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People keep coming to me and saying, oh, I've made this great life pilgrimage to try to see all the premieres in the world. And they have gone to London and to Berlin and to New York and then in Washington and Dresden to actually try to see them all together. So he has such an incredible hold on so many people that I think the real news is that the need to give him a broader public is so so urgent as the opportunity for all those who already love him and for those who don't yet know him to see his works together. Could you describe what it is that pulls people towards these paintings that makes them travel the world to see them? Well, he's magical painter, it's all I can say, and the images that he's created have such a strong visual impression. I mean, that people actually can sort of in their mind I see so many of his great works. I mean, you can see

woman pouring milk or you can see the little streets or the woman reading a letter. I mean, they're a lace maker. They're kind of images that capture the imagination and somehow stay with it probably because they're so few of them, I think. And to a large extent, they are very immediate images. They're images that are not locked in the 17th century. He's a very modern painter in that way. And he's sort of in a very universal painter, he's not just a dutch artist, he's sort of one of these artists who speaks to people from all nationalities. And so he sees in moments of daily life things that we have all experienced and really haven't understood or haven't seen or haven't recognized. And suddenly there, in a premier painting, you see yourself, you see these moments of reflection in between doing things and between opening a window and picking up a water picture or while you're reading

a letter, the kind of moments that you don't even realize you're having. Why was his output so low? Well, that's one of his great mysteries. We actually know very little about him as an artist. We know he lived and worked in Delft in the mid -17th century, but we don't know where he studied. We don't know the name of his master. We don't know if he traveled particularly. And we really don't know much about his working process. He didn't seem to have a workshop, so that would account for a small productivity level to a certain extent. Perhaps he didn't need to paint for the open market, which it seemed very likely he didn't. And that would mean that he wasn't forced in the situation of churning out paintings to earn an income. He had perhaps some money from his mother -in -law, who was fairly well -to -do. He also worked as an art dealer, and

he probably got some income from that. He may have actually been kind of a gentleman, amateur painter, so an amateur is an older term, some of you just loved art and painted, but not really a professional artist in the way we'd think of an artist today. Do the paintings tell us anything about his life? Well, some things, perhaps. Well, he had 13 children, and you hardly see a child in his paintings, for example. There are no scenes of family life. So that, in that sense, no. But there is an incredible sense of light and color and awareness of the world. And that suggests a peering into world with a great optical awareness of the way light enters into room and interacts with objects, the way it fills the space. All these are elements that suggest something of the

interest of science in the 17th century. Another, of course, of great fascination with the mayor, that degree to which there might be an interest in optics in the camera of security or use of the camera of security and perspective and how all this works in his paintings. So in that sense, I think there is an awareness of scientific discovery that comes through in his works. Did he have much influence on Dutch artists of his time? You talked a little bit about his being an amateur. Was his work seen? Well, again, we don't know too much about him and all that. He was head of the guild in Delph twice in the 16th, 16th, 1670. And so he must have been an important figure to whatever extent his works were known within the Delph community. But I would have to say now that influence of the premier in the 17th century is practically nil. And there are a few artists, perhaps Harbiel Metzu, who was a contemporary who worked in Lydon and Amsterdam. Some of his late

paintings suggest some of the mood and atmosphere of the premier. But it's not enough to really say the premier had a great impact. And it's fascinating question because he is so extraordinary and we value him so highly why is it that he wasn't more influential? And I don't really have an answer except to suggest or to hypothesize that perhaps his interest in seeing below the specifics of nature, seeing underneath what natural forms conveyed was something that most Dutch artists really didn't try to do. They weren't working so much to give a sense of structure and permanence and harmony. They were really more interested in the varieties of the natural world. And that may have been a different mentality and different emphasis that premier had that just wasn't picked up by other artists. Is this mystery or the mysteries of this

painter, are they vexing or are they intriguing? I mean, it sounds a little frustrating to be a Vermeer scholar. How do you think about that? Well, you know, every time you get frustrated, all you do is just forget you're trying to write something, put down your pen and pencil and just go look at the paintings. They are so wonderful. They're just so evocative that it is such a great sense of joy to work on this work. I mean, I love it and the fact that you don't have the answers, well, you generally don't have the answers to most things in life and this is just very clear in this case. It's just kind of a nice feeling that every time you look at the painting, there's more to be seen and more to discover. It's a very exciting, exhilarating sense. And I don't mind in the end not knowing answers to these things. And I mean, he's a great genius and you're not going to be able to ever explain genius. There's a painting in the show. I believe its title is Saint Praxidus.

And I guess it is not universally accepted as a Vermeer, but you believe it is. That's right. Why? Well, this is a painting that is an early work. And when Vermeer began his career, he started as a history painter. That was a painter of large scale biblical and mythological scenes. And it was about that time that he just joined the guild in Delph, around 1654. And he marries into a Catholic family and he converts to Catholicism. And this painting is a depiction of a saint, Praxidus, who cared for Christian martyrs, Roman saint. And it follows very closely into Jesuit ideals of showing that the Catholic faith predates the Protestant faith. And so it is, in fact, a Jesuit kind of an image at which fits very quite nicely into Vermeer's interest

at that time. And this is an unusual painting in, well, many ways, subjects not very Dutch, but also in that it's a copy or derived from an Italian 17th century painting by an artist by name of Cicarelli. And so it is also different in that it's not Vermeer's own idea. It's something that he derives from another artist. And so the technique and style are slightly different, which is normal when you bathe your painting on that of another artist, which a lot of Dutch 17th century artists did. So that's also not a problem. It is signed from mere 1655, signed and dated. And that fits quite nicely into Vermeer's interest at that time as well. The thing that I think is striking about this painting relationship to other Vermeer works is it's a very quiet, pensive mood, if this lady is undertaking a

task with downcast eyes. And it is a kind of a quiet mood that you also see in a lot of Vermeer's paintings once he becomes a genre painter. And this carryover of the history paintings into the mood and character of the genre scenes of the late 50s and 1660s is something that I think speaks well to the attribution of this work and is consistent with this use of the history paintings scenes from that period of his career. Are all the paintings that he did, are they all dated and signed? No, there are only three signed paintings. Excuse me, only three dated paintings. There are a number that are signed. Most of them are signed, but not all of them, but there are only three that are dated. So trying to establish the chronology of his work has always been rather tricky because you have a couple of the same procedures. You have another one is dated 1656, which is about the same time, two early paintings. And then one at the late 1660s. And so everything in between you sort of have to try to figure out

from the evolution of his technique and from the costume styles of the figures and interest and subject matter where they would fit into the course of his career. How did his painting change over the course of his life? Well, you have two basic changes, and that one is this change from a history painter to scenes to an artist depicting scenes of daily life and landscapes. You have a city scape, you have the little street and the view of Delft is the two city scapes. So that's a major shift right there at the beginning. And then if you watch his style evolve, there is a gradual interest in the way he paints in abstracting forms and abstracting light, abstracting texture, abstracting patterns within the paintings.

So the very latest works, some of them actually you feel that they are incredibly modern and that paint remains paint. Paint in the 1650s and early 1660s is often used at the service of illusionism. So he creates textures with very opaque paints and layers of glaze, but it's all meant to give the illusion of a pearl or a drapery or a rough wall in the view of Delft. I mean, paint always serves the illusion of texture in these works. At the end of his career, you find that the patterns become more abstract and paint is just paint. You just know confusion. It is describing a form, but it is much freer relationship of the way paint and light and color work with the images that he's depicting.