the blockbuster John Vermeer show the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam continues to teach us about the Dutch Golden Age master, with experts from the museum symposium in March featuring X-ray evidence that the artist painted over a self-portrait in his work A good sleeper.
The painting, in the collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, shows a young woman dozing at a table, seated in front of a half-open door. A preliminary examination of the work had revealed the presence of a man in the doorway, painted over it in the final version. The main theory about this mysterious presence was that it could have represented girl’s lover.
But Met conservator Dorothy Mahon and researcher Silvia Centeno have been conducting new, non-invasive research into the painting using the latest technology. This revealed the figure in unprecedented detail. Now, thanks to X-ray fluorescence, we can see that the man appears to be reaching out as if holding a paintbrush, and that the door was originally an easel.
Mahon and Centeno detailed these findings at the symposium in a presentation titled “A Maid Asleep and Study of a Young Woman: Recent Findings From Imaging and Chemical Analysis.”
X-ray by Johannes Vermeer A good sleeper (c. 1656-1657), in which a hidden figure of a man can be seen in the doorway. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Art historian Martin Bailey has since built on their work, suggesting in the art diary that Vermeer not only included his self-portrait in the painting, but would have painted his reflection in a mirror on the wall.
It might have been inspired by one of his Dutch contemporaries, Nicholas Maes, who lived less than 20 miles away. Although there is no evidence that they knew each other, the two could very well have met. And around 1655, Maes painted The ugly drummerwhich features a mirror on the back wall where the artist’s reflection can be seen, holding a brush.
Nicholas Maes, The ugly drummer (circa 1655). Collection of the Thyssen Collection, Madrid.
It is possible that Vermeer saw this work before painting A good sleeperwhich would date from 1656 or ’57.
If the artist did in fact base his hidden self-portrait on his reflection – and he included mirrors in other paintings, and is known to have owned one based on the inventory of his house when he died – that could mean that the painting does not actually represent a maid, but the model of an artist who has fallen asleep while posing.
Nicholas Maes, The ugly drummer (ca. 1655), detail showing the artist’s self-portrait reflected in the mirror. Collection of the Thyssen Collection, Madrid.
Other studies presented at the symposium include a new argument that a Philadelphia Museum of Art painting long assumed to be a copy of The guitar playerfrom the London collection Kenwood HouseEast makes it an authentic vermeer. The symposium accompanied “Vermeer”, the the biggest exhibition of the artist’s work all time. THE sell to show is on view for another month.
“Vermeeris exhibited at the Rijksmuseum, Museumstraat 1, Amsterdam, From February 10 to June 4, 2023.
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