← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Full Bio: Johannes Vermeer's Biggest Patron, and his Mother-in-Law
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart and we wanted to say a quick congratulations to everyone who received a Tony nomination today, especially the folks who have stopped by. All of It. That includes the cast and crew from the Rocky Horror Show, Punch, Fallen Angels, Becky Shaw, Two Strangers, Carrie Craig, Across New York and many others. We'll be posting photos and videos from nominees on our Instagram all day, so check that out when you have a chance@ Olive NYC. And of course, congratulations to our Broadway on the Radio guests from Chess and Ragtime and our upcoming guest from Cats, the Jellicle Ball, which earned nine nominations. We'll have Cats here for our next Broadway on the Radio event that's happening on May 21st featuring its newly minted Tony nominated directors, choreographers and Andre de Shields. Go to wnyc.orgcats to get your tickets before they're sold out for that special event. Now that's in the future. Let's keep keep things going for another installment of Full Bio. Full Bio is our book series where we spend time with the author of a deeply researched biography to get a fuller understanding of the subject. Our guest is the author of the book Vermeer A Life Lost and Found Andrew Graham Dixon Johannes vermeer was the 17th century Dutch masters whose paintings are in museums around the world. The Louvre, the Met, the Rijksmuseum and the National Gallery, to name a few. There's one that's missing the concert because it was stolen from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. Most of his 36ish paintings were painted for one family, the Van Ruven family who became his patrons, maybe even his friends. Their support was needed because Vermeer had a wife who came from a wealthy family. Katharina married Vermeer for love, but her mother Maria, tolerated the marriage barely, and used her money to influence it and their children. Let's get into it with Andrew Graham Dixon, author of Vermeer A Life Lost and Found. What was Vermeer's life like when he met his wife? I think it's Katharina.
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Andrew Graham Dixon
He was young, he was 20 when he met Katarina. Katarina is the daughter of one of the richest women in Delft A lady called Maria Tinnes, who lives in a place called Papist's Corner, which is the neighbor where the neighborhood of the Catholics. She's a Jesuit, and Vermeer is a dissenting Protestant, a member of the Remonstrant movement, quite possibly an even more radical member of the Collegiate movement. And she's clearly not happy that her daughter is going to marry him because he's got no money. He's the son of an innkeeper, after all. And he cleaves to the wrong faith, because it seems that Maria Tins is quite a militant Catholic. She's a Jesuit, and she entertains people from the Jesuit missions in her house. And people in the Jesuit missions have the secret dream of one day Spain or France will rule the Netherlands, and all of the Protestants who live there will have to be converted to Catholicism. So, you know, she's not a particularly tolerant religious person. The key note of Remonstrantism is that you're deeply, deeply tolerant. Remonstrants are, for example, really happy that Jews should live peacefully and be allowed to live peacefully in the Netherlands. They are perfectly happy for Catholics to live peacefully in the Netherlands. The problem is that some of these other groups are not so tolerant of them. But it's entirely within character for Vermeer as a Remonstrant to fall in love with Katarina, a Catholic. And I suspect. I can't prove it, but I suspect that Katharina, who had this rather domineering mother, a real matriarch figure, who clearly had her own very definite views about things. I think Caterina may have rebelled against her mother and gone to some of these religious meetings that were held by the Remonstrance and the Collegiates, who gave a great deal of power to women. Their religious meetings were the only religious meetings where women were allowed to speak, where their voices were heard. And so a feisty, as I see her, independent young woman like Katarina might well have gone to those meetings, might well have met Vermeer at those meetings. She certainly fell in love with him. There's evidence to suggest that she was, in effect, blackmailing her mother to give her permission for the marriage to take place by moving into the Mechlin Inn, not living in sin with him, but living in his mother's inn with him, almost holding her mother hostage until she would agree to the marriage. And Maria Tinnes had herself had a really brutal life. Her husband had been awful to her. He seems to have had some kind of psychotic tendencies and was very violent to her. And, you know, did Terrible things like beat her when she was pregnant, so that she miscarried. So she's already been divorced. Her son, she's only got one son. Her beloved daughter has died of the plague. Her son is alienated from her. So Katharina's the only person she has left in her life. And, you know, you can feel that. Well, there's this document which I quote in my book, where Maria says, well, I won't. I won't approve of the marriage. I won't approve of the marriage, but I won't stand in its way. And the two witnesses both say to the notary, she said this three times, she said this three times. So, you know, I think you have quite a strong sense there of the dynamic.
