Introducing an impetuous artist—and his studio
Although Johannes Vermeer is one of the most significant artists of the 17th century, much of the Dutch painter’s life and practice have remained a mystery. Until now.
The National Gallery has four paintings traditionally attributed to Vermeer. In 2020 and 2021, conservators, curators, and scientists took them into the conservation lab and used technical imaging to map the mineral elements in the artist’s pigments.
Seeing things hidden to the naked eye, they made some surprising new discoveries about Vermeer and his process.
Only about 35 paintings in the world are attributed to Vermeer. Now there is one fewer.
For nearly 50 years, scholars have questioned whether Vermeer actually painted Girl with a Flute. It was once thought to be a companion piece to Girl with the Red Hat because of their compositional similarities, nearly identical size, and similar wood panel supports. But the blocky brushwork and awkwardly positioned figure in Girl with a Flute have led many to doubt that the same artist painted both.
Over the last two years, National Gallery curators, conservators, and scientists have worked together to resolve this uncertainty. The team concluded that the artist who created Girl with a Flute was likely a studio associate of Vermeer’s—someone who understood the Dutch artist’s process but was unable to master it.
![Shown from the waist up, a young woman sits on the other side of the edge of a table, leaning toward us on one elbow in this vertical painting. She looks at us with dark brown eyes under faint, arched brows. She has pale skin with flushed cheeks, a long, rounded nose, and her ruby-red lips are parted. Her brown hair is tucked into a wide, conical hat with gray, pale yellow, and ash-brown vertical stripes. Light falls across her face from our right, so the hat casts a shadow over her eyes and on the far cheek, to our left. Light glints off of two teardrop-shaped pearl earrings. Her muted blue bodice has a few touches of topaz and sky blue create a brocade-like floral pattern. The bodice is trimmed with a wide band of white fur down the front and around the cuffs, which come down just beyond her elbows. A white kerchief tucked into the bodice covers her shoulders. She leans onto her left forearm, to our right, and that arm is close and parallel to the bottom edge of the composition. In that hand she holds a golden flute like a pencil, and her other hand rests against the edge of the table. She leans to our right so we can see the gold lion's head finial at the top of her wooden chair. The area behind her is painted with patches of harvest yellow, fawn brown, muted brick red, and parchment white to create a loosely patterned drapery that fills the background.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/1829584c-abf5-4c25-9977-8d13687a7406/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
![Shown from the elbows up, a young person with pale skin and brown hair wearing a wide, scarlet-red hat sits in front of a tapestry in this vertical portrait painting. She sits with her body facing our right in profile but she turns her face to look at or toward us with dark eyes. She has a rounded nose, rather flat cheeks, and a sliver of teeth is visible through parted coral-pink lips. The wide brim of the red hat seems to be made of a soft, almost feathery material, and it casts a shadow across her face. She wears a high-collared white garment that catches the light, a royal-blue, possibly velvet, robe or overcoat, and large, teardrop pearl earrings. Her arm runs along the bottom edge of the panel in front of two carved, wooden lion finials that could be the arm or back of the chair. The tapestry behind her is painted in tones of pale caramel brown and pine green. The painting has a soft, hazy look, and light glints with bright white specks off the pearl earrings, the tip of her nose, her lips, and the lion finials.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/b705a403-3496-42e8-abf5-a37e34c32198/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
The artist who painted Girl with a Flute did not have the precision or control we see in Vermeer’s Girl with the Red Hat. But analysis of the two paintings shows that they both use some of the same distinctive pigments, which suggests that they might have been made in the same studio.
Vermeer had a studio.
Until now, most scholars had never considered that Vermeer might have had pupils or studio assistants. Yet new technical evidence suggests just that.
Microanalysis of paint samples from Girl with a Flute and Girl with the Red Hat reveals striking similarities. In both paintings, we find green earth in the shadows on the women’s faces. Using this pigment for flesh-tone shadows was highly unusual in Dutch paintings—we haven’t seen it in works by any of Vermeer’s exact contemporaries.
