Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing

by Laura J. Snyder

  -1-

  There are some reasons to believe that Vermeer’s model for this painting was Leeuwenheok. The man in the picture is about Leeuwenhoek’s age—in his late thirties, like Vermeer—and it is possible to see the model as an idealized version of Leeuwenhoek as he could have looked a decade before he appears in another painting, Cornelis de Man’s Anatomy Lesson of Cornelis Isaaks ’s Gravesande (1681).

  De Man was commissioned to produce the painting by the surgeons’ guild. The group portrait depicted a human dissection by Cornelis Isaaks ’s Gravesande, a surgeon who lived near Leeuwenhoek, on the corner of the Nieuwstraat and Hippolytusbuurt. As the city’s official anatomist, ’s Gravesande performed weekly dissections in the Theatrum Anatomicum, on the Verwersdijk, dissections that Leeuwenhoek would sometimes observe. The painting shows the surgeon examining a cadaver, while other members of the guild (and Leeuwenhoek) look on. According to the report of the Delft historian Boitet, De Man asked Leeuwenhoek, who was not a member of the guild, to sit for the picture “in order to add more luster” to it. Leeuwenhoek is behind the left shoulder of ’s Gravesande, with his hand over his heart. His nephew and godson, Antoni de Molijn (1656–1729), son of his sister Margriete and her husband Jan Molijn, is at the top left of the picture. Antoni de Molijn was a surgeon who trained in Paris and had returned to Delft to practice. Another figure represented in the picture is the municipal physician Hendrik d’Acquet. D’Acquet was known for having the most impressive cabinet of curiosities in Delft and had obtained for Leeuwenhoek from Guelders “a certain sort of insect (unknown, for ought I known, in this part of the country) called cockchafer.” (Leeuwenhoek later observed two of these insects copulating in order to examine the male sperm.) Leeuwenhoek was related to De Man; the daughter of his great-aunt Margaretha van den Berch, Cornelia Jans Van Halmael, had married Anthoni Cornelis de Man (1587–1665), the nephew of the painter. In this picture Leeuwenhoek looks older than in the Vermeer pictures, and less romanticized, but with the same brown ringlets, strong nose, large dark eyes, and thin face.

  Later still, at the height of his fame, Leeuwenhoek would be painted by Johannes Verkolje, in what was pronounced by Constantijn Huygens to be an “excellent likeness.” The man in the 1686 picture is older, and much fleshier, especially around the nose and eyes, than Vermeer’s model, but not completely different from him—though it is more difficult to see the resemblance. Notably, however, Verkolje depicts Leeuwenhoek with the very same equipment portrayed in Vermeer’s painting: a pair of dividers, a globe, and a map—as if Leeuwenhoek wished to be remembered not only for his scientific discoveries but also for posing for Vermeer.

  Not only does the model in The Geographer somewhat resemble Leeuwenhoek, but Vermeer has painted a man engaged in science, an activity that Leeuwenhoek was pursuing single-mindedly by this time. Boitet reports that Leeuwenhoek was known by his fellow townsmen to have begun studying navigation, astronomy, mathematics, and natural philosophy around 1665. And the very year that Vermeer depicted a surveyor at work, Leeuwenhoek had passed the exam enabling him to be registered as an official landmeter, or surveyor, in Delft. It is suggestive that this is one of the few paintings dated by Vermeer himself, as if the year 1669 was particularly significant. On February 4, 1669, an act admitting Leeuwenhoek to the surveying profession was published in the state archives:

  Forasmuch as Antony Leeuwenhoeck [sic], burgher and denizen of the town of Delft, hath made petition unto the Court of Holland, saying that he hath for some while heretofore exercised himself in the art of Geometry, and advanced so far that he deems himself capable to fulfil henceforth the office of surveyor, and perform the service and duty thereof, wherefore he humbly intreateth that the Court be pleased to permit him to exercise the office of surveyor.…

  The entry goes on to note that Leeuwenhoek was examined by “the mathematician Genesius Baen” and has been found competent to perform the office of surveyor. Leeuwenhoek commented on one of the surveying tasks he undertook—measuring the height of the tower of the Nieuwe Kerk using his quadrant. Later, his correspondence will be replete with mathematical calculations of various kinds: atmospheric pressure, air resistance on falling bodies, water pressure on the eye of a swimming whale, and number of minuscule beings in a single drop of water.