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Interviewer
It's interesting. What did Vermeer compromise on in this marriage, whether it was for Katharina or whether it was for her mother?
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Andrew Graham Dixon
Well, we haven't talked about the singularity of Vermeer, the thing that makes him so extraordinary. So I probably better explain that, which is that he makes friends with a very rich remonstrant couple called Peter and Maria, who live in the center of Delft. And he makes a deal with them very early in his career, because he's clearly a deeply religious man himself, yet he makes no attempt ever in his life to become famous, to become rich, to become known. He paints all of his pictures. There's no example like it in the whole history of Western art where a great artist has painted all their pictures, bar a tiny handful for this one couple. Now, the problem with that as an approach is that the couple are prepared to pay him, but not a huge amount of money. So he's effectively painting for what he believes, painting for what they believe. He's creating something deeply beautiful, a series of 22 pictures for one house that is also like a church. The other side of that bargain is that he'll never make a lot of money. And his wife, who's come from this very troubled background, she clearly wants to have lots and lots of children, because she does. She has 14 children. So he's got no money. He's got a wife who wants to have many children, and he seems to love her very much and is very happy for her to have lots of children. But something has to give. And what has to give is that he has to accept that his mother in law will pay for everything. She'll pay for all the bills, she's got loads of money, there's no problem. But it means that he has far less power and authority in his own household than a husband would normally have in a 17th century Dutch household. And this leads to things that I imagine he can't have been particularly happy with as a pacifist tolerationist, someone who is deeply open minded and full of love. You know, that his mother in law should send, for example, his son and namesake Johannes to the Jesuit school. But I think that's the bargain. She's allowed to choose their education, she's allowed to send them to Jesuit school, and he'll put up with that as long as she pays for everything.
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Interviewer
So Maria used her wealth to influence Vermeer and Catherina and all their children?
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Andrew Graham Dixon
I think so. And she keeps him dangling to an extent, because we know one of my favorite characters in the book, I hope you remember him, is Hendrik van Boughten, who is Vermeer's baker. And Vermeer owes Mr. Van Boughten the largest bread bill that archival historians have ever discovered. It amounts to about a quarter of a million dollars in bread by the time, in modern money, by the time Vermeer passes away. So it's clear that Maria, his mother in law, sort of, she paid the bills, but she keeps in waiting the bread bill. Oh, well, you know, maybe I haven't quite got the money for that now. And this Mr. Van Boughton, who happens to be bakers, were very, very rich, actually. They did very well. They were very clever. Anyway, they manipulated grain prices and did very well. So bakers are not sort of, you know, a baker is not a poor person at that time. So this chap had lots and lots of money and he clearly was prepared to cut Vermeer a deal. He got three paintings out of him in the end.
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Interviewer
We're speaking with Andrew Graham Dixon. He's the author of Vermeer A Life Lost and Found. It's our choice. For full bio, I want to go back and talk about his patrons. You describe it as the arrangement and in your book you write a turning point in Vermeer's life was on 30 November 1657, when he owned. Is it Pietra Reuven? Am I saying it right? Peter, Peter, Peter.
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Andrew Graham Dixon
Peter Van Rauven.
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Interviewer
Thank you, Peter Van Rauven. He owed him money and he ultimately Vermeer became. They became his patrons. He painted for them, as you said. He painted all of these paintings for them. Would you explain their difference in social status so that our audience understands how this worked?
