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The Music Lesson: Plato, Wheelock, and the Puzzle of the Blue Chair

Introduction

I shall argue that a full appreciation of Vermeer’s The Music Lesson requires contending

with at least three inherent enigmas or puzzles that have gone virtually unaddressed in the

literature. A spate of books and articles address the painting’s symbolism, its perspectival

structure, and Vermeer’s techniques, but scholars have not so much attended to enigmas inherent

in the picture’s subject-matter which provide previously overlooked clues as to the painting’s

meaning. Platonic philosophy, common to Vermeer’s era, combined with perspectival geometry

and other factors, will enable a determination as to where Vermeer was situated when he painted

The Music Lesson, and with that information what discoveries can be made about what is hidden

in the painting’s meaning. We must attempt to glean Vermeer’s psychology along with the

Platonism of the Renaissance to determine why he painted it in the striking manner he did, and

what the singular significance of the blue chair reveals to us. The illustration below warrants

careful study.

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The centrality of the chair is indispensable to understanding the painting.

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Description of The Music Lesson

The overall description of the painting varies little among scholars. Arthur Wheelock’s

account is representative. He writes: “On the far side of a sunlit room with double windows a

young woman stands to play on a clavacin. A man in elegant dress watches her and listens

intently. Both figures are quiet and statuesque, as though the music were measured and

restrained.”1 The translation of the Latin inscription on the clavichord reads: “Music is a

companion in pleasure and a balm in sorrow.”

He proceeds by describing the objects in the room as fundamentally patterns of color and

shape as well as the painstaking meticulousness of Vermeer’s technique. Wheelock observes that
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“Vermeer calculated his compositional elements every bit as carefully as did Mondrian.”

Accordingly, the contents of the picture “have all been painstakingly planned. Minor adjustments

in the shape of objects clearly testify to the artists care about precision.” (p. 101) 2

Shaw-Taylor and Buvelot add to that description by noting that: … “The figures are placed

at the back of the room and the view of both is interrupted…and that by the most generous

measure they occupy just a sixth of the painted surface…...” These authors call the painting

‘enigmatic,’ and comment: … “There is something especially fascinating about a painting that

does not try to ingratiate or explain itself.”3 Or, in other words, one that poses a puzzle. Indeed, it

poses several puzzles, many of which can be addressed by considering where Vermeer sat while

painting The Music Lesson.

The mirror hanging at the center of the wall displaying not only the face of the young

woman but Vermeer’s easel as well, commands the attention of virtually all Vermeer scholars

and viewers. Wheelock believes that “The glimpse of an easel in the mirror reveals that the

whole image is an artifice, depicting what we desire but cannot embrace, like the woman’s

reflection.”4 And, as is frequently noted, Liedke proceeds to recount how the objects in the

foreground serve as barriers to both Vermeer as well as to us, the observers, pinioned at a

distance. So too do the table and blue chair which Wheelock submits “nestled” the two figures

who exist in “a private world.”5 Nicholson Writes: “Hemmed in between the lid of the virginal

and the knife edge of the picture, the man is permitted no freedom of movement.”6 This

interpretation accords with the subject of the second picture on the wall which is two fifths of a

version of a “Roman Charity” subject in which Cimon’s daughter Pero secretly breast feeds her

shackled father. The subject here is generally taken to mean captivity (which readily resolves

into captivation). The listener is captivated by the woman.

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Jelley provides us with an inclusive description which also emphasizes puzzling aspects of

the painting which presage my argument:

At first sight The Music Lesson seems strangely put together. If you were going to

make a picture of a musical ensemble you might make the people the main

feature; and not leave them marooned behind a jumble of objects. We are kept at a

distance from this couple; which pay us no attention at all. We become more

engaged with them, once our eye moves past the white jug to reach the back of

the room; then the mirror reflection draws us in to look again, and see a triangle:

now formed by three heads, as they are absorbed in their private moment. But

here we might stop to check something strange; because the looking glass does

not reflect what we might expect. In the mirror the woman’s head turns toward

the man, but the head of her standing figure does not.7

The Mirror

Snow provides a trenchant analysis: “It is there within the mirror world that the action of

The Music Lesson lies.7 Precisely that line of inquiry is what I intend to explore in the following

pages. The mirror and its reflection are central to the enigmas I shall now address. For example,

Wheelock and Broos tell us confidently that:

Puzzle 1. “Vermeer quite consciously announces his own presence by including a portion of his

easel in the mirror’s reflection.”8 But in point of fact, it does no such thing, because Vermeer is
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not present. Steadman, reflecting on the matter, writes: “On close inspection there seems to be no

sign of him. Not even his boot or edge of his jacket.”9 Further, as Benedict Nicholson provides a

psychological interpretation when he writes: “The painter appears to have been swamped by a

wave of diffidence at the crucial moment and to have fled the scene.”10

All that despite the fact that as Gowing. reminds us: “It was common practice to include in

the center of a subject, reflected in the surface of some still life object or in the mirror, a

miniature view of the artist at his work.…”11 Snow expands upon this line of thought, asking:

“And where exactly is this world whose reality the painter conveys with hallucinatory force?” 12

That enigma will be addressed in the final section. But there is another here.

