A study of Vermeer

by Edward A. Snow

We respond so intensely to Vermeer, suggests Edward Snow in this landmark study of the artist, because his paintings reach so deeply into our lives. Our desire for images, the distances that separate us, the validations we seek from the still world, the traces of ghostliness in our own human presence - these are Vermeer's themes. Whether his paintings depict a remote view of the everyday life of a city, an intimate exchange between a man and a woman, or a solitary figure absorbed in some familiar activity, their quiet realism is in dialogue with the uncanny, and has the power both to estrange and reassure. Scenes like A View of Delft can make us feel, in Snow's words, "either that we are in the hands of God or that all passes into oblivion, either that we are weighted down or weightlessly suspended, either that the world is there beneath our feet or that nothing exists beyond the moment of perception." As the author traces the elaborately counterpoised sensations that make up Vermeer's