Coming to Balance.

An exploration of "Woman weighing Pearls" by Johannes Vermeer.
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The delicacy of light and shadow, the sheen of living flesh, the magical appreciation of femininity, the soft harmonies of colour, the wonderful evocation of interior space, the compositional perfection, the peacefulness, poise and emotional power of Vermeer's art have always won him many admirers. Most of his paintings also pose riddles that arouse our problem-solving instincts. Somehow Vermeer manages to capture a person transfixed in a moment of domestic life, opening a window, reading a letter or pouring milk, and by the attraction of his art he transfixes the onlooker too. The rapt concentration going on "inside" the picture is now reproduced "outside" it as the viewer seeks to engage with and understand the painting.

In most of his work Vermeer displays not merely an astonishing visual talent as colourist and designer, but engaging depths of thought. He had an extraordinary capacity to carry the moral seriousness of history painting into tranquil interior scenes. Through the lowly doorway of domestic life we find ourselves being inducted into regions lit by reflections from eternal realms. By the intensity of his respect for his models we encounter persons in all their exquisite otherness. To begin to engage with his art we have to identify with the humanity of his subjects. There is a stillness, so we must stop, and fragments of a human story, so we begin to wonder. A pictorial fragrance of love and loveliness draws us in. As soon as the artist's competence has won our trust, and the painting's beauty has bathed our vision, we realise that there are matters to be decided. Our participation is invited.

Vermeer painted this picture of the Woman Weighing Pearls in 1661, at a time when Holland was at the forefront of European development - the first capitalist society with fleets that spanned the globe and a merchant banking system and stock exchange to support them, and the first nation of empowered middle class prosperity and intellectual curiosity. No other European society possessed such a concentration of scientists, philosophers, free-thinkers, artists and exiles as the great Dutch mercantile cities could then sustain. Out of the wars of independence from Spanish rule, the Dutch had emerged not merely the stronger, more advanced and prosperous society, but also the more inclusive. The Dutch triumph marked the effective death of the Inquisition. The requirement to unite as many of its citizens as possible in the war of independence, particularly those from the Catholic area of Flanders to the south, ensured that under the overall protestant ethic of the majority, toleration became the modus vivendi of the new republic in its Golden Age. And Vermeer was a Protestant married to a Roman Catholic so for him the art of balance was not only the political ethic of his society and the rational goal of his age, but the foundation of his domestic happiness.

With the close of the almost genocidal conflicts of the Thirty Years War at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a war-torn Continent had begun to accept that the ideological conflicts of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation could never be solved by military violence. What Isaiah Berlin called, "The first great wave of optimistic rationalism which followed the Wars of Religion," and which later "broke against the violence of the great French Revolution and the despotism and misery which ensued," was already visible. Across Europe, with greater or lesser creativity the hunger for order and balance was everywhere to be seen. From Milton and Marvel to Moliere and Racine poetry and literature began to emphasise structure, harmony and sheer delight in the rule of rationality. This was the great age of a pioneering love of mathematics, especially geometry, in all corners of educated society. Consequently the subject began to develop at an astonishing pace. Descartes' Cartesian system which gave birth to analytic geometry opened the way to the development of calculus by Newton and Leibniz and was followed before long by Newton's Principia Mathematica which had a phenomenal effect upon European thinking.
In Vermeer's time there was still no sense that the arts and sciences were in any sense antithetical. In fact Renaissance artists had long been pioneers of mathematics, and had energetically combined the roles of painter, architect, engineer and anatomist. Vermeer inherited this explorative tradition and made thorough scientific preparations for his paintings, experimenting with the camera obscura, studying colour theory, and showing strict regard for mathematical principles. But at the same time, in common with most of his contemporaries, he also held religious studies in high regard, and his art conveys a finely-tuned sense of spiritual awareness.