Vermeer is insinuating his presence at the easel when he is not present at all. What is he

telling us? It reminds us of Yeats’s question: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

Apparently, Vermeer believed the artist can be separate from his art; and so, he is emphasizing

that his art stands alone on its merits. Perhaps that is why he left no drawings or provisional

sketches for any of his paintings. Only the end result with its final impact was of consequence for

him. Therefore, it plausibly follows that: The painting speaks for him.

Puzzle 2. Yet that is not where the puzzles stop. Consider: If the mirror is reflecting Vermeer’s

easel why is his easel not in the body of the picture the way it is, for example, in The Art of

Painting? The mirror clearly depicts an easel where there is none in the literal perspective.

Vermeer has removed not only himself but the very means he employs in the act of creation,

(unless they reside in the perplexing box beside his easel). In this instance, the painting ceases to

speak for him. Instead, the painting speaks for itself.

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In 1997 The Music Lesson was on display at the Queens Gallery in London and Wheelock

spoke of the painting as part of the exhibition’s audio tour. After making some general comments

he directed the focus of his remarks to the blue chair and its beauty. He spoke of his good fortune

to have viewed the painting by means of an infrared vidicon. He descanted emotively of the

experience and how the chair fairly sparkled with a multiplicity of tiny lights. He concluded with

a fascinating question:

Puzzle 3. Why did Vermeer place this beautiful chair so prominently in the foreground? He

offered no explanation to what I regard as the most challenging and fundamental puzzle of all.

Vermeer’s Geometry

The chair certainly serves to separate the figures and it does lend itself to an enhancement of

perspective. But Wheelock knew all that full well. He was, I believe, asking something less

apparent and more unfathomed (or not yet realized and discussed) about the painting’s nature, or

Wheelock’s imagination would not have been so captivated by this particular puzzle posed by

the blue chair.

Vermeer’s geometry offers clues. Gowing, for example was able to determine pertinent

layout and perspectival measurements. He writes: “The evidence suggests that the diagonal

measurement of the squares of the marble floor in The Music Lesson was between 15 and 16

inches. On this basis it appears that when Vermeer sat down to paint his eye was about 47 inches

from the floor, he was about 6’1” from the nearest corner of the table, 13’2” Inches from the

lady, and 17’4” from the far wall.”13

With regard to such precise and revealing measurements Steadman’s work is indispensable

and far more informative. Steadman’s meticulously reduced scale-model reconstruction of the
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room along with his architectural drawings render measurements that are more germane than

Gowing’s in support of my thesis. Steadman notes that: “Any piece of furniture that is not

aligned with the walls but set at an angle… will have its own separate vanishing points.”14

Consequently Vermeer’s easel and the blue chair would, on this view, tacitly emerge from and

stand in opposition to the rest of the picture, better to capture the viewer’s attention.

The easel is set diagonally to the right. With the employ of a protractor and Steadman’s

architectural drawings its angle at 43o is readily determined. The angle of the blue chair is

similarly determined. The angle of the blue chair is also 43o. This equivalence cannot be

coincidental. Arguably, nothing in Vermeer’s images is. As Swillens puts it: “With constant care

he composed his pictures, not neglecting a detail or particular point, leaving nothing to

chance.”15

With his easel so angled Vermeer would naturally look to his left, his eye falling directly at

(or upon) the chair—which renders Wheelock’s question all the more beguiling. Vermeer’s

geometric precision, once again, requires careful inquiry.

Leo Tolstoy in his essay What is Art provides a clue when he writes: “Every work of art

causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced or is

producing the art and with all those who simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the

same artistic impression.”16 Suppose, then, the blue chair signifies that of ‘the receiver’ or

viewer—then the mirror has Vermeer’s easel’s right edge directly behind the head of the woman

and two tiles (approximately 30 inches) away from her. This is precisely where the chair sits.

