“Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks”
Dallas, Texas
dma.org
through June 25, 2023

The Dallas Museum of Art is the final stop for the touring exhibition “Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks.” On view are more than 130 works loaned by Antwerp’s Phoebus Foundation that mirror the extraordinary cultural developments that occurred in Flanders and Europe generally between 1400 and 1700.

Among the artists represented are Hans Memling, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jan Gossaert. The project was organized by the Denver Art Museum and curated by the foundation’s chief of staff, Katharina Van Cauteren.

Closer to Johannes Vermeer
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
rijksmuseum.nl/en/johannes-vermeer
through June 4, 2023

The Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands, is the only venue for the largest-ever retrospective of the brilliant painter Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), who lived and worked in the Dutch city of Delft. Amazingly, this is the first time the 225-year-old museum has dedicated a show to Vermeer, so it’s only fitting that it’s the largest one ever, presenting 28 of his known existing 37 works.

Vermeer is admired globally for his tranquil, introverted interior scenes, his unprecedented use of bright, colorful light, and his convincing illusionism. Unlike his contemporary Rembrandt, Vermeer left a remarkably small oeuvre, and luckily the Rijksmuseum owns four of the 37 works known, including The Milkmaid illustrated here.

Visitors to Amsterdam this season are enjoying the thrill of seeing so many together, especially since this is likely the last such gathering. The staggering insurance values and laborious planning of transport, security, and climate control — not to mention the difficulty of convincing owners to lend their treasures in the first place —make the mounting of such blockbusters extremely difficult today. (Just for example, Vienna’s Kunsthistoriches Museum opted out because its Vermeer appeared in six exhibitions from 2000 to 2008 and now is too fragile to travel.)

Works never before shown to the public in the Netherlands include the newly restored “Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window” from Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. And Americans should be proud that New York City’s Frick Collection has loaned all three of its Vermeers, marking the first time they have been shown together outside New York since their acquisition more than a century ago. Two of those paintings have undergone extensive examination at the Rijksmuseum. Alas, the Metropolitan Museum of Art across Fifth Avenue could not lend two of its four Vermeers due to conditions imposed by their original bequests. And of course Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum cannot lend its example because it was stolen in 1990.

For years now, a team of curators, conservators, and scientists from the Rijksmuseum have been collaborating closely with colleagues from the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the University of Antwerp to conduct research on Vermeer’s paintings. Their findings have shed light on the artist, offering new insights about his social position, living environment, and contact with fellow artists and citizens.

Modern technology has contributed profoundly to this progress. For example, intensive scanning of “The Milkmaid” has revealed two previously invisible objects: a jug holder and a fire basket. (Vermeer himself painted over them later.)  Experts can now also see some underpainting, and indeed underpaintings have also been detected in other works such as  “Woman Holding a Balance” at Washington’s National Gallery of Art (NGA).  The conventional understanding that Vermeer painted slowly and with great thought — without planning ahead — must therefore be revised. His end results may appear contemplative, but his working method was rigorous and far-sighted.

Unusually, a debate has emerged about the authenticity of another of Washington’s pictures, “Girl with a Flute”; the Rijksmuseum says it’s by the master, but the owner recently mounted a fascinating exhibition concluding that it was, in the words of NGA curator Marjorie E. Wieseman, produced by “an associate of Vermeer.” This, then, is one of three paintings that the Rijksmuseum-led team has “upgraded.” (The other two are in private collections.)

Gregor J.M. Weber, head of fine arts at the Rijksmuseum and co-curator of the exhibition, says, “Vermeer’s painting technique has always had something of a mystery.  How did he accomplish this miracle of light and color? With the discovery of a first sketch in black paint, we get a much better picture of his working method.”

His co-curator, Pieter Roelofs, the Rijksmuseum’s head of paintings and sculpture, adds, “The mystery of Vermeer, also known as the Sphinx of Delft, has clung to the artist for more than 150 years and has become part of his reputation. Connecting what we now know about his personal life with his work brings us closer to him.”

These two scholars have edited the 320-page catalogue that accompanies the show, and Weber has also produced a 168-page biography (Johannes Vermeer: Faith, Light and Reflection) that exposes the huge influence the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church exerted on the painter, who was raised Protestant before converting to Catholicism. Located next door to Vermeer’s home was a “hidden church” (Dutch Catholics could not then worship in the open), as well as a Catholic girls’ school where his daughters were educated. Weber has discovered a drawing by the church’s priest,  Isaac van der Mye, who was also a trained artist, that clearly reflects the characteristics of a camera obscura.

For those who can’t make it to Amsterdam, don’t worry: the Rijksmuseum’s digital experience,  “Closer to Johannes Vermeer,” is available on its website. There the British actor and art lover Stephen Fry explores the artist’s work and life, encouraging users to zoom in on tiny pigment particles via ultra-high-resolution photographs, or to compare recurrences across the paintings, such as pearls or the color ultramarine.

And for those who find themselves in The Hague during the exhibition’s run, don’t be surprised to find something fun on the wall at the Mauritshuis, where “Girl with a Pearl Earring” usually hangs. Now anyone can upload their own take on that famous painting to the museum’s website; the best ones will be displayed on a screen there and also on Instagram (@mygirlwithapearl).

San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas
samuseum.org
through May 21, 2023

The San Antonio Museum of Art has long been admired for its superb collection of antiquities, and now it has organized — and is the sole venue for — a groundbreaking exhibition, Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii. This is the first show mounted in the U.S. to explore landscape scenes as a striking (and little studied) form of ancient Roman art.

On view are more than 65 examples of wall paintings, sculptures, mosaics, cameo glass, and silver vessels created in Roman Italy between 100 BCE and AD 250. These works have been gathered from around the world — including Italy, France, and Germany — many coming to the U.S. for the very first time. Several years in the making, the project is grounded in original research undertaken by SAMA curator Jessica Powers.

Most of us readily recognize ancient Roman statues depicting gods and heroes, or scenes of battle and ritual carved into friezes or adorning pottery. But few of us have had the opportunity to experience Roman wall paintings in person, with their fluid, almost impressionistic brushwork and somewhat unexpected use of bird’s-eye perspective. Many offer an imaginary vision of a countryside dotted with seaside villas and rural shrines, where gods and mythological heroes mingle with mortal travelers, herdsmen, and worshippers.

Powers notes, “The artistic innovation of showing human figures within visually dominant natural settings began during the tumultuous final decades of the Roman Republic, as civil war in Italy resulted in changes in land ownership and territorial expansion continued in the eastern Mediterranean. In that context, landscape imagery was particularly resonant because of its portrayal of an idealized rustic past and its emphasis on traditional Roman religion. Roman authors recognized the novelty of these images, though the concept of a ‘landscape’ scene did not arise until the Renaissance.”

The exhibition has five thematic sections: Garden Landscapes, Coastal Views & Cultivated Landscapes, Sacred Landscapes, The Dangerous Landscapes of Myth, and Landscapes in the Tomb. Illustrated here is a coastal view that was excavated at the Villa San Marco near ancient Stabiae, just south of Pompeii. Depicting an elaborately constructed villa on a platform that extends into the sea, it celebrates the wealth and power of someone capable of paying for such a construction, as well as the engineering mastery of the Romans, whose buildings grew in structural complexity and sophistication.

Roman Landscapes is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated scholarly catalogue, and Trinity University (located nearby) has dedicated a springtime lecture series to the exhibition.