Johannes Vermeer

The Astronomer, 1668



The Geographer, 1668-9



Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, 1670



Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, 1663-4



A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window, 1657


The Geographer was painted from 1668 to 1669, around the same time as a very similar painting, The Astronomer, of 1668. The paintings show the same model, wearing the same blue robes, in similar settings of scientific work.

The Astronomer is situated to the right side of the canvas, in a profile view, although facing away from the viewer. He is leaning forward actively, toward his window at the left, stretching his hand out to a globe on the desk. His other hand is set on the edge of the desk nearest the viewer, supporting him as he stretches forward, as though in a quick bout of inspiration, caught completely in his work. It is already late in the day, as one can tell from the golden light that pours in through the window.

The Geographer, in contrast, shows the scientist interrupted from his work. He is facing in a forward position, leaning forward once again, over a large sheet of paper spread roughly about over the desk, holding a compass. The same globe that the Astronomer leans toward is visible in this painting, set atop a high wardrobe. In both paintings, the scientist presses his left hand to the same corner of the desk, supporting himself while leaning forward. The geographer would have been supporting himself in the astronomer's manner a moment ago, but his attention has just been diverted. He looks up, out the window to the left, just quickly and momentarily distracted from his work. The hour is closer to the morning or afternoon; the light that pours into the room is of a more pale silver character.

In both paintings, there is a similar blue and gold ornamental carpet appears tossed over the front side of the desk. In the Astronomer's, the pattern is a European looking floral pattern. On the whole, the Astronomer has a more organised and geometric composition than the Geographer. The astronomer's body forms two equilateral triangles with a common vertex, one between the edge of his back at the right of the painting, and his left arm, and the other between his left and right arms. These form the main diagonals of the piece. The rest of the elements of the painting consist primarily of rectangular forms. The desk is set at straight horizontals and verticals. The background is full of strong verticals, from the chair on which the astronomer sits, the windows at the left, the wardrobe, a chart displayed on the front of the wardrobe's doors, and the space between this wardrobe and a dark, obscure painting on the wall to the right of it. It is very carefully organised, and the astronomer's pose tends not to seem completely spontaneous. The geometry of the composition, the astronomer's gesture of complete focus on his work, and the gold light and deep shadows of the evening hour, all work together to make a calm, yet intense mood, intimate, and almost mystical in nature, well suited for a depiction of the study of the outer cosmos—a mysterious and unfamiliar realm at any period in our history yet, but even more so in the Baroque era when this was painted, at the dawn of the scientific revolution.

The composition in The Geographer is a more disheveled one. Papers are more scattered about; the books set atop the wardrobe are set on their side with their inconsistent pages shown, rather than neatly upright, arranged by their height, as in the Astronomer. The globe is set there as well, set aside and out of use, but not neatly out of the way. In his frontally oriented position, the geographer's robe even looks more disorganised than the astronomer's, even though it is the same robe, simply because from the front, a white and a red-orange layer of fabric are visible under the blue one. This disheveled appearance is well suited for the subject, the geographer figure just interrupted from his work. This effect is accomplished most directly by subtly changing the angle from which the viewer sees the scene. In the Astronomer, the viewer sees a direct frontal view. In The Geographer, the viewer has taken a few steps to the right, and stepped back to get a wider view. The facade of the wardrobe and window sill are revealed. The chair is removed; the figure is standing at the center of the painting instead, hunched over his map in a mostly frontal view. This change in his position upsets the balance of the painting, as well. Where in the Astronomer the figure and the window created a symmetry of visual weight, in the Geographer the figure is situated more centrally, leaving the right side of the painting unoccupied but for small objects, light in terms of visual weight. The movement of the figure and the chair reveal scattered papers on the floor and diffuse areas of light and shadow about the rear wall, which has more of a cool gray tone under the daylight, than the warm brown that it takes on in The Astronomer. The space is more open in the Geographer, because a wider angle is depicted, and because the scientist is not covering the right side of the wall. The carpet on the desk, although very much arranged in nearly the same way as the Astronomer's, also suggests the worldliness of the geographer. Rather than the comparatively sparse European floral design, we see a denser pattern, with decorative borders blocking off different spaces, suggesting the carpets of the Middle East. Its patterns are unclear in places, and may well still be of a mostly European design. Though it is visually busier, while comparatively, the Astronomer's carpet seems to suggest a certain sort of calmness in mood.

