from a comparison  between two or more other elements, whether they are colors, lines, forms, values , or any combination thereof. Contrast  is a quality that defines the relationship any one element has with any other  element in a composition.
Core Shadow
A core shadow, sometimes called body shadow or mass shadow, is the area of an illuminated object that is fully  turned away from the light source, on which light is cast from a single direction.  If there is no reflected light,  everything beyond the core-shadow is uniformly dark. Some define the core  shadow as the line which divides  the  illuminated side of the object for its shadowed side.
"In the nineteenth century, the core shadow was called the "bedbug line," giving us a peek into the living conditions of art students who  knew all too well that bedbugs hated light and would scurry along the edges of  the shadows."20
Copying
Copying and other forms of artistic imitation and emulation  were practiced since the birth of western art. Much of our knowledge of Greek sculpture  is derived from Roman copies.
In the past, the practice of copying was a central component  in the methods of training painters. Copying began at the very beginning of an  apprentice’s training and often lasted long after he had reached mastery.  Rubens continued the practice into his advanced years and Ingres was still  studying on the day he died. Philip IV gave Rubens extraordinary permission to  make scale copies of Titian paintings in the Royal collection that had to be  taken off the walls and brought to a temporary studio set up for the purpose. "Copying",  wrote Delacroix, "herein lay the education of most of the great masters." Copying  not only improves technical skills but allows the copier to "get inside the head" of the artist he is  copying.
Apprentices made copies of drawings, prints and paintings by  admired masters, known as drawing "from the flat." Afterwards he drew "from the  round," or from plaster casts and only when he had mastered both,  could he draw from the live figure.
Producing copies was an important part of a successful  painters’ workshop activity. At least 22 copies were kept by Rubens in his  studio until his death: some were those mostly by Rubens, some executed by  workshop assistants and retouched by Rubens, and some executed entirely by  assistants. The Dutch painter Michiel van Mierevelt , perhaps without equal,  produced around 5,000 portraits over a fifty-year period, of which over 600  survive. It has been calculated that fifty percent of his oeuvre consisted of  copies of famous and important people, such as the portrait of Prince Maurits,  evidently in great public demand.  Rembrandt, whose oeuvre has plagued art  historians and collectors with doubts, had as many as  forty apprentices, of whom he signed many of  their copies.
Although copying is frowned upon in most art institutions today,  it is slowly been revived in a growing number of traditionalist ateliers.
Craquelure - Craquelure
Craquelure (French: Craquelure, Italian: crettatura) is the  fine pattern of dense "cracking" formed on the surface of materials.  The term is most often used to refer to ceramics and paintings. Normally,  craquelure is formed by the aging of paints. It can be used to determine the  age of paintings and to detect art forgery, because craquelure is a hard-to-forge  signature of authenticity.
Authentic paint craquelure occurs because paint dries and  becomes less flexible as it ages and shrinks. Cracks caused by stretching or  slackening the canvas are quite different from cracks due to other factors,  such as drying and ageing of the paint. The paint cracks when the stress upon  it is greater than the breaking stress point of the paint layer and the paint  will crack approximately at right-angles to the direction of the stress,  relieving that stress. The stress at the corners is more than double that of  the center. There appear to be distinct French, Italian and Dutch "styles" of craquelure.
Craquelure is almost impossible to accurately reproduce  artificially in a particular pattern, although there are some methods such as  baking or finishing of a painting wherein this is attempted. These methods,  however, can get a crack at most uniform in appearance, while genuine  craquelure displays irregular patterns of cracks.
"A crack pattern is not an intentional part of Old Master  paintings, but develops over time as the painting responds to its environment  (mainly to changes in relative humidity). Of course, a painting’s environment  changes in many different ways as it is displayed, stored, bought and sold,  restored, etc. and we cannot know the painting’s exact environmental history  over a number of centuries. The analysis of the crack pattern assumes that  exact knowledge of a painting’s environmental history is un-necessary, it  merely assumes that a painting has a predisposition to crack and that its  predisposition will be more fully developed under some conditions and less  fully developed under other conditions. The exact details of environmental  history may therefore determine the extent of cracking, but not the  predisposition to crack in a particular pattern."21
"The fine network of cracks usually goes unnoticed, except  in light passages such as flesh or sky. Even when visually obvious, the network  is often overlooked because it is perceived to have little to do with what the  artist intended to depict – we subconsciously filter it as irrelevant. Yet, as  the detail of light transmitted through a portrait on canvas shows, the crack  network can be a surprisingly high proportion of the painted area.
