Baroque1660
The Glass of Wine
Johannes Vermeer
Curator's Eye
"The heraldic stained-glass window representing Temperance, watching the young woman finish her glass, creating a silent moral counterpoint to the suggested inebriation."
A genre scene of rare elegance where Vermeer explores the ambiguity of a gallant encounter, oscillating between the intoxication of the senses and moral warning.
Analysis
Painted around 1660, "The Glass of Wine" belongs to Johannes Vermeer's period of full maturity. The historical context is the Dutch Golden Age, a time when the United Provinces dominated world trade, favoring the emergence of a bourgeois class eager for representations of its own refinement. Unlike his contemporaries like Pieter de Hooch, Vermeer sublimes the genre scene by infusing it with an almost sacred tranquility, transforming a trivial moment of seduction into a meditation on light and space.
The mythological and allegorical analysis is subtly concealed in everyday life. There are no gods here, but moral symbols. The stained glass in the window is the key element: it depicts a female figure holding a bridle, a traditional attribute of Temperance. This "myth of virtue" overlooks the young woman drinking, suggesting that intoxication is a danger to the soul. The presence of the musical instrument on the chair in the foreground refers to the myth of Orpheus or romantic harmony, but here, the lute is neglected, perhaps signifying that harmony is threatened by the rush of desire.
Technically, Vermeer demonstrates unparalleled mastery of perspective and reflectance. The tiled floor, rendered with mathematical precision, guides the eye to the center of the action. The light, coming from the left, passes through the stained glass to die on the bright red satin of the lady's dress. The artist uses the "pointillé" technique to render reflections on the white earthenware jug and on the gold frame of the painting on the wall. The texture of objects—the velvet of the tablecloth, the transparency of the glass crystal—is of a realism that goes beyond simple imitation to reach a form of visual poetry.
The psychology of the work lies in the silent and unbalanced interaction between the two characters. The man, standing and still in motion, holds the jug, ready to refill for the lady, while she drinks her glass in one go, her face half-masked by the crystal. This gesture masks her expression, leaving a mystery over her consent or her disturbance. The atmosphere is charged with a contained tension; the domestic setting, orderly and luxurious, seems to be the silent witness to an internal drama where reason struggles against the abandonment to the senses.
A secret revealed by modern scientific imaging (X-rays and infrared reflectography) is that Vermeer modified several crucial elements during creation. Originally, a small figure of a man was visible through the open door, but the artist covered it to reinforce the claustrophobic intimacy of the scene. Furthermore, the painting within the painting, hanging on the back wall, is an Italianate-style landscape, often interpreted as a symbol of aspiration for distant freedom or a reminder of the dangers of the outside world.
A fascinating anecdote concerns the stained glass. The coats of arms depicted belonged to the family of Janetge Jacobsdr. Vogel, a family from Delft. This suggests that the painting could have been a specific commission or that Vermeer used elements of his immediate environment to anchor his allegories in local reality. Recent pigment analyses show the intensive use of natural ultramarine (lapis lazuli), a pigment more expensive than gold, for the shadows of fabrics and stained glass, proving the importance Vermeer placed on the chromatic vibration of this work.
Finally, the glass itself hides a feat: the liquid inside is painted with a striking economy of means, a few touches of white and red sufficient to suggest the refraction of light through the wine. Mystery persists over the identity of the models, although some historians believe they recognize the artist's wife, Catharina Bolnes, lending her features to this exploration of female vulnerability in the face of masculine advances.
Join Premium.
UnlockQuiz
What is the woman in the painting doing?
Discover