The Geographer's painting suggests to me an ambiguous dual sense of worldliness. On one hand, it is the mundane practicalities of everyday life, as opposed to the intellectual pursuits of the Astronomer, which verge on the mystical, somehow simultaneously more cerebral or requiring more introspection, and centering around the wider reaches of space, the distant cosmos, the heavens, the planets, and stars. On the other hand, the Geographer's worldliness is a broadness and openness of knowledge and experience, far beyond the basic practical needs within a particular small city. Although, this is remaining withing the context of life on Earth and within human societies. An uneasy balance between these states is shown in the Geographer, seemingly expressed even through the daylight which silently pours through the window, onto fragments of the wall, to the carpet, and over the geographer's face and robes.

The Geographer's worldliness is related to a familiarity with the human affairs of a multiplicity of other lands. The Astronomer's focus rests at more distant spheres, far away from Earth, which leads him to become detached from the mundane human or Earthly matters, and so seemingly more isolated and introverted, because from the point of view of another part of the human world, there isn't much connection—the connections pursued are instead made toward parts of the universe even more distant than the distant human cultures, upon which the Geographer places his focus.

Vermeer's two scientist paintings, then, show distinctly different concepts of intellectual pursuit, in what are otherwise very similar paintings. They are compositionally very similar; they show the same model in the same space, even wearing the same robes, and his hair tied back in the same manner. These similarities make it easier for the viewer to discern the differences between the two. But it also has the effect of communicating that, for their differences, neither of the manners of scientific pursuit are better than the other; they are simply different areas of study. They are both vital and worthwhile, providing useful and fascinating knowledge. Equally, they are expressive of the human capacity to gain knowledge, of a particular human energy in an intellectual pursuit and work.


The next paintings centre around a more common topic in Vermeer's paintings. The Astronomer and the Geographer are his only paintings of scientists, although the communication by letters is a more recurring element in his paintings, appearing throughout his career. Women are shown in the various stages of the process of communication by letter, the writing of the letters, the reading of them, and receiving these letters from their maids. Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid is a later painting, from 1670, five years before the artist's death. It shows a seemingly urgent scene of a seated woman, writing a letter at a table, keeping an intent focus upon her work, and a maid looking out the window, waiting for the writer to finish. The scene is set apparently at the same window as that which is used in the scientist paintings, a particular corner that occurs often in Vermeer's paintings, presumably being the artist's studio with different props and furniture items arranged to make a different setting. The space shows the corner of a room with gray walls, with a wall at the left and windows visible, and the rear wall shown fairy close by. It has been hypothesised that this setup, having windows to the left of an image, was a common aspect of Dutch baroque paintings of interior scenes for practical reasons, which stem from the fact that most of the time, the artist is working directly from observation, especially on preliminary drawings that will later make up the completed paintings. The artist is standing, facing forward, with an easel in front of him, and an arrangement of objects or a model a greater distance away. But, the only light available, most of the time, is sunlight. And the sunlight, coming in through only one wall, will cause a shadow to be cast. If the artist is right handed, as is the majority condition, setting oneself up such that the window is at the left helps to avoid an interference from the shadow. One's right hand is up, and one needs to see the area to the left, in front of where the hand is. The light is coming from the left, and the shadow is then behind the hand.

Whatever the reason, this kind of an interior space occurs quite frequently in Vermeer's paintings, including in this one, Lady Writing a Letter to her Maid. The space is changed to denote different kinds of rooms by the use of furniture and other props. Here, there is the table where the letter writer works, with a red carpet draped over it, some dark curtains at the foreground which frame the left half of the image, a lighter, shorter, and thinner set of curtains set at the right side of the windows, near the room's rear corner. The back wall is taken up almost entirely by a large painting, an outdoor scene, apparently a more prestigious kind of religious or mythological painting, with four or five figures visible, including a seated woman holding a baby, in conversation with a man nearby. There is a chair in front of the table, and there are a few scraps of paper of the floor in the foreground.

One can very easily build a narrative from a look at the figures in the painting. It seems a rather urgent situation; both figures look impatient in their tasks. The writer is certainly focused and busy, and the maid is looking out the window, intently but quickly, as though looking for something or someone outside. Her mouth seems a bit open, as though she is saying something to herself, or preparing to say something to the writer. It seems unusual that the maid would be standing there for the writing of the letter, so this suggests that instead, the maid had brought the lady a particularly important letter, and it was necessary to write and send out a response immediately.