But why? How are we to understand what Vermeer was ‘up to’ in the placement of these two

objects? The answer to that question becomes clear if an unanticipated question is asked. What
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would one see if one sat in it? Surprisingly the ‘viewer’ would be looking directly at Vermeer

(were he there), peeking around his easel. He would be fairly “nose to nose” with him. I submit,

this cannot possibly be so by happenstance. It is surely deliberate. This is how Vermeer

announces his presence. Adding to the arresting confusion of the work, Steadman calculated that,

in reality, Vermeer was seated at the far right, and well outside the frame of the painting.

However, the chair is empty, as is Vermeer’s chair. We are left with a painting absent of a

painter, his means, and the viewer as well. And, to put a finer point on his absence, Vermeer, (as

in many of his paintings), leaves the picture unsigned. Similarly, Wheelock (1981 p128) in his

discussion of The Allegory of Painting, notes Vermeer does not identify the artist whose back is

to us. To my mind the only remedy to this paradox, one which does not beggar the imagination,

is that, the painting is meant to betoken an existence in an ideal realm; a Neoplatonic realm of

forms. Presciently, Snow wondered in this regard whether: “the world conveyed in The Music

Lesson “…survives in the absence of the viewing self;”17 a thoroughly Platonic position. And

recall Snow’s earlier remark, noted in the discussion of the mirror: “And where exactly is this

world whose reality the painter conveys with hallucinatory force?”18 It is worth asking whether

Vermeer’s mirror is intended to be that world, a repository of ideal forms. Everything in the

room is meticulously and explicitly detailed and in focus, yet in the “mirror world” (and the

mysterious box) things are uncharacteristically vague and enigmatic, something rarely seen in

Vermeer’s work, and arguably intended by Vermeer to insinuate ideal essences of the Platonic

world. If so, the meticulous room represents Vermeer the artist. While the mirror, on this view,

represents the abstract Platonic essences occurring in Vermeer’s mind. That line of inquiry is

what I intend to explore further in the following pages.

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Vermeer and Neo-Platonism

Neo-Platonism was the prevailing mainstream philosophy during the high

Renaissance of the late sixteenth century. The importance and the influence of it was far-

reaching. (Huerta, p. 15) Artists of the period readily embraced it, not so much as a philosophy

than as a zeitgeist in which they were immersed. This led Huerta to regard Vermeer’s

conjunction of the sensible and intelligible, and the classical and abstract methods which

permeate his pictures, as: “Vermeer’s attempt to define the indefinable [which] caused him to

invest his work with indirection and ambiguities that reflect the insufficiency of his material

means. Vermeer sought to present an ideal vision by means of sensible facts.”18 In that regard,

Huerta elaborates: “Vermeer conducted a sustained program of investigation, painting images

that were not merely symbols but comprehensible explications of impossible facts;” thereby

rendering the ineffable ideal required by Plato to be intelligible. Moreover, “the classical and

abstract methods which permeate his pictures are . . .a natural consequence of his fidelity to both

classicism and Platonism.” 19. All are, in this view, in the service of instantiating his conception

of “the Ideal.” As such the painting becomes its own Neoplatonic form (akin to Van Gogh’s

sunflower). Both transcend realism. The Neoplatonic view was a shared preternatural idea, that

there exists an imperceptible, hidden ‘higher world’ in which anything that is visible is a poor

manifestation of a divine abstract Form.

Plato and the Blue Chair

In book ten of Plato’s Republic Plato elaborates upon his theory of Ideal Forms, advancing

his belief that all objects in our manifest world are poor instantiations of Ideal Forms that
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populate an ontologically true reality which is prior to the ordinary physical world we live in.20

And surely Vermeer knew that Plato chose to expound upon his position with a thoroughly

germane example: a chair!

We are now in a position to better understand Wheelock’s perspicacious observation that so

fascinated him: the reason for the prominence of the exquisite blue chair. Shaw-Taylor and

Buvelot afford us a rapturous description of the blue chair:

In some ways the sensation of reality in Vermeer’s painting goes beyond accuracy. His

colour for example is far more intense than the reality would be. Technical examination

of the paint structure reveals that the artist mixed significant quantities of ultramarine

blue in the under layers throughout. It was unheard of to use this intense and extremely

expensive pigment anywhere but in the final paint layer as here, on the chair fabric….

Vermeer’s painting has the luminous, polished brilliance as an image in Pietro dura. His

intensification of colour is like hyperbole in language—a means of evoking reality more

than a strictly accurate description could achieve.21 In effect Vermeer is attempted an

idealization of the chair itself.