Indeed, Vermeer's painting arrives on the scene at a time of strong renewal of personal faith and piety both in Protestant and Catholic circles. Just when the hope of establishing an exterior ideological structure for European Christendom has had to be abandoned, fires of individual encounter with God and personal faith in Jesus flare up on all sides. Blaise Pascal's Provincial Letters, and later his Pensées had a great impact among intellectuals. He was a brilliant thinker, and a great pioneer in physics and mathematics as well as an inventor of machines such as the hydraulic pump. Not only does his extraordinarily "modern " mind almost prophetically address problems of sophisticated scepticism ahead of time, but he combines the head of a genius with the heart of a child. Having had a conversion experience that amounted to a coach crash with truth, he confessed that he had encountered a mind that outclasses all minds, and a love that sustains all love. After his death his valet found a piece of paper sewed into his coat on which a message read, "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars..."

Pascal's credentials as a scientist would have been well known in Holland, and this may well have brought him to the attention of artists as thoughtful as Vermeer. But whether or not Vermeer was aware of his apologetic work, this was the age of Bunyan, Fox and Penn, an age that witnessed the courage of the Pilgrim Fathers in America, and the humility of brother Lawrence practising the presence of God in the kitchen and the sandal shop of the Carmelite Priory in Paris, followed by the patience of Madame Guyon in prison, and the perseverance of the Huguenots. The combined effects of the Reformation and the printing press had placed the Bible into the hands of all who could read, and they could also, in turn, comment on what they were reading. It was probably the first age when personal faith received intellectual stimulation and empowerment on a vast scale. One of the challenges faced by thinkers in Vermeer's Holland, which lay at the centre of intellectual as well as spiritual ferment, was to bring into balance all that was being disclosed.

Usually Vermeer avoided direct religious piety in his art. He had all the delicacy and sensitivity of a free man who has no intention of imposing himself on others, and still less of policing them. Nevertheless he was a man of his age, the Dutch were fond of moral and religious allegories, and he had to reach his contemporaries through a frame of reference they could readily understand. The most obvious way to establish a philosophical, moral or religious framework for a painting is to paint a picture within a picture that will allow for all sorts of analysis, comparison, and reflection. Like a mirror seen within a mirror, a picture within a picture suddenly gives a painting an unexpected narrative dimension, an outside as well as an inside, raising wonderful questions about the interplay between objective and subjective worlds.

Something like this is happening in Vermeer's painting "Woman Weighing Pearls." Behind the young woman is a painting of the last judgment partially obscured by shadow. Clearly, although Vermeer is not forcing a religious viewpoint, he is setting the scene more firmly than he does in many other paintings. His contemporaries would immediately have understood how to "read" the picture. At least, they would have thought they did. Almost certainly they would have jumped to the conclusion that this was a conventional "vanitas" painting presenting a traditional Christian teaching in a novel style. And this is the interpretation that has generally been followed ever since. Given the power and prosperity of 17th century protestant Dutch society, the young woman would seem to serve as a poignant warning. Behind and above her, whilst she is weighing pearls, in the picture within the picture Christ is weighing souls. At first glance she seems unaware that her life also is in the balance. In the context of the final judgment the value of earthly possessions is trivial, and fascination with them a snare. So apparently there is more than a hint of irony that the woman's unconscious behaviour is affecting her destiny.

That is as far as some accounts of this picture are able to go, even today. Consequently there are viewers who rate it slightly lower than, say, "Woman In Blue Reading A Letter," because they find the moralising out of harmony with the picture's aesthetic and human appeal. They feel that, possibly for the sake of a client, Vermeer has forced a beautiful work of imagination into a religious straightjacket.

However, there is much more to be said on the artist's behalf. If this picture amounts to no more than a slightly embarrassing illustration of a religious allegory, a routine "genre" painting, it is hard to account for the depth of meditation it arouses. There is a peacefulness, a truthfulness and a loving-kindness about it which holds the viewer captive. It is a calm, satisfying and life-affirming picture that does not quickly lead us to a simplistic moral terminus, or we would just as quickly be bored by it. Besides, no artist wants to let his viewers go so easily. Certainly not an artist of Vermeer's ability.