The mystery artist who painted Girl with a Flute was familiar with Vermeer’s unique methods and materials, but unable to achieve his level of expertise. They may have been a pupil or apprentice in training, an amateur who paid Vermeer for lessons, a freelance painter hired on a project-by-project basis, or even a member of Vermeer’s family.
This exciting notion of a studio calls into question the long-held idea of Vermeer as a lone genius. On the contrary, he might have been a mentor and educator, training a future generation of artists.
Vermeer was more spontaneous than we thought.
Looking beneath the polished, controlled surfaces of his paintings reveals that he wasn’t always a painstakingly slow perfectionist. At times, we see an impetuous, even impatient artist.
For example, microscopic analysis of the paint layers beneath the surface of Woman Holding a Balance reveals that Vermeer began with a monochrome painted sketch. As we know from chemical imaging, he then quickly applied a bold underlayer to plot out forms, colors, and patterns of light.
Further imaging suggests that Vermeer added a copper-containing material to speed the drying of the black pigment so that he could proceed to the painting’s final stages.
Slide the bar to view chemical image
Vermeer sometimes painted over other paintings.
In the early 1970s, curators, conservators, and scientists learned from an X-ray image that Vermeer painted Girl with the Red Hat over a partially completed portrait of a man in a black hat, possibly painted by another artist.
Rather than scraping away the image or applying a covering layer, Vermeer rotated the panel 180 degrees and then painted directly over the portrait.
Over the last 20 years, advances in chemical imaging and image processing methods have allowed us to see the man in greater detail than ever before. In the absence of written records, these noninvasive techniques offer curators and scholars a glimpse at how Vermeer worked and clues about the people he depicted. One day, we may even be able to identify the black-hatted man—or the artist who painted him.
![Shown from the elbows up, a young person with pale skin and brown hair wearing a wide, scarlet-red hat sits in front of a tapestry in this vertical portrait painting. She sits with her body facing our right in profile but she turns her face to look at or toward us with dark eyes. She has a rounded nose, rather flat cheeks, and a sliver of teeth is visible through parted coral-pink lips. The wide brim of the red hat seems to be made of a soft, almost feathery material, and it casts a shadow across her face. She wears a high-collared white garment that catches the light, a royal-blue, possibly velvet, robe or overcoat, and large, teardrop pearl earrings. Her arm runs along the bottom edge of the panel in front of two carved, wooden lion finials that could be the arm or back of the chair. The tapestry behind her is painted in tones of pale caramel brown and pine green. The painting has a soft, hazy look, and light glints with bright white specks off the pearl earrings, the tip of her nose, her lips, and the lion finials.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/b705a403-3496-42e8-abf5-a37e34c32198/full/!900,/0/default.jpg)
![](/content/dam/ngaweb/stories/vermeers-perfectionism/2-underpainting-vermeer-rotated.jpg)
This digitally processed image shows the lead-containing pigments in the layer underneath the painting of Girl with the Red Hat.
Vermeer built up colors in mixtures, layers, and careful contrasts. He sometimes used several pigments of the same color.
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Looking closely at A Lady Writing reveals how Vermeer manipulated his materials and technique to achieve surface effects.
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A close-up view of the woman’s yellow jacket sleeve reveals Vermeer’s thoughtful use of fluid paints. Individual brushstrokes and dotted highlights spread and settled as they dried, creating a smooth surface.
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In this microscopic close-up, arrows point to cool taupe and pale yellow pigments applied in soft dotted strokes. By setting these fluid touches of paint together, Vermeer created subtle effects of light and shadow.
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Analysis of microscopic paint samples and maps obtained through imaging show that Vermeer used four different yellow pigments: two types of lead-tin yellow, yellow ochre, and likely yellow lake. The result is a rich, complex yellow, which Vermeer deliberately and thoughtfully composed.
Sometimes Vermeer changed his mind.
Technical imaging now allows us to visualize the artist’s working process more clearly and identify subtle changes.