I submit that in an effort to get closer to the abstract ideal form of the chair, Vermeer

employed the Maroger technique of glazing and what Wheelock, in describing Officer and

Laughing Girl, calls “Vermeer’s precise sense of realism.” Color realism “employs a flattening

of an object into areas of color, where the modulations occur more as a result of an object

interacting with the color and light of its environment than the sculpturing modeling of form or

presentation of textual detail. The actual color of an object, or ‘local color’, is held secondary to
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how that color interacts with surrounding light sources that may alter the look of the original

color.”22

Vermeer’s blue chair is replete with golden upholstery and tacks which literally protrude

from the canvas owing to Vermeer’s generous application of paint. Clearly Vermeer enhanced

the blue chair to a degree which deliberately defies everyday reality, being in the realm of the

senses and as consummate as that world allows. He painted a chair that intimates that it resides in

another flawless realm; the one of idealized abstract entities which Plato gave him.

Platonism and Neo-Platonism

Plato had scant regard for knowledge derived from the senses. Unlike his former student

Aristotle who made appeal to logic, Plato employed a method of discussion leading to more and

more profound insights. He was resolute in his belief that the human mind has the capacity to

acquire absolute truth. Accordingly, sense perception was relegated to the realm of opinion

concerning the world of objects. Because sense data was a matter of opinion, it contributed little

to any attempt to establish a firm foundation of knowledge and truth.

He taught, instead, that it is through intellect that we attain access to another world of

immutable essences which he referred to as Ideal Forms and ideas. It is in that world of ultimate

realities from which the world afforded by the senses is derived. They are independent of human

minds insofar as they constitute the ultimate constituents of the universe.

A simple example illustrates Plato’s position. In the ordinary world of the senses there are

an indefinite number of possible triangles. Nevertheless, from a small number of exposures to

any of them we, even as children, apprehend an Ideal Form, namely “triangularity” which

enables us to recognize triangles that we have never before encountered. Plato, thereby
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concludes that there must exist and ideal and perfect form (“Triangularity”) from which those

triangles found in the world of the senses are imperfect manifestations. The same holds for the

far more important concepts of Beauty, Justice Truth, Virtue, and the like. All are perfect in the

Ideal realm but not in the sense-world.

There is in Platonism a rather incorporeal element which had been interpreted as a spiritual

one, and which later became the basis of Neo-Platonism; a philosophy in accord with the

religious preoccupations of the time. Plato’s emphasis on questioning contemplation was

thereby replaced with an emphasis on theurgy. It was in this recasting of Plato’s thought that

Vermeer was immersed; and which I contend, informed his art and in particular, The Music

Lesson containing Wheelock’s puzlingly prominent blue chair.

Vermeer’s color theory and the blue chair

Although “Color Theory” was not codified and was accorded little explicit consensus in

Vermeer’s time 23 it certainly existed informally. Redelius writes: . . .Vermeer as with all other

17th Dutch painters, was indebted to his Flemish brethren who helped to disseminate to their

northern brethren pictorial techniques that to this day have not been equaled. It was, we propose,

the soft and highly tractable Flemish medium and pictorial methods employed by Anthony van

Dyck that offered to Vermeer the basic devices on which to construct a medium and the

necessary pictorial devices that would best serve his artistic needs.”24 Redelius, drawing upon the

work of Morager,25 goes on to propose the precise nature of the varnish Vermeer used which was

designed to be (in Vermeer’s pre-1660 paintings) softer than Van Dyck’s in service of creating
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the “softness and subtle tonal nuances generally associated with Vermeer’s paint structure.”

Wheelock concurs; in his discussion of A Lady Writing: “In the shaded areas where

semitransparent glazes are most prevalent, Vermeer’s technique lent his form a distinctive

luminosity.” (1981 p126).

But there is something else to be said of Vermeer concerning color. Philip Leslie Hale

writes: “He felt the need of a cutting color, a complimentary in his colour harmonies. With that

strange intuition which he often showed about things, he seems to have realized that yellow, not

orange was, the compliment of the kind of blue he used. Certain modern investigations into the

laws of colour have affirmed the same thing.”26 Vermeer apparently had an implicit

understanding of his medium as well as how to use it to achieve his enigmatic effects. Locutions

like “that strange intuition” draw us closer to Vermeer’s nature than words like “genius” do; and

they inform us, even if but a little, of the kind of mind that inclined Vermeer to paint what he

did, in the way he did, deeply informed by the prevailing culture in which he was immersed.

