Word: vermeere
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Fact: Johannes Vermeer (1632-75) was a Dutch painter with a sketchy biography and exacting pictures that continue to astonish more than three centuries after his death. Fiction: an illiterate girl named Greit, 17, a servant in the Vermeer household, was the model for the artist's celebrated portrait Girl with a Pearl Earring...
Tracy Chevalier is cautious with fact and adventurous with fiction in her novel, aptly titled Girl with a Pearl Earring (Dutton; 240 pages; $23.95). Vermeer's activities as an art dealer and tavern operator are not pushed further than the thready historical record. Greit, on the other hand, is a full literary creation with the candid radiance of the Vermeer canvas. Through her eyes, we also get a close, bottom-up perspective on life in the city of Delft at a time when Holland was a leading maritime nation...
Chevalier is especially adept at character studies: imperious burghers, butchers, biddies and crones. It's as if, after scrutinizing Vermeer's masterworks (and doing the required reading), she began to think and feel like a 17th century Delfter...
...trick, of course, is to convey that sense of place and the texture of Vermeer's achievement without sounding like an art-history major. Chevalier's way is to have Greit assigned to clean Vermeer's studio, where she can observe the artist playing with light and color. Taken by Greit's fresh face and openness, Vermeer encourages the girl's curiosity. He solicits her comments and soon has her grinding his pigments...
...time he died, in 1978, Rockwell occupied a place somewhere between Vermeer and Disney, a hard spot to locate, much less evaluate. But whatever else he was, Rockwell was the road not traveled. You go through this show wondering what 20th century art might have been like if it had not been so quick to put aside anecdote, draftsmanship and the raptures of watching paint do its dead-on imitations of other stuff. In short, what it might have been like if it valued more what Rockwell did. Given the essential places where painting had to go, places where Rockwell...