CHAPTER 12 THE REFORMED PAINTING: THE XVII CENTURY NETHERLANDS
Jacques rouveyrol
I . REFORM
Against a policy of the Roman Church faces the temporal greatness, Luther and Calvin undertake the reform . The Gospel is only source of truth and salvation lies in faith, not works. It can not be bought by "indulgences." In salvation, grace and predestination play an essential role (Calvin). There is a questioning of priestly celibacy, monastic vows, sacraments, and worship images.
II. THE SCENE OF GENDER
1. From Luther to Calvin, the position of iconoclastic reform strengthens. The image religion is excluded. The painting turned therefore to the profane to the everyday. The Netherlands developed the genre scene .
The impossibility of representing religious scenes led painters to turn to scenes of everyday life. the heroes of God, saints, are substituted for ordinary heroes. A history painting succeeds genre scenes (with landscape and portrait). At the extraordinary succeeds daily.
The impossibility of representing religious scenes led painters to turn to scenes of everyday life. the heroes of God, saints, are substituted for ordinary heroes. A history painting succeeds genre scenes (with landscape and portrait). At the extraordinary succeeds daily.
The Middle Ages was already human activity (next to the saints) but systematic way as part of a comprehensive classification of such activities in the calendar . Or as attribute of a particular saint (Joseph is a carpenter).
In the sixteenth century, already, the secular genres were beginning to gain some independence from the religious paintings: portraits, landscapes, still lifes (eg Caravaggio Basket of Fruit Milan Pinacoteca Ambrosiana 1596)
's XVII S Dutch will take human activity itself and for itself. Without distortion (a woman to the bathroom will not be a Bathsheba bathing , even if sometimes the ambiguity remains, the Bathsheba Bathing, Rembrandt, 1654, precisely is both a Woman Washing ). The genre scene (deemed less than the Painting History) painted so daily.
In general, the interpretation is likely to reveal three meanings:
1.The allegorical meaning: the table is the coded representation of an abstraction. The woman shown below is an allegory of faith. 
.............................................. . Vermeer The Allegory of the Faith 1671-1674 New Yort, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
.............................................. . Vermeer The Allegory of the Faith 1671-1674 New Yort, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2. The historical sense: the table is the representation of a mythological or historical scene. This learned applied to the study is Saint Jerome.
;;;;;;................................... ...................... Massys (entourage) Saint Jerome 1520 Dusseldorf, Kunstmuseum 3. The generic sense: the table is the representation of a certain activity. Is a music scene.
......................................... .............................. Gerard Ter Borch Concert 1657 Paris, Louvre
When a table has neither a sense of history nor an allegorical meaning it is determined as a genre scene.
Dutch genre scene rejects anything that is not daily. She painted a soldier? Yes, but asleep
The paper is broken down into two areas: the inside (feminine, peaceful, virtuous), outside the (male, confrontational, vicious).
Inside, women embody the domestic virtues (food, cleaning, home maintenance, child rearing). The woman is at home. Yet the situation of the latter is highly valued. It is even more valuable (virtue) than humans (Vice). It enjoys great freedom (in the house, it is true) and largely contribute to the business of the economy (domestic). She is educated to educate its children Outside, the men show their fragility, their bribes (intemperance, drunkenness). The man remains the master, certainly, but a master fragile, weak, easily led to debauchery.
2. Is it then only to note? To paint reality as it is, without more? Not even in the seventeenth century. "Realism" and symbolism coexist in Dutch painting. Symbolism moralizing.
a. The Dutch painting, in fact, is not realistic . She paints daily but not all daily. In addition, she does not refuse "quote", that is to say the reference to the painting itself. The artists borrow from each other: they also painted the painting. The same year Vermeer and Pieter de Hoock paint a Woman Libra . Vermeer painted glass of wine (1660-1661 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) and Gerard Ter Borch
the Gentleman by drinking a lady (Buckingham Palace) very likenesses.
the Gentleman by drinking a lady (Buckingham Palace) very likenesses.
b. Dutch painting is symbolic .
-> symbolism "neutral" : Often, in Vermeer in particular, we find a table in the table . It is precisely this picture that gives meaning of the work. Towards that turns this woman? The Cupid table suspended over his head leaves no doubt: it is to a man.
The Lady In writing of 1665 Vermeer again, The gloomy picture on the wall is a still life with musical instruments including a bass viol: it refers to harmony in love is the subject of correspondence maintained by the woman.
And yet, in The Love Letter (1669-1670) of the same artist, the teacher's concern is not only contradicted by the smile of the girl, but also by the calm sea hanging on the wall, meaning both the journey of the letter and a good omen in love.
Nevertheless, the interpretation of symbols is not always easy (it was not more in Flemish painting of the fifteenth century). Why, for example, in The Music Lesson (1662-1664) Vermeer (see below) the face of the girl in the mirror, which bends over the keyboard of the spruce, it is straightened and turned (to the gentleman)? Why in The Reader to Window (also lower) face in profile it is reflected from the front?
Either Woman with a Pearl Necklace (1664) below. Is it vanity? (Woman admiring herself in the mirror, pearl necklace sexual connotation). Do not forget that the mirror is also an attribute of Prudence and Truth. The beads are also associated with faith, purity and virginity. Only the calm and serenity of the woman rather suggest a positive meaning of integrity, truthfulness and purity.
-> A moral symbolism (inspired emblems: leaflets or books both popular with a title, a picture, a short text, the overall worth or moral lesson technical advice). · is praise on the domestic virtues ..
- Or blame on the excesses and vices, Pricipals: intemperance, sloth, lust.
-> symbolism "broad" showing relationships. Number of tables that are neither praise nor blame is thus devoted to the relationship, reading or writing the love letter, usability (with wine or music).