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter is another painting, a considerably earlier one, of 1663-4, showing a different kind of scene, within a the same topic of communication by letter. The woman is simply standing alone with the letter, wearing a large pale blue house coat. She is standing in a profile view at approximately the center of the image, in front of a sunlit wall with a large map over it. The lower half of the painting has other pieces of furniture visible, dark blue tables and chairs.

The narrative that one gets from this painting is a significantly simpler one—simply reading a letter. There isn't very much of a sense of when it was received, or any specific details of a narrative like that. Instead, it is a more general depiction of a domestic event. The reading of a letter had certainly been taken on by Vermeer at least once before, in a surviving painting from 1657. Both of these show a similar kind of composition, fairly geometric, with a woman at the center, in profile, facing the left window to read her letter. But, compositionally, the later painting is more successful. The earlier painting, A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window, is still quite superb in terms of its brush work and its treatment of light, though the actual arrangement of objects in the picture plane comes across as haphazard or even clumsy. There is an open window with a curtain draped over it, and in front of the woman is a bed, or a low table, with a red carpet draped over it, and a sprawling bowl of fruit. There is an excess of space on the wall for almost the entire upper third of the painting, and most oddly, the right side of the painting is dominated by a completely arbitrary pale green curtain, of a thick looking fabric. Its upper bar extends across the canvas near the top, and the curtain's lower edge nearly meets the lower edge of the painting. It doesn't seem to actually logically fit in with the space that is being depicted—it looks very much like something that was added later in order to take up some extra space. It is overall very cluttered at the lower two thirds, with a haphazard arrangement of furniture that distracts from the reader, the main subject of the painting, while the top third of the painting seems to consist primarily of unnecessary space. Woman in Blue Reading a Letter shows a more refined execution of the same subject. The point of view is closer, which cuts back on unnecessary space, and places more emphasis on the reader, who then appears larger than in the earlier painting. There is not an excess of furniture, and the dark shadowy forms that are there for the chairs and tables are set to the sides of the canvas, not in the way of the figure, only what is needed to give a sense of a real space. The window is also not shown. It is implied instead by the strong sunlight on the wall. Geometrically, the painting is arranged simply into quadrants, in which the upper right and lower left are occupied by dark objects—the draped table, and a map on the wall; and the upper left and lower right are mostly the blank wall, though the upper left is certainly the lightest space. The woman in the center is also strongly lit. The arrangement of light and open space creates a strong diagonal, based around the source of light and the action of reading the letter.

In the later Woman Writing a Letter with her Maid, there is less of an obvious geometricity to the composition, though there is still an emphasis on the diagonal light from the upper left window. There are two rows of windows, and it is the upper row that casts the strongest light on to the curtains. Light moves from there, to the writer, who is wearing a dress and bonnet of pale cream tones, which keeps the emphasis on her intense focus. The pieces of furniture and walls are still viewed from somewhat of a frontal position, which suggests something of a grid, but there is not a very immediately apparent arrangement on a grid format. But, the composition remains quite balanced.

These are not the only paintings related to letter communication that Vermeer painted by any means, and they hint at a strange social aspect to this method of communication. Being a form of communication, by its very nature, it involves an association between two people, at minimum. There are numerous others involved in delivery and transport of the letters, but as for the actual reading and writing of the contents of the letter, there are in particular the sender and the recipient. It is by nature a social activity, a form of communication, yet the act of writing, and the act of reading, tend to be intensely private activities. This is the emphasis in the earlier letter reader paintings, in which only one figure is shown, with a letter, reading. It is a domestic, private, intimate activity, though other people must be involved to allow that moment to occur. There are depictions by Vermeer of letters being delivered, and these tend to show a jarring disagreement between the social aspect of the delivery, and the private activity of reading the letter. In Woman Writing a Letter With her Maid this tension is overcome for the most part by the urgency of the situation, although the maid still looks away, crosses her arms, and seems in some uncertain state of beginning, somehow, to speak. There is a nuanced relationship between social and private activity in the process of letter writing, changing at the various stages of the process, studied extensively in Vermeer's paintings throughout his career.