Vermeer, unedited
 

Of course it's important to see it the way the artist intended it. And of course I'm glad it was carefully researched and lovingly restored and all that.

But I've still gotta say, compositionally speaking, I really prefer the version that was simplified decades after the artist's death.

A lot.

If that's the bus to Hell, save me a seat.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/...upid-painting/

I find the Cupid slightly terrifying!
F.

LOL to both, Julie and Fliss..

Here's a link from your link, Julie:

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/...cealed-spaces/

My grandfather had two oil portraits (his parents) and, when he took them for a cleaning, they both had flowers at the bottom, which didn't show before. Dust has a strange and perfect way to settle, it seems. I know this is different.

The link I added is about a painter who 'erases' humans from famous paintings.

Thanks for sharing,
~mignon

The Cupid was a concession to the residual overdone bad taste of the late Renaissance. Totally needless! Vermeer's second thoughts were Best Thoughts. Any point made by the Cupid, however valid, is vastly secondary to the understatement of the pre-"cleaning" version. Vermeer would be properly and exquisitely pissed.

Word-Bird's poetry prompt
A poem in which the ghost of Vermeer expresses his disapproval concerning the removal of the Cupid.

Hola, mignon; I enjoyed that article. I like to think that, in all instances, alien abduction occurred!
F.

Oh, what an interesting link. I quite like both. They just say different things about the girl. Isn't it interesting, how we read things, paintings as palimpsests, the idea of authorial intention. I love it.

Anyway, for my contribution, here are some uncovered paintings, from Hereford, late seventeenth century, vernacular art (but possibly more do-able as wall coverings than eerie cupids). I believe they were hidden under white plaster for a fair while, although I could be wrong.

http://sarah-janecrowson.com/wp-cont...uses-hford.jpg

(apologies for awful snapshots - there are no photos of these on the web I could find to link to so you got mine instead)

I ought to say that artistically I agree with Julie, and I don't care what the scholars think or say. I chose to not accept their verdict. This is often my way with Greek and Roman poems. If, after sufficient thought, I think their arguments, however fine spun, are inconclusive or just wrong, I will disagree. That's me.

I doubt that there is sufficient forensic evidence that Vermeer did not paint over the Cupid himself unless there is secure documentation that someone else did so. If that exists, so much the worse for art.

Show me the money.

Allen, I don't think there's anything unusual about finding Greek and Roman poems a bit bonkers sometimes, lol. I don't have any money for you, just the note that Cupid has always scared me a bit! F.

I read the text accompanying the visuals. And my reaction remains the same. Vermeer ? That cupid is as typical of Vermeer as a VW Beetle is typical of garden bugs. Something is very wrong in claiming that Vermeer meant that cupid to be there, ever!

But if Vermeer meant for it to be painted over, why was it there in the first place? Do you suppose Vermeer did it and changed his mind? If not, what happened? Did one of his apprentices go rogue and paint in the cupid when Vermeer wasn't looking?

But paintings were never intended for galleries; they were painted for patrons. If someone asked Vermeer to put in a putto, he'd probably have done it and if someone later offered to buy the picture if the babe were disappeared, someone else would probably have made it so.

That’s good, Ann. I’ve always respected your mind and control of facts. My strong feeling, as I’ve mentioned, is that the cupid is alien to Vermeer’s sensibility. I have nothing against foreskins or cupids, but if anyone is interested in Vermeer as Vermeer the artist, that second-rate cartoon should disappear again.

Psst...Allen...Vermeer seems to have put the same Cupid painting in the background of three other paintings:

1. A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal (The National Gallery, London), whose Google Arts and Culture webpage says:

2. Girl Interrupted at Her Music (The Frick Collection, New York), whose Wikipedia entry says:

3. A Maid Asleep (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), whose entry in The Complete Interactive Vermeer Catalogue says:

Apparently that last sentence will need a bit of updating, since the restorers of Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window contend that differences in the layer of microscopic dust between the layers of paint and varnish in various areas indicate that the Cupid painting could not have been painted over during Vermeer's lifetime.

Anything to sell a piece of sailcloth to a rich boob. “You want egg in that beer, Mynheer? Will that be poached or hard boiled? I can do an omelette even. Costs more.”

Julie, this is fascinating. I don't know enough about Vermeer's total oeuvre to do more than speculate but that doesn't stop me doing so. I note that it's a different representation of Cupid in each case so it's more than just copying a particular painting. I still wonder where the eventual buyer fits in.

I'm not a particular admirer of Vermeer, apart from one painting that I saw for the first time low down on a wall in the Rijksmuseum. It stopped me in my tracks. I didn't even know who painted it - I'd just come out of a roomful of Vermeers and thought it must be someone else's - Hobbema perhaps, on a very good day...

So I'll go back and peer again at The Little Street, looking for traces of Cupid.

Thanks Ann, but awwright, couldn’t painters who paint for money suffer from cupidity? — Maybe everything I love is wrong! Stand back, I hope a metanoia isn’t afoot! Let’s demote Vermeer for being whatever he was: venal, penile, senile in utero, exhume the art. Burn Vermeer as a MCP. Oh, sweet Vermeer. Shakespeare was a dog too.

Actually, to my eye, the Woman at Virginal painting makes huge sense.

This is me ranting: But I’m So glad that none of these Cupids have theriomorphic horns. Yick.

I’m about to shut up.