Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

INTRODUCTION
Chapter 6: Vermeer’s Women in Film and Fiction:
Ekphrasis and Gendered Structures of Vision
Both the United States and Europe have witnessed a literal Vermeer craze
in recent film and fiction. To mention some of the most notable, Jon Jost’s film
All the Vermeers in New York (1991), the novels by John Bayley, Girl in the Red
Hat (1998), Susan Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue (1999), Tracy Chevalier’s
Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999), Catherine Weber’s The Music Lesson (2002),
and Luigi Guarnieri’s La doppia vita di Vermeer (2004), as well as the poetry
collections by Marylin Chandler McEntrye, In Quiet Life (2000) and Carlos
Pujol’s La pared amarilla (2002), all deal with Vermeer paintings.
Perhaps one of the reasons why this seventeenth-century Dutch artist
fascinates so many people is because so little is known about his life and so few
of his works exist, leaving ample room for fictional speculation. 200 Moreover,
Vermeer often depicts his subjects – mostly women – in a moment of quietness or
intimacy, so that the viewer is at once drawn in and kept out of their privacy.
Critics have often remarked upon the silence and mystery surrounding Vermeer’s
canvases. Yet, these silences, as Brian J. Wolf has proposed, can be seen as an
expression of the socio-cultural identity of the Dutch upper bourgeoisie, who
200 According to John Nash, “of the twenty-nine works documented in Vermeer’s lifetime,
twenty-two appear to survive today, seven seem to be lost. Eight further, undocumented works are
today universally accepted as genuine. […] Currently there is consensus among Vermeer scholars
on not more than thirty-one works. Of these, seven have chequered histories.” See John Nash,
Vermeer (London: Scala Books; Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1991), 26. Other scholars set the
number at thirty-five or thirty-six works. The two paintings whose authenticity is the most
disputed are Girl with a Flute and Girl with a Red Hat.
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