Vermeer’s nature

Early in his discussion of Vermeer, Hale comments on how little we know of the

man, not even his master, his technical methods or what he thought of his work. Hale was an

Impressionist painter himself. Perhaps in light of that, and his own intuition regarding the artistic

temperament, he allowed himself, by small degrees, to not let the matter of Vermeer’s nature
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rest. Hale writes: “. . .it is strange that there was evidently nothing mysterious about him as there

is in his pictures” (p. 69). Then Hale takes another small inferential step with regard to

Vermeer’s interiors: in contradistinction to Whistler, whom he describes as “nervous” and “self-

conscious,” Hale describes Vermeer as “calm, almost phlegmatic, quite unconscious, and

without pose” (p. 92). Later Hale goes so far as to conjecture: “Vermeer seems to have loved

life; he chose the harder part in art—to make things beautiful, quiet, serene. It is a commonplace

that it is easier to write an artistic story of how the course of true love never did run smooth, than

to write the story of a happy love, so that it shall be interesting and artistic. Vermeer’s story was

the was harder to tell—the simple story of health and happiness—of light of life and love” (p.

201). It is worth noting in this regard, that all three paintings here commented on, share a

stillness and silence about them which may be an important feature in pictorial portrayals of the

sublime; and presumably, a clue to Vermeer’s nature as well.

Gowing similarly ignores convention in his attempt to fathom Vermeer’s nature. In the

section in his book called, “Characteristics of His Thought” Gowing makes small but penetrating

comments: “. . .the zone of emotional neutrality in which Vermeer suspends the human matter in

his pictures is suffused with the profoundest personal meaning.” “. . .he stands farthest from all

of his time, as a poetic illustrator of the subtlest and least expressible meanings of human

aspect.” “Eyes never meet in Vermeer, action is stilled. There is no speech, these almost

unmoving figures communicate by letter or on the keyboard of the virginals.” Then Gowing

begins to go further “. . .We may fancy that their relations reflect another, between them and

their painter.” “. . .lurking below his almost inhuman fineness of temper, there is an element at

variance with any simple view of his temper.” Then Gowing presses further still: “Possibly we

should be justified in suspecting from the impeccable consistency of these pictures that
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underneath something is hidden. An element of concealment, of deception of which perhaps the

painter was as much a victim as any of his students, is never entirely absent from Vermeer’s

thought,” (Italics mine). Recall how Vermeer announces his presence by the precise location of

the blue chair and what one would see if one sat on it. Gowing then writes “. . . he builds his

elaborate, deceptive yet lucid manner until at last we gain a kind of knowledge of its basis in his

deepest feelings;” and finally, because “his nature excluded directness “. . .he entered the world

of ideal, undemanding relationships,”(Italics mine.) Is it truly an idle inferential leap to conclude

that it was that kind of world, apart from personal conflict and the disturbing clamor of daily

living, that Vermeer aspired, through painting, to live in? A peaceful world, like the one Plato

gave him.

Further on Hale writes: “Time apparently was of no importance with Vermeer. It mattered

nothing to him of how long or how short a time it took to make the knob on the end of a map

stick—he was concerned in getting it right. . .. He seemed to have a passion for rightness that we

do not attain; and a knowledge and intelligence added to his diligence that allowed him to attain

it, in larger measure, at least, than do other men” (pp. 224-5). I prefer to believe it was less a

matter of diligence than one of being lost in the silent world of painting, with its concomitant

experience of unalloyed concentration in which the sense of time evaporates, as in Plato’s world

which is timeless

Of course, all these conjectures might be dismissed as speculative, but Hale makes some

attempt to substantiate them when he writes: “. . . it is by the study of little things that we are

able to build up a conclusion of a man” (p. 102) . . ..” And by his works we know him” (p. 284).

Midway through his book, Hale pens a sentence which, is in my view, so profound as to be

funny, and worthy, as well, of serious reflection in any effort to divine Vermeer’s nature: “The
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imagination staggers at the thought of Vermeer ever painting a cow” (p. 102). Vermeer was an

artist of subtle facial expression, he studied the delicacy of human interactions, a world of subtle

insinuations of motives and emotions. Hale’s passing “cow comment” teaches us that to know

Vermeer’s inner nature, it is as central to think on what he would never paint, (things that held no

interest whatsoever to him,) as it is to attend on what he did.

A brief exploration of Platonic Form used by Vermeer and other realists

Redelius also draws our attention to Vermeer’s use of what has been referred to as

pointille (dotted) technique, “credited as the means by which he achieved the ‘effect of moving

light.'” (p. 128) This is of particular interest because centuries later Seurat not only embraced and

employed pointillist techniques according to, the then, codified scientific color theories of Ogden

Rood26 and most notably the color theory of Michel Eug ne Chev ul. Chevreul realized that

the correct hue of a color could not be achieved without taking into account the influences of the

other colors surrounding it. He writes: “If we look simultaneously upon two stripes of different

tones of the same colours, placed side by side, if the stripes are not too wide, the eye perceives

certain modifications which in the first place influence the intensity of colour, and in the second,

the optical composition of the two juxtaposed colours respectively”.27 Chevreul called these

phenomena the “multaneous contrast of colors.” The “color wheel” was an extension of his

discoveries. It followed that Chevreul’s advice to artists was to think, not simply in terms of

individual colors, but of the contrasting colors as well. His influence was felt by Vermeer and
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Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painters; but none so much as on Georges Seurat whose

works employed small dots of contrasting colors, the pointille technique.