"If we assume that the cracks across a painting are a uniform colour then   they will have a large effect where they cross contrasting paint   passages and a negligible effect where they cross paint passages of a   similar colour. The presence of crack networks therefore influences the   tonal organization of paintings, effectively reducing their dynamic   range."22
Critic
One who analyses, evaluates, or expresses an opinion on a work of art , from a cluster of Greek words meaning to decide, to  discern, to judge. Academic scholars, primarily engaged in the historical study  of visual arts, have generally seemed to maintain a tacit distinction between  themselves and critics, whom they see as engaged in journalistic art  appreciation, subjective impressionism, and other types of unreflective  criticism.
Criticism
The analysis, evaluation, interpretation, and study of works of art . Although it is true that disapproving remarks are sometimes  made, it is a common mistake to assume that "criticism" simply means negative  commentary and that to be critical means to be cynical, derogatory and  insulting.
The following, which briefly traces the birth of the modern art criticism, is drawn  from:
Gerrit Verhoeven. "Mastering the Connoisseur's Eye: Paintings, Criticism, and the Canon in Dutch and Flemish Travel Culture, 1600-1750." Eighteenth-Century Studies 46.1 (2012):pp. 29-56. Project MUSE. Web. 3 Jan. 2013. < http://muse.jhu.edu/ >
In the late 17th century books on art criticism and  aesthetic theory had flooded the market, ranging from Roger de Piles’s Dissertation sur les ouvrages des plus fameux peintres (Paris 1681), Gérard de  Lairesse’s Groot Schilder-boeck (Amsterdam 1707), and Dubois de Saint-Gelais’s descriptions of Parisian  art treasures, to reprints of older manuals by Giorgio Vasari and Karel van  Mander.
In 1728, the English painter, collector, and writer Jonathan  Richardson Sr. (1667-1745) and his son, wrote Le traité de la peinture, a  manual which discussed theory of art criticism and connoisseurship, along with  a detailed inventory of the most outstanding paintings, sculptures, and  architecture in Europe, as drawn up by Richardson Jr. during his Grand Tour  to Italy in the early 1720’s. Looking with a  trained eye, Richardson Jr. had listed hundreds of masterpieces worth seeing  and meticulously weighed pros and cons in design, composition, brush  techniques, and chiaroscuro. Although Richardson’s traité was far from unique,  it soon became the benchmark criteria for assessing the quality of paintings  (balanced composition, lofty style, powerful brushstrokes, lively colouring)  well underway by the eighteenth century, but a clearly defined canon of  favorite masters, schools,subjects and periods had also begun to take shape.
What was novel and trail-blazing in Richardson’s work, however, was his idea that  the stanza of art criticism, rather than being restricted to erudite painters,  royal collectors, and aesthetic quibblers, could in fact be mastered by lay  connoisseurs and bourgeois art lovers. Written in a comprehensible style, his  book offered training for this growing multitude of  do-it-yourself  experts.
Richardson’s  textbook thus marks a broader social phenomenon, in which dilettanti and  dabblers slowly but surely entered the domain of art criticism, thereby  founding a public opinion based upon the most exceptional masterpieces and  (re)shaping the highbrow canon to ‘popular’ bourgeois taste. During the eighteenth  century this new ideal of the amateur-connoisseur resonated in a boom of  auction rooms and art galleries, concert halls, music magazines, painting and  literature, and private fine arts societies.