So there are puzzles. Firstly, whereas many viewers might have quickly prided themselves on perceiving the simple "vanitas" message, (store up for yourselves treasure in heaven for where your treasure is there your heart will be also...) few perhaps would have gone on to detect the more exquisite irony that just as the woman is attracted by the beauty of her jewellery, the viewer is attracted by the beauty of the woman, and also by the beauty of the painting itself. Certainly Vermeer knew that not only prospective buyers, but most onlookers would "weigh up" his picture in the balance of their minds - as the woman is weighing her pearls, and with at least the same degree of fascination. Which is the greater snare, the pearls or the picture? Such considerations provide the start point for a moral enquiry closer to home. It may be that the woman is not the satisfying object of superior appraisal that she seems on the surface to be, but the bait that brings us to be weighed in the same balance! Like novelists and prophets, artists do sometimes turn the tables on us.

But there is something more wonderful here than a game to catch an unwary onlooker. We immediately see that the woman is beautiful. Moreover she is pregnant which enhances the sense of integrity and innocence that permeates the painting. The woman herself is facing the light, and the golden new moon of her full belly reflects sunshine from the yellow-curtained window, suggesting ripeness and fulfilment. It is difficult to read such warm blessings in a negative sense. Her wealth of jewellery is quite impressive from a middle-class Dutch burgher's point of view but by no means wildly excessive, her clothing stylish but not especially sophisticated, and her surroundings comfortable but not opulent. The woman is not in turmoil. Her demeanour conveys authority as well as calm. Heavy with child she seeks steadiness to still the scales she is holding in her right hand simply by stretching out the finger-tips of her left hand to touch the table. Nothing more. Her body language speaks of a thoughtful and balanced personality. All in all this portrait of a young wife is so positive, so warm heartedly and lovingly composed that Vermeer seems very far from laying a judgement upon her.

In Vermeer's society women did have scope for the running of their own households, (as, for example his own wealthy mother-in-law, Maria Thins) and might be much involved in family financial affairs at a time when a banking system had barely been invented. Gold, silver and jewellery were not solely for superfluous ornamentation as they mostly are today, but fulfilled the same function as both a current and a savings account, and were used as a way of transferring funds to others. Very likely, therefore, we are to understand that the young woman is engrossed in competently judging a practical matter - the value of her own or someone else's property in order to ascertain how much she has been given, or how much she must pay out. Furthermore, the woman's scales are empty, which suggests that for the moment she is balancing spiritual as well as financial considerations. Hence far from being ignorant or unaware of the painting behind her, the woman might easily be acting in obedience to it. Her deliberation, set against Christ's final task, can be seen as the beauty of a child of God made in God's image who is herself participating in the making of accurate judgements in which moral, material and spiritual considerations are balanced.

Whether or not Vermeer intended to catch out casual viewers in the limitations of conventional moralising, a deeper intention seems to be to illustrate that it is possible to lead lives of balance, that it is possible to exercise moderation, and that it is possible to deal with material things with full understanding of the implications of a final judgment by Christ in which the criterion is not ownership but stewardship, not quantity of possessions but degree of love. Therefore, far from condemning the young woman, by this account Vermeer is upholding her good judgement. And so we arrive at a complete volte-face from an opinion dictated by superficial or legalistic interpretations of scripture. One of Vermeer's more subtle points seems to be that if a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a little morality, or a little conventional religion, is even more so.

If you rule two diagonal lines from the four corners they meet at the exact centre of the painting, precisely at the faintly visible fulcrum of the woman's balance. Therefore, to say that this painting is about balance and right judgement is almost a tautology. Somewhere on the scale between caring nothing for possessions and withdrawing completely from the world on the one hand, and being possessed by possessions on the other, there must be a point of balance at which the person is engaged with the materials of life yet free. In this young woman Vermeer has attempted to paint that point of balance. And by focusing on the personality and thoughtfulness of his subject he tells us that in principle this balance is accessible to us all. But he also tells us that such a point can only be reached with divine help. He does this by placing the woman's head directly beneath Christ's feet, and by giving her a white head-cloth to signify her purity of mind and submission to him, and by creating - with marvellous skill - the dignity and poise of a woman who has authority because she has placed herself under authority.

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