Seurat assimilated Chevreul’s color theory into what he termed “Chromoluminism.” But

he did so in service of the same ends which motivated Vermeer. On this matter Patrick Pye is

definitive when he writes: “Seurat acted on the principle, purely idealistic, which makes us deny

reality to matter and admits only of the world as representation. Nature for him was the simple

motif of the creation of a superior and sublime reality . . .The artist is charged with the task

recalling us to the ideal that is revealing to us the primitive beauty of things, of discovering the

imperishable character, the pure essence.”28 Otherwise put, Seurat was searching after the

“Sublime,” a concept directly analogous to Vermeer’s “Platonic Ideal.”

Vermeer and the concept of the sublime

The notion of the “Sublime” is an idea first formulated in a tract by Longinus, a

philosopher in ancient Rome. The influence of his idea has survived, in various forms, into

modern times. Arguably the finest mind to address the concept was Emmanuel Kant’s: “The

beautiful in nature is connected with the form of the object which consists in having boundaries.

The sublime, on the other hand, is to be found in a formless object, so far as in it or by occasion

of its boundlessness is represented, and yet its totality is also present to thought.29 In other words,

the sublime is not an object of sense experience. The universe is boundless and consequently

supersensible existing beyond contours and dimension. Philip Shaw provides a more modern and

less erudite definition: “In broad terms, whenever experience slips out of conventional

understanding, whenever the power of an object or event is such that words fail and points of
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comparison disappear, then we resort to the feeling of the sublime. As such, the sublime marks

the limits of reason and expression together with a sense of what might lie beyond these

limits.”30 The lineage from Plato to the sublime, with its Neo-Platonist idea of an Ideal realm,

inhabited by things like an “Ideal Chair,” is direct. What Vermeer and Seurat aspired to create

was, on this view, the same.

During the mid-nineteenth century, while Seurat was working in France, The Hudson River

School of artists in the United States were developing an independent Romantic art movement,

devoted to painstakingly hyper-realist landscapes. Its purpose was the same as that of Vermeer

and Seurat, to intimate “the sublime.” In his essay Michael De Sapio described its goals: “But

what most distinguished these artists was their desire not just to portray the realism of nature, not

just its sheer beauty, but the presence of the Divine in it . . . The Hudson River School was

founded on a spiritualty which dealt with man’s experience of nature to the Transcendent and the

sublime—that is to God. . .. The concept of the sublime (from the Latin for “beyond the

threshold”) attempted to account for the feeling of awe, majesty, and even terror that man

experiences whenever contemplating the wonders of the natural world.”31 Indeed, the earliest

meaning of “awe” was “intense fear.” Being beyond the senses, they can engender the strongest

emotions we are capable of feeling. Recall Snow’s comment mentioned earlier: “And where

exactly is this world whose reality the painter conveys with hallucinatory force?” Iain Boyd

Whyte nicely captures the history of this remarkable idea which has survived from its conception

in ancient Rome to the present:

The test of a construct that has true value is its ability to retain its core yet take on diverse

and different guises over the centuries, each of them expanding both the potency of the

construct and our understanding of it. So it has been with the sublime. Dismissed in the
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heroic years of high modernism a passé and febrile embrace of Kantian philosophy by the

romantic imagination, the sublime enjoyed an enormous survival of interest during the

post-modern 1980s and 1990s. With the certainties modernistic project held up to critical

reexamination, the sublime offered a vehicle with which to question the dominant view of

human agency on which the modern economic and political order had been established.

Dismissing as reductive and one-dimensional the modernist conception of the human

condition as rational, progressive, and benign, the postmodern critique found in the

sublime a device for exploring more profound and complex layers of meaning: the heroic,

the mysterious, and the numinous.32

Clearly Vermeer inhabits this realm of the “mysterious,” and the “numinous” and so many of

his paintings abound in that. His works, which have been called enigmatic, or paradoxical, or

puzzling, words which, in the broader context of the sublime, prove to be strangely

unsatisfactory. They are unable to capture Vermeer’s “secret” because as Longinus knew, that

mystery cannot be apprehended in words. “. . . “the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that

it cannot entertain any other.”37 “Vermeer’s secret” is likely what Wheelock was seized by. The

sublime resides beyond reason and the senses like Plato’s Ideal Forms. Vermeer’s paintings are

elusive, and enigmatic and their alluring beauty and mystery issues from that.