Looking at A Lady Writing using infrared reflectance imaging spectroscopy—a technique that helps visually separate the pigments in a painting—reveals that Vermeer first painted the quill pen in a more vertical position to suggest active writing.
Using the same imaging, we see that, in the initial design for Woman Holding a Balance, Vermeer painted the scale at an angle. He later positioned it parallel to the picture plane, the two pans in perfect equilibrium.
![In this vertical painting, a woman stands near the corner of a dimly lit room, facing our left in profile and looking down at a balance she holds suspended in her right hand over a wooden table. She wears a peacock-blue velvet jacket with a white hood and fur lining, and a voluminous, mustard-yellow skirt. A window near the upper left corner is partially covered by a canary-yellow curtain. Light coming in through that window falls on the pale skin of the woman's face and hands, and highlights the white trim of her garment. Her left hand, closer to us, rests on the edge of the table near two open boxes, and a blue cloth is bunched at the back of the table to our left. Gold chains and pearl strands drape over the edge of one box. The woman stands in front of a framed painting. Much of the detail is lost in shadow but at the top center of the painting, a person surrounded by a golden halo floats in the sky with both arms raised, and is flanked by people encased within a bank of clouds. Nude people on the ground below in the painting, seen to either side of the woman, writhe, twist, and point upward.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/c948cf32-e6c7-41a0-a053-0ad0562960c4/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.97
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Misattributions are one thing. Fakes are another.
In the 1930s, during a climate of “Vermeer fever,” Andrew W. Mellon purchased two paintings—The Lacemaker and The Smiling Girl—that became part of the National Gallery’s collection in 1937.
![Painted almost entirely in tones of golden, mustard, and pale yellows, a young woman is shown from the lap up having turned to face us while making lace on a wooden frame in this vertical portrait painting. Her body faces our left almost in profile, but she turns her face to look at us with large, hazel-gray eyes. Her skin has a yellow cast but her smooth cheeks are lightly flushed, and her coral-red lips are parted. Her cinnamon-brown hair is parted down the middle and pulled back under a slate-blue ribbon, and she wears a teardrop-shaped earring in the ear we can see. Her burnt-orange shirt has pale yellow, wide cuffs at the elbow-length sleeves and a wide collar that rests across her chest and shoulders. The cuffs and collar are textured, suggesting fur. She rests her bare forearms against the wood frame in front of her, to our left, which is about the height of a table. A parchment-yellow cloth is draped over the frame, and she holds two short, cylindrical bobbins in her hands. Two more thread-wrapped bobbins hang to one side. The woman’s tea-brown skirt is partially hidden by a table situated closer to us, in the lower right corner of the painting. The table is covered with a patterned rug in maroon red, black, and gold. On the table are a low, wide pewter-gray bowl and a dark indigo-blue pillow with gold tassels and gold stripes near the seams. The wall behind the woman is honey yellow.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/b386f7e0-cacb-495a-9eef-3c96f5a6ce14/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Imitator of Johannes Vermeer, The Lacemaker, c. 1925, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.54
![](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/53b11b32-8e95-41d4-bb53-a55931823419/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Imitator of Johannes Vermeer, The Smiling Girl, c. 1925, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.55
Almost as soon as the paintings arrived, critics doubted their authenticity. The stiff, awkward figures; clumsy brushwork; and lack of attention to anatomical proportions were inconsistent with Vermeer’s work.
Our recent pigment analysis confirms that these suspicions were correct. It reveals the presence of synthetic ultramarine, a pigment that became available only in the 19th century, and lead chromate, a yellow pigment first produced in 1811.
The presumed forger, Theodorus van Wijngaarden, was born in 1874 (200 years after Vermeer’s death). He “aged” his paintings by drying them in the sun to expedite cracking; pressing the canvases against a beach ball; and tinting them to imitate the look of old, discolored varnish.
While we are missing many details about Vermeer’s life, the things we do know helps us understand this artist and his extraordinary works.
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