''The Procuress'' (Dutch: ''De koppelaarster'') is a 1656 oil-on-canvas painting by the then 24-year-old

Johannes Vermeer Johannes Vermeer ( , ; see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch ...

. It can be seen in the in

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

. It is his first

genre painting Genre painting (or petit genre) is the painting of genre art, which depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity ca ...

and shows a scene of contemporary life, an image of mercenary love perhaps in a

brothel A brothel, strumpet house, bordello, bawdy house, ranch, house of ill repute, house of ill fame, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activity with prostitutes. For legal or cultural reasons, establis ...

. It differs from his earlier biblical and mythological scenes. It is one of only three paintings Vermeer signed and dated (the other two are '' The Astronomer'' and ''

The Geographer ''The Geographer'' (Dutch: ) is a painting created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in 1668–1669, and is now in the collection of the Städel museum in Frankfurt, Germany. It is closely related to Vermeer's ''The Astronomer (painting), The Ast ...

''). In 1696 the painting, being sold on an auction in Amsterdam, was named "A merry company in a room". The woman in black, the leering coupler, "in a nun's costume", could be the eponymous procuress, while the man to her right, "wearing a black beret and a doublet with slashed sleeves", has been identified as a

self portrait Self-portraits are Portrait painting, portraits artists make of themselves. Although self-portraits have been made since the earliest times, the practice of self-portraiture only gaining momentum in the Early Renaissance in the mid-15th century ...

of the artist; there is a resemblance with the painter in Vermeer's '' The Art of Painting''. It seems Vermeer was influenced by earlier works on the same subject by Gerard ter Borch, and '' The Procuress'' (c. 1622) by

Dirck van Baburen Dirck Jaspersz. van Baburen ( – 21 February 1624) was a Dutch people, Dutch Painting, painter and one of the Utrecht School, Utrecht Caravaggisti. Biography Dirck van Baburen was probably born in Wijk bij Duurstede, but his family moved to ...

, which was owned by Vermeer's mother-in-law Maria Thins and hung in her home. Some critics thought the painting is atypical of Vermeer's style and expression, because it lacks the typical light. Pieter Swillens wrote in 1950 that—if the work was by Vermeer at all—it showed the artist "seeking and groping" to find a suitable mode of expression. Eduard Trautscholdt wrote 10 years before that "The temperament of the 24-year-old Vermeer fully emerges for the first time".. The jug on the

oriental rug An oriental rug is a heavy textile made for a wide variety of utilitarian and symbolic purposes and produced in "Orient, Oriental countries" for home use, local sale, and export. Oriental carpets can be knotted-pile carpet, pile woven or Kilim, ...

is a piece of Westerwald Pottery. The kelim thrown over a bannister, probably produced in

Uşak Uşak () is a city in the interior part of the Aegean Region of Turkey. It is the seat of Uşak Province and Uşak District.medallion A medal or medallion is a small portable artistic object, a thin disc, normally of metal, carrying a design, usually on both sides. They typically have a commemorative purpose of some kind, and many are presented as awards. They may be in ...

s and

leaves A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, stem, ...

. The instrument is probably a cittern. The dark coat with five buttons was added by Vermeer in a later stage. The man in the red jacket, a soldier, is fondling the young woman's breast and dropping a coin into her outstretched hand. According to Benjamin Binstock, this "dark and gloomy" painting could be understood as a psychological portrait of his adopted family and does not represent a didactic message. Binstock says Vermeer used his family as models; the procuress could be Vermeer's wife Catherina and the lewd soldier her brother Willem.

Provenance and exhibitions

The painting was in the Waldstein collection in Dux (now Duchcov), then bought in 1741 for August III of Poland, the Elector of Saxony. The painting was exhibited in 1980 at the ''Restaurierte Kunstwerke in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republic'' exhibit in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Altes Museum. This painting should not be confused with another painting by the same name, by Dirck van Baburen, nor with a fake version once attributed to Vermeer, of which technical analysis in 2011 revealed that there is

Bakelite Bakelite ( ), formally , is a thermosetting polymer, thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, formed from a condensation reaction of phenol with formaldehyde. The first plastic made from synthetic components, it was developed by Belgian chemist ...

in the paint, definitively proving that the painting is a modern forgery. It was most probably executed by the notorious forger,

Han van Meegeren Henricus Antonius "Han" van Meegeren (; 10 October 1889 – 30 December 1947) was a Dutch painter and portraitist, considered one of the most ingenious Art forgery, art forgers of the 20th century. Van Meegeren became a national hero after World ...

, who was responsible for producing several fake Vermeers and known to use said resin to harden the paint.

Painting materials

The technical investigation of this painting was done in 1968 by Hermann Kühn. The pigment analysis revealed Vermeer's use of his usual pigments such as

ultramarine Ultramarine is a deep blue pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder. Its lengthy grinding and washing process makes the natural pigment quite valuable—roughly ten times more expensive than the stone it comes fr ...

in the blue wine jug and

lead-tin-yellow Lead-tin yellow is a yellow pigment, of historical importance in oil painting, sometimes called the "Yellow of the Old Masters" because of the frequency with which it was used by those famous painters. Nomenclature The name lead-tin yellow is ...

in the jacket of the woman. He also employed

smalt Cobalt glass—known as "smalt" when ground as a pigment—is a deep blue coloured glass prepared by including a cobalt compound, typically cobalt oxide or cobalt carbonate, in a glass melt. Cobalt is a very intense colouring agent and very litt ...

in the green parts of the tablecloth and in the greenish background which is less usual for him.

References

External links

''The Procuress'' - Essential Vermeer website''The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer''
exhibition catalog fully online as PDF from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on the painting
Johannes Vermeer, ''The Procuress''
Colourlex {{DEFAULTSORT:Procuress, The Collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Genre paintings by Johannes Vermeer 1656 paintings Food and drink paintings Prostitution in paintings

Provenance and exhibitions

Painting materials

See also

References

Further reading

External links