Summary

Shawe-Taylor and Buvelot, after exploring The Music Lesson’s intense reality, its paint

structure and color values, Vermeer’s interpretation of light (with partial employment of a
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camera obscura), his touch and its effect conveying “a heightened sensation of the impact of

light,”32 and the painting’s intense realism suggestive even of sound conclude that: “The only

remaining clue to the meaning of the painting is the inscription on the virginal.”

In contrast I maintain that there exist other subtle and elemental clues concerning the

painting’s meaning; clues which, to my knowledge, have little precedent in the multitudinous

interpretations of the work. These take the form of questions about enigmas or puzzles within the

content of the picture; elements which on close inspection, require resolution. We must ascertain

how incompatible elements can be resolved in service of clarifying what Vermeer is attempting

to tell us. Our understanding of these incompatibilities redounds to these questions about

puzzles and mysteries, which are often left to the observer to divine. Because these questions are

about meaning, we must be circumspect before supposing that all pertinent analyses of the

painting lie within one domain of discourse and its audience, namely that of scholarly art

criticism.

Unquestionably, scholarly art criticism employs a formidable array of means in its efforts

to explicate a work of art. Generally beginning with a description of the piece the analysis

quickly deepens and ranges over particulars including the work’s medium, composition,

perspective, color, texture, historical lineage, the use of light, and to a lesser degree,

interpretation and meaning. However, meaning is not the sole province of that discipline because

meaning relies so heavily on a painting’s audience. The attempt to discern meaning, in many of

Vermeer’s paintings, is arguably the most difficult and personal pursuit in which we can engage.

What the art critic sees is not necessarily what the architect does, or the historian, the

philosopher, the museum goer, or for that matter, Vermeer himself. The point being that
 21

Vermeer’s “mystery, his “secret private message” as Lennart Seth puts it, (see Conclusion) are

unlikely to be exhausted within the domain of any one discipline. Vermeer’s achievements are

too singularly remarkable as to admit of being so confined.

Liedke asserts: “The view in the room and the view in the mirror are irreconcilable.”33

Otherwise put; the mirror view is in conflict with the body of the painting which represents the

manifest world of “the given” of our everyday reality. I propose, nevertheless, that within the

Platonic realm such seemingly irreconcilable differences, which we customarily understand as

enigmas or puzzles, can be deciphered and admit of illuminating clues as to the meaning of the

painting. I propose that the three problems that I have investigated afford an expanded

understanding both of Vermeer’s extraordinary mind and his objectives in The Music lesson.

How better to intimate Plato’s Ideal chair than with Vermeer’s resplendent blue chair. And how

better to reply to Wheelock’s incisive question than within the solutions to the Sphinx of Delft’s

all but secret riddles; riddles which are only seemingly problematic until Plato renders them

intelligible?

Conclusion

In his remarks which conclude his analysis of The Music Lesson Lennart Seth writes:

“The Music Lesson is a variation on a theme which many painters have treated in Holland. But

Vermeer’s painting strikes a mysterious chord we do not encounter elsewhere, as if it bore a

secret and private message.33 Wheelock clearly concurs, and writes of Vermeer: … “the nuances
 22

of meaning that one receives are often fleeting and incomplete.” And in, Woman Holding a

Balance “Vermeer has stated his meaning subtly and it [therefore] has been interpreted in many

different ways.” (1981 p 41) Later, Wheelock writes “He gave tangible substance to abstract

ideas.” (1981, p 44). These efforts are, to my mind, attempts to reach after the sublime and

Plato’s Ideal Forms.

I have undertaken to expose three “discrepancies” in the painting which, I believe,

illuminate the manner with which Vermeer created his “mysterious chord.” Clearly, Seth’s

observation should not be restricted to The Music Lesson alone since Vermeer achieved similar

effects in virtually all his paintings. The body of Vermeer’s work could not have more decidedly

earned him the appellation of “The Sphinx of Delft.” In accordance, I have endeavored to fathom

three problems to better understand the painting’s “secret and private message.” Wheelock writes

that the contradictions [in Vermeer’s oeuvre] are “. . . an essential part of Vermeer’s subject; to

reconcile them becomes perhaps the profoundest purpose of his pictures.” (1981, p103).

Wheelock was referring to Vermeer’s efforts toward that reconciliation; however, surely

something of that purpose redounds to us his viewers as well. It is we who experience the

“mystery.” It is we who must reconcile Vermeer’s contradictions. This paper is in service of that

end.