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Andrew Graham Dixon
Sure. Well, Vermeer, as you know by now, he's the son of an innkeeper and the innkeeper's the son of a tailor. And Vermeer is clearly pretty well educated, but he's not well off. He's not rich. Whereas Peter and Maria, she has a lot of money just from coming from a rich family, and he also is from a wealthy family who've made their money in the Delft brewing business. But very interestingly, and this is one of the key things I think I discovered in my research, very interestingly, there's a long history of Peter, in particular his family and Vermeer's family being part of the same circuit. So while Vermeer. This is why I had to rewrite the start of my book, because I found that while Vermeer's father and the preacher who was the Remonstrant collegiate radical and Dichna were all hiding their Remonstrant beliefs and being. Having to be very, very careful not to let anyone know what they believed. Peter's father and grandfather were being arrested at exactly the same time in their house, which is only like 200 yards away. Everyone lives next to everyone else in Delft. It's tiny. It's almost like a block in modern Manhattan as a town. So they get arrested for sheltering a Remonstrant preacher who does them the disservice of dying while in their house. He has a stroke and he dies. And while they're thinking what to do, they put the body in the barn, the Maltings barn, where they prepare material for making beer. And one of the housemaids sees the body and screams. And the Calvinist authorities are alerted, and they come and they arrest them. And they don't put them in prison, but they fine them a huge amount of money, 500 guilders, which is enough to buy two houses in Delft at that time. So they've got this common background, and there's a lot of evidence. For example, when Vermeer's sister is about to die and she needs a witness because she needs to make a will very, very quickly. It's in the middle of the night. The notary is called in the middle of the night who turns up to help her make the will. And she's poor. She's, you know, she's not a rich woman. She's married to a frame maker. But Peter Van Raven turns up, you know, in the middle of the night to sign as a witness to her will. And that's very unusual. You know, that's like the mayor of the town going to the house of a shoemaker and helping them to make their will. You know, it's a big dispute. So the families have clearly very, very close. And the more I discover, I've even found things since I wrote my book, which I'm writing an afterword about now for the paperback edition, you know, I found more evidence of the proximity between the two families. So, yes, big disparity in wealth, but very, very close as people. And Maria, Peter's wife, even leaves Vermeer 500 guilders in her will, which is the only case in all of Western art history that we have, of a patron leaving a large amount of money to an artist in their will.
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Interviewer
It's interesting.
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Alison Stewart
I wanted to tell people that in
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Interviewer
the beginning of your book, there's a
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Alison Stewart
map of Delft and you can see how small it is and how close things were to each other. It's kind of interesting.
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Andrew Graham Dixon
Yeah, no, absolutely. I worked out the other day. I just come back from Delft, actually, and nothing that I took. I was taking a few people around to show them some of the places that I discovered had a bearing on Vermeer's story. And we noticed collectively that it's a 30 second walk from A to B and then a 40 second walk from B to C. Nothing seemed to be further than like 400 yards.
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Interviewer
I'm talking to Andrew Graham Dixon, the author of Vermeer A Life Lost and Found. It's our choice for full bio. In the Van Ruvens estate, they left their paintings.
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Alison Stewart
First of all, why were they sold off? Was this the norm?
