Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found | Andrew Graham-Dixon; Guest Co-Host Prof. Philip Eliasoph
Join Michael in his conversation with Andrew Graham-Dixon about his new book Vermeer, A Life Lost and Found which is a groundbreaking study of the seventeenth century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.
Andrew is a British art historian, art critic, author and broadcaster and one of the leading art critics and presenters of arts television in the English-speaking world. He has presented numerous landmark series on art for the BBC and in the course of his storied career, has won numerous awards for writing and broadcasting.
Joining Michael as a special guest to help facilitate this conversation is Dr. Philip Eliasoph, Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Dr. Eliasoph is a Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Book Notes
The paintings of Johannes Vermeer of Delft are some of the most beautiful, even sublime, in the history of art. Yet, like the life of Vermeer himself, they are mysterious and have for centuries defied explanation. Following new leads, and drawing on a mass of historical evidence, some of it freshly uncovered in the archives of Delft and Rotterdam, Andrew Graham-Dixon paints a dramatically new picture of Vermeer and vividly evokes the world of the Dutch Republic as it was in its so-called Golden Age.
Vermeer emerges from this account as a man deeply engaged with his society: well-travelled, a reader of books, a man personally connected to many of the most interesting people of his time, including merchants, philosophers, preachers, bankers, regents and bakers. He was also deeply affected by the struggles that shook his world: the Eighty Years War for Dutch independence and the yet more terrible Thirty Years War. Graham-Dixon shows how Vermeer was moved to become a pacifist by such atrocities, and thereafter made many of his closest friends in the ranks of Europe's first peace movement. He reveals that Vermeer's closest collaborator and chief patron was a woman. These are all previously untold stories, and they have a direct bearing on his art.
The many piercing descriptions of Vermeer's pictures, which are at the heart of the book, shed new light on his intentions. Graham-Dixon reveals that nearly all of Vermeer's best loved works were originally painted for a single significant location in Delft. Every one of his major paintings, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, View of Delft and The Milkmaid, are reassessed and their meanings rethought. The two great unresolved questions about Vermeer - why did he paint his pictures, and what do they mean? - are persuasively answered here for the first time.
Biography
Andrew Graham-Dixon
https://www.andrewgrahamdixon.com/books.html
Paintings Discussed
Philip Eliasoph
