From a saint’s integrated office, through tables with quills and ink-pots, to beautifully crafted furniture for the home office.
Vermeer
Blue-on-white Delft tiles in paintings of Vermeer, and those in the 19th century who recreated period interiors, including Laura Alma-Tadema.
Curtains around 4-poster beds, revealing hidden opinions, framing a cameo landscape, showing time and place, and in a trompe l’oeil still life.
A grand castle kitchen, the element fire, Vermeer’s milkmaid, a witch’s kitchen for Faust, a rotund cardinal tasting the sauce, and in a humble apartment in London.
Examples of interiors by Gerard ter Borch, who liked open-ended narrative, Gabriël Metsu, Pieter de Hooch, and Jan Vermeer.
First popular in the Dutch Golden Age, paintings of interiors enjoyed success during the 19th century, when they were favourites of the avant garde.
Paintings of fields of buckwheat (not a cereal at all), sainfoin (ideal for horses), flax (oil paints and linen), and clover. And how the Dutch Golden Age changed its agriculture.
Carrying Caravaggio’s rotting fruit, bread from the cereal harvest, Vermeer’s milkmaid, fish, dirty washing, lambs, rocks and garlic.
Ariadne’s Corona Borealis, a difficult reading from Tintoretto, celestial spheres, constellations of summer, and signs of the zodiac.
How some landscape painters blurred the view to paint, while others have depicted motion blur, depth of field effects, or an edge hierarchy. Links to each article in the series.
The Eclectic Light Company 