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Andrew Graham Dixon
Well, when the Van Ravens. Basically what happened was Vermeer signed a deal, 1657, and from that point on, he paints all his pictures for Maria and Peter, and he's painting pictures that express their beliefs. So they're full of power and meaning for those people. They're full of their dreams and their ideals. They're paintings about peace, they're paintings about the rights of women to think about the important things in life, like God and how to be saved. You know, these paintings mean everything to them. And they. It's fascinating, actually, because he paints, you know, this great artist, the Sphinx of Delft, who's perhaps not quite so mysterious once you know this. He paints 22 pictures at least, maybe 23 even give with the lost ones for these two people. Mostly they're painted for Maria, I'm sure, because the subjects of the paintings are so overwhelmingly female. And it was the custom among women of the Collegiate and the Remonstrant faith to have meetings where mostly women attended. It was their chance, because in a regular church, even in A remonstrant church. It was a male priest that spoke and women who listened. But in their own patch, in this house where all the paintings are, you know, it's women. But what happened was that Those pictures, these 23 pictures, they stay together. They're always together. And they are then left by Peter and Maria to their only child, well, their only surviving child. They have two children that die very, very young. But they have only got one child who survives. She's called Magdalena van Ralven. You will know her because she's the girl with the pearl earring. That's a portrait of her. She inherits all these pictures and tragically, she only lives a few years. She falls passionately in love, as women do in 17th century Holland. And they. And rich women do what they want. It's the moral of the story, because Vermeer's wife does the same with him. She's very rich, Magdalena, she's got all the Vermeer paintings. She marries a penniless publisher, a printer, and sadly, I'm sure we don't know the cause of death, but she's 25. I think it's almost certainly childbirth. She dies and we know that she leaves all the paintings to him. And he's living in this tiny little princess shop. I was standing outside of it yesterday. It's on Great Market Square in Delft. It's a thin sliver of a little house. You would never know it. It's got the words the golden ABC on it. That was the prints. That was the printmaker's name for his shop and that we know a notary visited, you know, sadly, after she died. 1585, I think that's the date. It's in the spring. The notary walks off Great Market Square, you know, past all the people selling brandy and hot rolls. Get your hot rolls here, all that. He walks into this tiny little quiet front room and there he makes a note. He says, we've got 11 paintings by Vermeer and we've got three more by Vermeer all in one room. And he goes through the house and we've got four more and we got five more. In the end, they're all in this house. And what's fascinating about it is think of all those paintings together in one room. It's not. They've got an art collection. And the Vermeers are part of an art collection. No, this is a Vermeer collection. It's just his pictures. In essence, his very, very mean. There's nothing like it in the annals of art history. My explanation of who Vermeer was is very unusual, but it fits the facts perfectly because everything in the situation is very unusual.
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Alison Stewart
You also make the argument that he painted in pairs. Could you explain that argument to me?
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Andrew Graham Dixon
Well, it's very. Once you see, the thing is, once you. Vermeer has. Has essentially not been understood at all, really, in the past, because nobody ever knew this religious context. But once you know the religious context, everything. It's like. It's like everything changes. You suddenly realize, oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Of course. Of course. So. And one of the things is that they are painted in pairs. The most obvious example of this, which really in. Has been staring us in the face forever, is lot one and lot two in the auction of 1696. They were actually paired in the auction. They are two paintings called the Milkmaid. The titles are all modern and apocryphal. They're not Vermeer's titles at all. So there's a painting called the Milkmaid, and there's a painting called the Woman with the Balance. One is in the Rijksmuseum, and one is in Washington in the National Gallery of Art. They've never been hung together. No one has ever noticed before that they are a pair, but they are, without any doubt, a pair. The women are painted in the same scale in the same room. One of them is active. She's crumbling bread into milk to make bread pudding, which was the food you used to give to the poor. It was the food that Maria, Vermeer's patron and her husband used to give to the poor. They were part of the charity chamber. They left a lot of money to the orphans of war. In their will, they cared about charity. Whereas the other woman, the one with a balance, she is weighing something. And she behind her is a painting of the Last Judgment. So that tells us that, of course, what she's weighing is her soul. And these are the two expressions of remonstrant Christian life, and in many ways, traditional Christian life. Anyway, on the one hand, you have the vita activa, the active spiritual life, the lady making the bread. And on the other hand, you have the vita contemplativa, the contemplative spiritual life. It's the two aspects of what you want to be as a deeply devout woman. You want to be very charitable, and you want to really interrogate your conscience at the end of every day and make sure that it's absolutely spotless. And if anyone ever doubts that these two pictures are a pair, look about two foot up from the woman's head in either picture, and a few inches to the left and you'll see a nail in exactly the same place on that wall. And the nail, which Vermeer, incidentally, borrowed from Rembrandt, a portrait of a Mennonite preacher called Claus Anslow. The nail, as it does in that painting, symbolizes the fact that these people think all the time about Christ's crucifixion, about Christ as the great example of how to behave and how we will be saved.
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Alison Stewart
That was Andrew Graham Dixon, author of Vermeer A Life Lost and Found, Our choice for full bio tomorrow, our final installment, when we'll discuss Vermeer's work and why he died at just 43 years old.
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