Saturday, December 23, 2006

Dutch Renaissance?



THE LITTLE STREET
(Het Straatje)
c. 1657-1661
The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

To accompany Athos' prayerful intentions about the Netherlands in his post below, I would like to present Vermeer's The Little Street, one of my very favorite paintings. Click for detail!

5 comments:

Athos said...

Nice, Porthos. What light Vermeer could portray. One can tell a cloud has gone in front of the nearly midday sun, but only for a moment.

I visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (way) back in '72; the city was hippie heaven. I think the birds flew strangely overhead due to the billows of smoke from heavy concentrations of a, er, hemplike substance being burned in such large quantities.

But I was old enough to be blown away by the art.

Porthos said...

I think I was in Amsterdam at almost the same time (like, around Watergate)!? I was with my parents and brother, and didn't do anything bad at that particular time, except embarass myself at a restaurant in front of family friends. I think we also nudged and giggled through part of the red light district.

And then hit the airport once, just in transit, in 99. I unavoidably noticed an astonishingly large selection of porn in the magazine shop. Hoo boy.

Ah, the tolerant Netherlands. May she rise from the ashes.

Porthos said...

Get ready for this, Massketeers . . .

The . . . Vermeer Code!!!!!

Athos said...

All the lines, angles, diagrams ... woohoo ... I be dizzy, Porthos!

There must be a bumper crop of people with squirrels in their heads. Is this the far end of gnosticism, or what?

Porthos said...

The only thing convincing about that "proof" was the hidden profile at the end. But now I can't look at the painting without seeing the profile. The jerk.