Three seemingly irreconcilable elements in The Music Lesson pose arresting questions:

Why does the mirror reflect an easel where there is none in the body of the picture itself? Why is

Vermeer not seated behind his easel? Why does the mirror reflect something other than what we

see in the interior of the room? And why as Wheelock observed, did Vermeer give the exquisite

blue chair such prominence in the foreground of his painting? I have proposed answers to these
 23

questions intended to carry us toward a more penetrating understanding, not only of the effect

that Vermeer’s paintings have on us, but of the mind that created them.

Footnotes

1) Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. Vermeer: The Complete Works. New York: Harry N. Abrams,

1997 32.

1) Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. “Critical Assessments: The Music Lesson:” In: Jan Vermeer.

London:1981. 101-105.

3) Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Quentin Buvelot, Masters of the Everyday: Dutch

Artists In the Age of Vermeer. Royal Collection Trust: London, 2015. 161-162.

4) Walter Liedke, Vermeer: The Complete Paintings. Ludion press: New York, 2011. 160.

5) Arthur K. Wheelock JR, Vermeer: The Complete Works. 1997. 32.

6) Benedict Nicolson. Vermeer: Lady at the Virginals. Forgotten Books Royal Collection:

London, 2012. 11.

Comment [NY1]: Change all
citation numbers in text and citation
7) Jane Jelley. Traces of Vermeer, Oxford University Press: UK, 2017. 165. list.
 24

7) Edward Snow. A Study of Vermeer, University of California Press: Berkeley California,

1994. 206.

8) Philip Steadman, Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces.

Oxford University Press: New York, 2001 85.

9) Arthur K. Wheelock Jr et al, Johannes Vermeer, National Gallery of Art: Washington,

1995. 128.

10) Benedict Nicolson, Vermeer: Lady at the Virginals, 10.

11) Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer. University of California Press: Berkeley California, 1997.

126, note 80.

12) Edward Snow, 126 note 80.

13) Lawrence Gowing, A Study of Vermeer. 125.

14) Philip Steadman, Vermeer’s Camera, 75.

15) P.T.A. Swillens, Johannes Vermeer: Painter of Delft, Spectrum Publisher: Brussels,

1950. 143.

16) Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art? British Classical Press: London,1994. 56.

17) Edward Snow, A Study of Vermeer. 116.

18) Robert D. Huerta, Vermeer and Plato: Painting the Ideal. Rosemont Publishing and

Printing Corp, New Jersey: 2005. 15.

19) Robert D. Huerta, Vermeer and Plato. 89.

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20) “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” Neo-Platonism. Stanford. Edu Jan 4, 2016.

21) Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Quentin Buvelot, Masters of the Everyday: Dutch artists in

the age of Vermeer. Royal Collection Trust: London, 2016. 162.

22) https://en.wikipedia.org/index/.php?title=Color_realism.

23) Zerka Z. Filipezak, “Vermeer, Elusiveness and Visual Theory,” Simiolus: Netherlands

Quarterly for the History of Art. Vol. 3, 2006. p.271.

24)Franklin H. Redelius, The Master Keys: A Painter’s treatise on the Pictorial technique of

Oil Painting, iUniverse: New York, 2009. 127-129.

25) Jacques Moroger, The Secret formulas and Techniques of the Masters, trans. Eleanor

Beckham. The Studio Publications: New York, 1948.

Comment [NY2]: Citation
numbers must be changed.
26) Philip l. Hale

26) Ogden Rood, Color: A textbook of Modern Chromatics, With Applications To Art And

Industry, (1890) Read Books: Illinois, 2007.

27) Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer, University of California Press: Berkeley, 1997.

27) Mischel Eug ne Chevreul, (1860) trans. Charles Martel, The Principles of Harmony and

Contrast of Colours, and Their Applications to the Arts, Hard Press: Florida, 2017. pp. 8-9.

28) Patrick Pye,“The Emptiness of the Image: The Case of Seurat,” Studies: An Irish

Quarterly Review. Vol, 81, no.32, 59.

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29) Emmanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. J. H. Bernard Digireads.com publishing:

Illinois, 2019. 88

30) Philip Shaw, The Sublime Routledge: New York, 2017. 2

31) Michael De Sapio. “Nature and the Divine: The Spirituality of the Hudson River

School,” The Imaginative Conservative.org. December 10, 2016. pp. 2-3.

Comment [NY4]: Make whyte : in
“beyond the finite” number 32. page
32) 1.

32) Walter Liedke, Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, 107.

33) Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Quentin Buvelot, Masters of the Everyday, 163.
Comment [NY5]: Citation.

34) Edmund Burke quote p. 47