Word: vermeere
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...only the latest in a series of art thefts that have run through Europe like a plague in the past several weeks. But in some ways it was the most painful for art lovers. Vermeer was among the greatest of all painters, but he painted few pictures, and fewer still survive-no more than 36. Three weeks ago, a thief cut one of those precious 36 out of its frame in Brussels' Palais des Beaux-Arts, where it was on loan from Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. The place was closed for the night, four guards were on duty...
...cheered, jeered, envied and snubbed. This unusual woman viewed the streets of Cambridge and Boston as canals leading to her inside-out, quasi-Venetian palace just across from the Museum of Fine Arts, on the Fens of Boston. With a mere handkerchief she outbid Europe for a Vermeer, and with her husband's shipping fortune she bought a great collection of Italian paintings...
Even before Berenson began to cultivate Mrs. Jack's taste in the arts, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Gardner had bought a few paintings on their own- based on their own likes and dislikes. The Concert by Vermeer was bought at the Hotel Druout auction galleries in Paris in 1892; the little Dutch girl seated at the piano with the light streaming in through the window captivated Belle Gardner. In the Gardner Museum's Dutch room today, where the light falls on the stone floor, the Vermeer shines as one of the most exquisite of the artist's works anywhere...
...Gardner Museum is in fact Mrs. Jack's jewel box with its own Vermeer quality of natural lighting, stone floors, Gothic windows, and Flemish tapestries. The spring flowers that fill the courtyard intertwine with the Venetian stone and grow into ornamented columns. Her museum is a refuge from the noise, the pollution, and the threatening man-made environment today; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, unchanged in all these years, is one brief moment caught from fleeting time...
Leaving the exhibition, one can't help but remember a kaleidoscope of images: Sassetta's Magi colorfully dotting a hill, the light passing through the stained-glass window of Vermeer's work, the strength of Picasso's Gertrude Stein, Rousseau's Tropics, with a monkey that looks like he's blowing bubbles with orange bubble gum, or Pollock's Autumn Rhythm defying the limits of its canvas. As if each color of Morris Louis' "unfurled" is a work from the show, one sees them falling off to the sides leaving a space of white light shining from the center...