View of Delft - Johannes Vermeer

View of Delft is a painting by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is an oil on canvas and is 98 x 118 cm. It was started in 1660 and finished in 1661. The genre is landscape art, and in the time it was painted, cityscapes were not a popular subject for paintings. It is one of three of his paintings of Delft. The other two being The Little Street, and House Standing in Delft, which is lost.

When looking at this picture the eye is immediately draw to the cityscape, however after a longer period of time, one notices that the sky takes up more than half of the canvas. Clouds cover most of the blue, and at the very top is an ominous, looming thundercloud. At the bottom on the canvas there is more detail, and an even greater amount in the middle. In the bottom left hand corner is a group of people conversing. There is a woman and her child, a man talking to a couple, and two older women off to the side. They are all wearing traditional clothing. Just above them is the Schie Canal and several types of boats. These include a tow barge, sailing ships, tow barges, and herring busses.

The larger tower in the back to the right of the channel is the New Church. In the actual city of Delft, the New and Old Church are just as grand and assuming. However, in Vermeer's painting, the New Church is pictured nearly twice as wide and much more prominently. Furthermore, the bell tower appears to be empty. However, it has been proven that during the summer of 1660, the bells were taken for restoration. Some of the other buildings are the Rotterdam Gate, part of which are the twin towers in the picture, the Schiedam gate, the Armamentarium, and the Kethel gate.

Among art historians, there is a debate as to whether or not Vermeer used a camera obscura, the precursor to the modern photographic camera, to aid him in painting this cityscape. The lengthy depth and immaculate focus of all the details in the painting lead many to believe it would have been impossible to do with the naked eye. Others believe he used an inverted telescope to view the scene rather than a camera obscura.



Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_Delft
http://kalden.home.xs4all.nl/verm/ship/Ships_main.html
http://kalden.home.xs4all.nl/verm/view/Vermeer_main.html
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/v/vermeer/02c/13view.html
http://www.artble.com/artists/johannes_vermeer/paintings/view_of_delft
http://www.learner.org/courses/globalart/work/177/index.html