Group of relatively small, often anecdotal, paintings of everyday life, made in Rome in the mid-17th century. The word derives from the nickname "Il Bamboccio" ("Large Baby"), applied to the physically malformed Dutch painter Pieter van Laer (1592/95-1642). Generally regarded as the originator of the style and its most important exponent, van Laer arrived in Rome from Haarlem about 1625 and was soon well known for paintings in which his Netherlandish interest in the picturesque was combined with the pictorial cohesiveness of Caravaggio's dramatic tenebrist lighting. Because van Laer and his followers depicted scenes of the Roman lower classes in a humorous or even grotesque fashion, their works were condemned by both court critics and the leading painters of the classicist-idealist school as indecorous and ridiculous. The painter Salvator Rosa was particularly savage in his comments about the later followers of the style, whom he criticized for painting "baggy pants, beggars in rags, and abject filthy things." The Bamboccianti (painters of Bambocciati) influenced such Dutch genre painters as Adriaen Brouwer and Adriaen van Ostade. (from the excellent online art resource the Web Gallery of Art,< http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/welcome.html >
Arie Wallert and Willem de Ridder, "The Materials and Methods of Michael  Sweerts," in Michael Sweerts (1618-1664)  by Guido Jansen and Peter C. Sutton, Zwolle, 2000, p.  373
Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, art & artISTS: the Renaissance and the Rise of the Artist (website) < http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/renaissance.html >
John Michael Montias, "The Guild of Saint Luke in 17th-cnetury Delft and the economic status of artists and artisans", Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 9(2): p. 104.
Shelley, James, "The Concept of the Aesthetic", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), < http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/aesthetic-concept/ >
Dutch and Flemish Painting of the 16th- and 17 Centuries, National Gallery of Art. < http://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/dutch.shtm >
"The Allegory of the Catholic Faith", Metropolitan Museum of Art (website). < http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/32.100.18 >
Daneil Arasse, "Vermeer's Private Allegories", in Vermeer Studies , New  Haven and London, 1998.
Mark  Lesney, "Analyzing artistry. Spectroscopy is indispensable in examining  the provenance of artifacts and paintings", Today's Chemist at Work websie, 2002 < http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/tcaw/11/i03/html/03lesney.html >
Lydia  Thompson, "Authentication and the Art Market", Thompson and Martinez Fine Art  Appraisals website,  Posted on August 2,  2012 < http://thompsonandmartinez.com/authentication-and-the-art-market/ >
Ronald  D. Spencer, "How Decisions on the Authenticity of Visual Art are made by Courts." http://apps.americanbar. org THURS345500SPENCER_72.doc
Taylor, Paul, "Vermeer, Lairesse and Composition," Hofstede de Groot-lezing, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische  Documentatie, The Hague. 2010, p. 7.
Mariët Westermann, "Vermeer and the Interior Imagination", in Vermeer and the Dutch Interior, Ed. Alejandro Vergara, Madrid, 2003,  p. 229.
Hume, D., 1738/1911, Treatise of Human Nature, A. D. Lindsay (ed.), London: Dent. Bk III, part I, Sect. 1, p. 177; Bk I, IV, IV, p. 216.
Palmer, S. K., 1999, Vision Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 95.
Maxwell, J. C., 1890/1970, "On Colour Vision", in D. L. MacAdam, (ed.), Sources of Color Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press., p. 75.
Eugene Clinton Elliott, "On the Understanding of Color in Painting", in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Jun., 1958), pp. 453-470.
Arthur Wheelock, Colour Symbolism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting", in The Learned Eye, Regarding Art, Theory, and the Artist's Reputation, Ed.  Marieke van den Doel, et. al., Chicago, 2005.
Roy Ashok and Jo Kirby, "Rembrandt’s Palette", Art in the Making: Rembrandt. Eds. David Bomford et al. New Haven, 2006, pp. 12-13.
Juliette Aristedes, Classical Painting Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice, 2008, p. 64.
Spike Bucklow, "The Description and Classification of Craquelure," in  Studies in Conservation, Vol. 44, No. 4 (1999), pp. 233-244.
Spike  Bucklow, "The effect of cracks on the perception of paintings", 1996. < http://www-hki.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/research/hist/cracks.html >