Video No. 6063. English Language Pal VHS.
An Exploration of Art on Film.
'Light, Love And Silence'.
Directed by Michael Gill.
Jan Vermeer (1632-75) was little known outside Holland either during his lifetime or for more than two hundred years after his death, yet he is now acknowledged to be one of the most gifted and intriguing painters of the 17th century.
In 1995-96 the first major exhibition of his work for three hundred years was mounted in The Hague and Washington DC, attracting an exceptional number of visitors. His intimate depiction of domestic interiors and the tenderness that he shows towards his sitters imbue his paintings with a degree of humanity and dignity that is extremely rare and deeply touching.
This film looks at the social, political and scientific context in which this most enigmatic of painters lived, from the birth of an independent Dutch society to developments in the fields of optics, astronomy and geography that so transformed the 17th century. Vermeer left no papers, no drawings, no clues as the meaning or intention of his paintings, and he died leaving such substantial debts that this widow was forced to sell all his work.
This film demonstrates how modern technology can go some way to unravelling his revolutionary techniques and his exploratory process of pictorial composition. Academics including Dr Jonathan Miller and Svetlana Alpers discuss the ambiguous nature and meaning of Vermeer's settings and subjects, the formal simplicity and intensity of feeling that make his jewel-like paintings so moving.
