Early Vermeer Goes from the Bible to the Bordello

I’ve never been a Vermeer fan. I love his yellows and furs, his filtered light, and blessed hush. Alas, to me, his work’s an Old Master version of Hollywood’s women’s picture. Almost all of his figures are women. Not Mildred Pierce or Leave Her to Heaven or Scarlett O’Hara, where the women are hardly pastel, rarely quiet except when planning something sneaky and mean, and might be crazy, but Now, Voyager or To Each His Own, in which women contemplate convention and how to navigate it. Most of Vermeer’s women are passive, as in The Procuress, a surprising, early picture that shows a client pawing a prostitute’s bosom.

Vermeer’s women might likely be in a pickle but engage the pickle with diffidence. I’m not crazy about Remington, either, but, even-keeled as I am, am inclined to action. I like challenges, narrative, and dilemmas that can be solved or botched, and where time is of the essence. Nobody moves much in a Vermeer painting.