III. THE STILL LIFE
The Middle Ages is symbolic. On religious symbolism. The Flemish Renaissance is symbolic, unlike the Italian Renaissance. But the symbolism is hidden (Van Eyck, ...). The seventeenth century Dutch retains the symbolism, but symbolism hidden symbolism becomes profane : morale. The still life is his field of choice.
1. Allegories : still lifes (allegorical).
a. The pleasure of the senses: 
b. Sensual pleasure and vanity of this same pleasure
b. Sensual pleasure and vanity of this same pleasure 
2. Vanities (booster of death: memento mori ) ... 
... ..................................... ................................................ First known vanity ... ... and immortalizing the power of painting. (Below the skull reminded that death spares nobody, not even the artist who holds in one hand a self-portrait. But this self-portrait is what survive to the artist. The triumph of art death he denounces and ensure the immortality of that key).
3. Vanity : rich table (first third of the seventeenth). The vanities are there to remind people of the transience of worldly pleasures and earthly life. They aim to denounce the low value of the pleasures and life itself. Yet they do not preclude the exercise of this vanity: the exhibition of wealth. In times of famine, this wealth is manifested by the abundance : Table richly stocked.
4. Vanity : refined table (after the first third of the seventeenth), the period of starvation increased, wealth is best shown by the abundance in the choice of dishes and utensils presentation. This is the table refined. 
IV. THE LANDSCAPE
Calvin demands: it can only represent what can be seen. Men (genre scenes, portraits), things (lifes) and nature (landscape). We can not show "Heaven", then we will do the portrait of the Earth. In every detail.
Landscapes of the campaign, city views, sea is (paradoxically?) Above the sky which is painted. This sky where God no longer "allowed" to show themselves. V. STAY IN THE MOMENT
Beyond their symbolic meaning, the works of painters major attempt to capture in a daily activity that they suspend making gasoline of human life by the Dutch culture of the seventeenth century.This gesture is then torn from the banality and a sort of Olympus bourgeois has to be the heroes of which are no longer warriors or gods, but men and women rooted in life quotidienne.Du shot is a painting that is unless she does things and the scenes she figure.La Dutch painting of the seventeenth century is a painting of the presence.
No drama, no crisis, no story (s), but the existence of things, beings, matter. This will Chardin in the eighteenth century in France. This is manifested presence partour better than elsewhere in Vermeer. (Above, the famous Lacemaker 1658-1660) a. From private intimate
Vermeer painted only two views of outside (The Alley and View of Delft) in the interior but open windows through which one never sees. Better that reflect sometimes the inside. A visual barrier often intervenes between the viewer and we painted the subject. So there as an inside of it. That is what Vermeer painted.
................................... ...................... Vermeer Liseuse to Window (1647) The Music Lesson (1662-1664)
b. A close intimacy but inattégnable: secret .
Only the thread that is holding the lace is clean. The rest of the table is (slightly) blurry. We therefore see this thread with his eyes: privacy. But we do not see what it does: secret.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Gerad Ter Borch The Dispatch 1658-1659 Philadelphia Museum of Art At the concentration of lace or opposes devolution rather responds character witnesses, just as elusive. That look and think what this messenger The Dispatch? Or young women Curiosity (1660) or The paternal admonition (or Conversation galante 1654-1655) of the Ter Borch?
c. Light.
But Vermeer is also the painter of light. Who is the painter in this Vermeer Allegory? Visibly it is in the sketch. Vermeer but never makes a sketch. He uses a hand rest. But at this stage, the hand rest is superfluous. So this is not a painter Vermeer. Vermeer painted an Allegory of Painting , but the painter of painting something else: an Allegory of History . The picture is hard to read, as shown. So the paint is difficult to represent (it is difficult to make an allegory). That is why the card that makes the bottom of the table is unreadable. But what makes it unreadable? light reflected off it. This means that there is a mystery paint . This aims to restore the light . However, light is the only visible thing that we can not paint (that will challenge the Impressionists but at the cost of a radical change in the painting itself).
Conclusion: Out, because of the Reformation, with religious paintings of the Italian Renaissance, but in the very movement of the Renaissance who had left for heaven Earth (a land populated by heroes, saints or gods of mythology), the Netherlands are intended to paint daily.
Through the genre scenes and still lifes, is the presence beings and things is affirmed. Instead the gods descend in the world, it is the people and things of this world, amounting to an essential mode of existence. And that essence is in their privacy to be discovered and that fixes it.
VI. APPENDIX 1 : FLANDERS
The Netherlands converted to the Reformation were therefore also converted their painting.
But the North is also Flanders, remained Catholic and attracted from the South: Italy and France:
School of Antwerp: .. Jacob Jordaens 1593 - 1678
............................. Pieter Paul Rubens 1577 - 1640
............................. Antony van Dick 1599 - 1641
1. These painters of "Nordic" their commitment to the daily and do not loath to paint genre scenes. But they also have a side "southerner," "Italian" that leads to history painting (religious or mythological).
2. Sometimes history painting is an excuse for the genre scene. Thus Jesus with Martha and Mary (scene already used in this sense by the way Peter Ansver the sixteenth s but will be even by Velasquez) is a pretext to develop a still life which, combined with the meeting "historic" of Christ with the two women, is a genre. "
VII. APPENDIX 2: THE CATHOLIC NETHERLANDS
In the Netherlands, some pockets of resistance "Catholic (as Utrecht) see the development of a historical painting influenced by Italy (and especially Caravaggio)
1. Utrecht School: Hendrick Terbrugghen 1588 - 1629
............................... Gerrit van Honthorst 1590 - 1656
Again, we follow the Italian tradition of history painting. But it is his country, its culture, Dutch. So it also makes the genre scene.
2. Rembrandt, finally, the biggest excels both in one area than in another.
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