[MR] [Slightly OP] Blake Gopnik - 'Pride of Place': Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age at the National Gallery of Art - washingtonpost.com

[David Chessler]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/02/AR2009020203455.html

The 'Golden' Compass
Dutch Cityscapes Point to Liveliest of Details

By Blake Gopnik
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 3, 2009; C01

In 1667, a Dutch artist called Jan van der Heyden painted a grand 
view of Amsterdam's newly built town hall, declared the Eighth Wonder 
of the World -- by Dutchmen, at least.

But when you first come across that picture in "Pride of Place: Dutch 
Cityscapes of the Golden Age," a fascinating new show at the National 
Gallery of Art, you wonder what young van der Heyden had been smoking 
when he painted it. (This is Amsterdam, after all.) The hall's great 
cupola looks thin and drawn, as though a Monty Python hand of God has 
given it a squeeze.

Yet his cupola looks odd only if you stand directly in front of the 
picture, as we've been trained to do with modern images: snapshots, 
TV screens, newspaper photos, almost any image made with a lens, in fact.

View this distinctly unmodern, pre-photographic picture as it was 
meant to be seen, from very close, and from a point more or less 
lined up with the eyes of the horse at its far bottom right, and its 
cupola seems not just normal, but stunningly real, almost as though 
it's sitting high above you in the air.

<<<snip>>>

(Interestingly, when van der Heyden sold his picture south, to a 
Medici duke, he included some kind of device you could attach to the 
frame to set your eye at the right point of view. It seems that 
Italians, like us, needed help with looking at the pictures by their 
Dutch contemporaries.)

<<<snip>>>

Even pictures that barely hint at their perspective may ask you to 
sidle crab-wise up to them. Look from straight ahead and several feet 
away at Aelbert Cuyp's great image of the Maas River at Dordrecht, 
from the National Gallery's own holdings, and the wide-beamed ship at 
its far right seems almost as round as a barrel. Take the ship in 
from much nearer but far over to the left, from about the point of 
view of the important officials being rowed to it, and this lead ship 
suddenly slims down, projecting out toward you and almost ready to 
pass by. The great Maas, instead of looking like a pool in the 
painting's foreground, now seems like a long channel that your gaze 
runs down as it skims along the ranks of Holland's specially 
assembled fleet -- the real naval assembly, from July 1646, that is 
the main subject of the painting. Come near, and Cuyp's celebrated 
clouds, which he's designed almost receding in perspective to the 
left, seem to soar above you, up and out of view. They stop seeming 
like a perversely vacant zone across the top of his canvas, as 
they're often described.

<<<Snip>>>



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/02/AR2009020203255.html

A Vermeer Treasure That's Out of 'Place'

Tuesday, February 3, 2009; C02

The greatest, most famous Dutch cityscape of all is Johannes 
Vermeer's big "View of Delft."

Yet it isn't in the National Gallery's show "Pride of Place: Dutch 
Cityscapes in the Golden Age."

The picture was supposed to come over from its home in the little 
Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, co-organizer of this show. Late in 
the game, however, Mauritshuis officials decided that they couldn't 
risk another trip abroad for their very greatest treasure. (It 
previously came to the National Gallery in 1995.)

Its absence is a shame, because there may never be another chance to 
see it with its closest kin, or them with it. And also because 
Vermeer's masterpiece is such a stunning example of the special 
viewing that Dutch cityscapes encourage, and reward. The painting's 
perspective is designed for viewing from the very far left, though 
it's not clear that that's ever been noticed. Seen from there, but 
only from there, the long, turreted gatehouse at the right edge of 
the scene looks as it's meant to, and as it really sat in life -- 
sticking out at right angles to the rest of the view, straight out at us.

Vermeer's "View" also rewards standing very close to it, even more 
than other such Dutch paintings do. Once the picture completely fills 
your sight, without a hint of frame in view, Vermeer's famous light 
and air and space wrap all the way around you. Suddenly, you're in a 
Vermeer, not looking at one.

Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age runs through May 3 
in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art, on the north 
side of the Mall at Sixth Street NW. Call 202-737-4215 or visit 
<http://www.nga.gov>http://www.nga.gov.

--

YIS

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