All Is Speculation

Jeffrey Meyers

Look here upon this picture, and on this.
Hamlet

In Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found (Norton, 2025, 370p, $45), Andrew Graham-Dixon argues, without providing evidence, that Vermeer’s secular paintings are religious.  English reviewers have been impressed by his wild surmise and fantastic speculations, and his book has received favorable notices.  It will therefore be useful to take a careful look at his far-fetched claims.  Since there are very few known facts about the life and religious beliefs of Vermeer (1632-75), Graham-Dixon (whom I’ll call G-D) has poured his inventions into this tempting vacuum, his suppositions into this archival void.

But assertions and repetitions are not arguments.  Instead of presenting convincing evidence, like a serious art historian, he provides pure fantasy.  He strains for new interpretations and hidden meanings in Vermeer’s art, but even with the help of Eugénie Aperghis-van Nispen tot Sevenaer (is she a real person?), he misinterprets almost every work.  This born-again art critic, suffused with religious enthusiasm and confused by the contents of his own mind, has invented a new genre.  His art fiction resembles a picture dealer on acid.  His book, built on a foundation of sand, should be consigned the dustbin of art history.

G-D has done extensive research, but he tends to wander away from Vermeer and disappear into the unfamiliar Dutch archives.  Most of his archival material is tangential to Vermeer and torture to read, such as: “Van Swoll married Hendrijke Verhoef in 1656, and by 1666 he had prospered sufficiently to buy the plot of land on which his home, number 413 on the sought-after Herengracht canal, would eventually be built.”  “The unfortunate preacher, Johannes Spenebovius (or Speenhovius, as he is more commonly styled), had been a close friend of Jacobus Taurinus, brother to Johannes Taurinus.” (Was there also a connection between the cow and bull, the bovine and taurine?).

G-D’s factual errors cast doubt on his judgment.  He argues, since most of Vermeer’s subjects are female, that he was “painting for women.”  In fact, his audience was mainly men, who are more strongly attracted to female subjects.  Vermeer, whose sharp, clear Netherlandish details are quite different from the blurry French artists, did not “invent an early version of what would later be known as Impressionism.”

G-D’s grasp of history is equally erroneous.  He states that the Dutch land was a “safe haven” that “protected them from their enemies, in particular the mighty Spanish.”  But in 1567 the Spanish under the Duke of Alva successfully invaded and occupied the country for 92 years and committed mass executions when towns were captured.  The French under King Louis XIV invaded Holland again in 1672, and the Franco-Dutch War lasted until 1678.  It’s not true that in 1666 “there were no Jews in England to convert.”  In fact, Oliver Cromwell admitted Jews in 1656 and King Charles II allowed them to remain in the country.  In “To His Coy Mistress,” Andrew Marvell noted their presence in the early 1650s and wrote, “You should, if you please, refuse / Till the conversion of the Jews.”

Vermeer was raised in the Arminian tradition.  But G-D doesn’t tell his anglophone readers that John Milton’s theological beliefs in De Doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost were strongly influenced by Arminianism, a 17th-century Protestant doctrine that emphasized free will over the strict Calvinist belief in predestination.   G-D rejects the universally accepted idea that Vermeer “stopped painting religious themes and switched to more modern and secular subjects.”  He claims that “painting for Vermeer was a form of religious contemplation,” that “he was a profoundly religious artist who seems to have regarded painting as a form of devotion.”  By exclaiming that “Vermeer was a painter not of things but of ideas,” G-D reverses William Carlos Williams’ modern belief in “The Red Wheelbarrow”: “No ideas but in things.”

Vermeer’s late secular pictures—The Astronomer and The Geographer—have the same domestic subjects, tone and mood as the ones G-D calls his religious works.  Christian symbols clearly appear in Vermeer’s early pictures, but there’s no evidence for religious interpretations of his secular paintings.  If his patrons had wanted religious pictures, he could have painted them.  Instead, he gave them what they asked for and what has been universally admired: his brilliant genre pictures of harmonious people in “peaceful rooms flooded with light.”

Examining the colored photos in G-D’s book exposes his refusal to see what’s in Vermeer’s paintings, the absurdity of his distortions and the radical weakness of his religious thesis.  Cornelis van Haarlem’s The Massacre of the Innocents is a much more powerful protest “against the futility and emptiness of war” than Gerard ter Borch’s placid solitary Man on Horseback.  G-D perversely declares that the titles of Woman with a Balance and The Milkmaid, which accurately describe the paintings, are misleading modern inventions for “A young lady weighing gold” and “A maid pouring out milk.”  Without concrete evidence, it’s impossible to believe that these women are “modern dress incarnations of the biblical Martha and Mary,” and that Woman with a Water Pitcher portrays the Woman of Samaria in the New Testament.

The two realistic, domestic, musical, static, 17th-century women in The Guitar Player and A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal do not at all look like “angels sent from above” nor “messengers from another realm.”  G-D even repaints the superbly realistic View of Delft, which Proust called “the most beautiful picture in the world.”  Though he admits we cannot see it, “a rainbow at our backs must be there.  It is not a representation of reality; it is a dream, a prophetic vision,” in his mind alone.

