Dutch Mona Lisa

I visited the Mauritshuis in The Hague twice last week. First with my upstairs neighbor’s little baby daughter and her grandmother, second with an American nephew and one of my younger brothers.

The Mauritshuis houses the work of some fine Dutch painters of our Golden Century such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Johannes Vermeer. The three of them created a true revolution in art. And it wasn’t simply technique or angle, or even the reflection of light and darkness that made them unique in depicting the scenes and people of their time.

Most of all the Dutch painters of the 17th century captured the spirit of their day. They had left the elegance and refinement of the Renaissance behind them and had fully immersed in the energy and seriousness, mixed with the joyful passion of the new age of enterprise and human independence.

Vermeer’s girl with the pearl earring – as the painting is officially known (*) – can truly count as the Dutch Mona Lisa. A furtive young woman, busy with her chores, looking straight into the lense, alsmost literally, of Vermeer’s Camera Obscura. Her expression is a far cry from the sensual expression of many of Da Vinci’s women. Yet it is difficult not to be moved by her seeming innocence and the sensuality of the painter’s brush that captured this one second of her life.


Portrait by Frans Hals

The portrait of the man with a hat by Hals is of quite a different nature. But it is a snapshot in much the same way. With quick brushes Frans Hals depicts almost the entire inner life of a joyful, relaxed individual who seems to have come by for just a cup of coffee (or a pint of beer) before moving on.

This year is Rembrandt’s 400th birthday. He is the other historic celebrity next to Mozart to whom much of the Art world has dedicated AD 2006 as a year of commemoration. Rembrandt left us his selfportraits from his early adolescence up to the last year of his life. The portrait depicted below looks very similar to the pictures people nowadays take of themselves with their cellphone. Rembrandt is looking at himself as if he were saying: “Man, what have you done?” Here is a man, selfconscious and very much aware of the fortunes and misfortunes that had befallen him. Is he making excuses, or is he simply trying to make an assessment of himself, in full knowledge of his own weaknesses, not dissimilar from the questions the Apostle St. Paul might have asked whom he represents in this painting?


Rembrandt's selfportrait as St. Paul

It is a great pleasure to be able to visit the lives of people of so many centuries ago. But it is an even greater pleasure, of course, to transmit this enjoyment to people of new generations, whether it is a little baby or an American nephew.
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(*) A few years ago Vermeer's painting was the subject of a wonderful movie "Girl with the pearl earring", starring Scarlet Johansson in the title role. I recommend this movie to anyone interested in a credible representation of the stern family life in a Dutch town back in the 1600s.