G-D asserts that Vermeer was influenced by two Italian artists.  In his early religious pictures, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and St. Praxedis (the locale of Robert Browning’s poem “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church”), the subjects, like those in Italian pictures by Vaccaro and Fischerelli, are traditional. There is no reason to suppose that the infinitely superior Vermeer copied the mediocre Italian pictures, and that his sitting Christ was “lifted directly” from Vaccaro’s standing Christ.  G-D states, “for Vermeer to have seen them, both pictures or variants of them would have had to have been imported to the Dutch Republic.”  Not true.  He could have seen copies of many Italian pictures in engravings.  Since there’s no documentary proof, it is pure fantasy—without a shred of fact, reference or hearsay—to claim that Vermeer “travelled to Italy between 1650 and 1652.”

D-G goes off the rails when he absurdly compares the woman in Vermeer’s A Lady Writing to paintings of St. Jerome and St. Matthew, and to Michelangelo’s wildly different Delphic Sibyl.  His frequent comparisons to Caravaggio, the subject of his previous work, are always wide of the mark.  A Maid Asleep is not in “the transports of a mystical vision.”  She’s more likely dreaming about her next chore or next meal.  G-D mentions that the peach in Girl Reading a Letter “resembles the female sex,” but ignores the sexual suggestion of the Maid’s “wrinkled plums.”

Vermeer’s The Procuress could hardly represent the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  The impoverished Son in the Bible was not lavishly dressed and did not fondle his mother’s breast.  This work is more satirical than the supposedly satirical The Glass of Wine and Young Woman with a Wine Glass.  In Diana and Her Companions, the furled white cloth at the bottom of the picture does not resemble the dove of the Holy Spirit.  In Christian paintings the Holy Ghost always appears in Heaven and does not lie on the ground like a pigeon.

G-D states that the title of Mistress and Maid is a misnomer.  In his most misguided statement he insists that the real story probably may portray “a decent woman shocked by an indecent proposal as she receives King David’s letter urging her to commit adultery with him.”  But nothing in this picture connects the woman to Bathsheba and nothing is known about the contents of the letter.  Since the mistress hasn’t yet read the letter, she can’t be shocked by its contents.  G-D illogically concludes, “Bathsheba, if this is she, clearly knows who sent it.”

Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window does not remotely resemble an Annunciation.  G-D irrelevantly cites the pagan Gyges, who in Herodotus secretly observes the naked queen and then kills the king.  He also argues that the image of Cupid on the far wall confirms that “this had always been a marriage picture.”  The son of the mythological Venus, Cupid is the god of the erotic, volatile, dangerous and blind nature of love.  He is not “the emblem of a love that is true and honest,” not “the symbol of faithful love, the lover who cleaves to just one beloved.” He hardly represents sacred love in marriage.  It is absurd to imagine the lubricious Cupid in Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride or Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding, though G-D pointlessly compares this Vermeer to Van Eyck’s portrayal of consecrated love.  He even contradicts himself by saying that in The Milkmaid “a painted Cupid tells us that she has put romantic love and its temptations behind her.”  According to G-D, Cupid means completely different things in two pictures by Vermeer.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is G-D’s most ludicrous example of mad speculation.  He declares that “Vermeer’s portrait of her character may have been painted to mark a rite of passage.  It could have been done either before or after the baptism itself, so it was probably completed sometime in 1667 or 1668.”  (See endnote.)  The model’s name was Magdalena, but her portrait is not about Mary Magdalene, nor is it a “macrocosm of divine love.”  Despite his claim, she’s not “experiencing a life-changing revelation, realizing that the only true pearl is the kingdom of heaven.”  But he cannot possibly know what the girl is thinking.  He says the blank wall “gives the room the feel of a chapel, within which the young woman takes on the character of a priest at the altar”—though at that time female priests did not exist.  He concludes “the empty chairs in Vermeer mark the place of Christ.  If we are looking at her and she is looking at Jesus, then we must be standing in His shoes,” which places a heavy burden on the spectator.  G-D doesn’t see that a subtle white triangle leads down from the girl’s right eye to her teeth and to her earring.  In 17th-century Netherlands precious pearls gathered by skilled divers in the Dutch East Indies were not spiritual, but material symbols of worldly wealth and status.

The Lacemaker is the worst example of his absurd distortions.  We cannot see this seated woman’s abdomen and cannot know if she is pregnant.  Nothing in the picture suggests that it portrays “the love of a young mother-to-be for her unborn child.”  G-D maintains that “the sewing cushion and the red threads that pour into it, are like the arterial flow of a mother’s blood nourishing the placenta.”  This is the first time in biological history that an embryo has been created from lace threads.

Endnote.  This book is based on many wild speculations that creep illogically to false conclusions: as if, so if, so maybe, may also, may indeed, perhaps, probably; possible, seems possible, raises the possibility, possibility is remote, possibility cannot be ruled out, only possibility, possible visit; it seems, she seems, seems to, seemingly, seems likely, likely to have been; may have, may have been, might almost, might have been, would have been, may have spent, could have, would have to be, must have seen, must have been, can only have been; seems unlikely, unlikely to be true, more than likely; may be explained, hinting strongly, we can make a guess of it, reveals by inference, strengthens the hypothesis, almost certainly; tempting to think so, tempting to speculate, tempting to believe.

Jeffrey Meyers, FRSL, has published Painting and the Novel, biographies of Wyndham Lewis and Modigliani, Impressionist Quartet and a study of the Canadian realist painter Alex Colville.

His book, The Biographer’s Quest, appeared in April 2026.