  Vermeer intended The Geographer as a pendant, or a companion picture, to one painted the year before, The Astronomer, which featured the same model. In the earlier picture, the natural philosopher is turned toward a celestial globe on the table and an astronomical manual opened on the table before him. The book is Adriaen Metius’s*2 Institutiones astronomicae & geographicae, a book on both astronomy and geography, subjects then considered two sides of the same scientific coin; the presence of this book further suggests that the two pictures were meant as pendants. Another clue that Vermeer gives us is that on the wall behind the natural philosopher in The Astronomer we can see part of Peter Lely’s painting of Moses. In the seventeenth century Moses was often described as the oldest geographer. The pictures were originally the same size, though The Astronomer was cut down later. Throughout the eighteenth century they were always offered for sale together, from their first appearances at a Rotterdam auction in 1713—where they were offered as a set for three hundred guilders (about $4,025 today).

  As a surveyor, Leeuwenhoek would have used the book portrayed in The Astronomer. Metius taught surveying at the University of Franeker, and the book discusses how astronomy and geography are related in the tasks required of a surveyor. If Leeuwenhoek owned that book, then he may have lent it to Vermeer—he may even have brought it to his sittings for the painting. We know that Leeuwenhoek probably owned another book by Metius, his Arithmeticae et geomitrae practica, because he would later use it to calculate the number of spermatozoa in the milt of a cod.

  It is possible, as some have speculated, that Leeuwenhoek commissioned the two paintings to mark his new position as surveyor of Delft. There is no evidence of this. What is more likely is that the paintings are Vermeer’s comment on the keen interest in—almost obsession with—science that pervaded Delft and the Dutch Republic. His depictions of the natural philosopher at work are most likely not a paint-for-hire celebration of Leeuwenhoek’s new scientific status, and may not even be meant as portraits of him, but they do represent the kind of person Leeuwenhoek was. And they are clearly celebrations of science, in particular sciences that gain knowledge by visual experience.

  Surely it is telling that in depicting natural philosophers studying both the heavens and the earth, Vermeer is also showing off two fields in which the new optical instruments were used. (He shows neither in the pictures themselves, although one might—with a little imagination—see a box-type camera obscura in what looks like a little side table with a hinged top in the lower-right corner of The Geographer.) Astronomers, of course, used the telescope for their observations of the night sky. Just four years before he painted The Astronomer, in 1664, a comet appeared and was visible for six weeks. During this time it was tracked across the sky by astronomers, including Constantijn Huygens’s son Christiaan, until March 20, 1665. When this comet disappeared, another—this one with a tail an astonishing thirty astronomical degrees in length—was visible for a week. Several treatises on comets appeared in the following years, and many amateurs were moved to purchase telescopes and begin to study the night skies, seeking the next comet.

  Surveyors, too, used optical devices: as we saw, they had been using a type of camera obscura for cartographical drawing since the sixteenth century. The English mathematicians John Dee, Thomas Diggs, and William Browne had discussed the use of camera obscuras for cartographical drawing in the last quarter of the century, as had the inventor of the first portable camera obscura, Friedrich Risner. Thomas Browne described the use of “perspective glasses,” a type of camera obscura, for making topographical surveys; these used a biconvex lens a foot or more in diameter, placed in a wooden frame. A large concave mirror was placed slightly beyond
the point of the inversion of light rays; the mirror would show an enlarged image of the landscape being surveyed, which could be copied by the surveyor. (Although the production of the right-side-up image was similar to that of the camera obscura in that it used a lens and mirror, the image was not projected onto a screen or paper, as in the standard camera obscura setup.) Thomas Harriot used perspective glasses in his cartographical surveys of the lands of Virginia in 1588; he later employed a similar device to project and draw the moon’s surface. In depicting the astronomer and the surveyor at work, Vermeer has painted two natural philosophers who, much like Vermeer himself, rely on optical devices to gain their knowledge of the physical world.

  -2-

  By this time—whether or not Leeuwenhoek modeled for Vermeer, and whether or not they knew each other—the two men were moving in very close geographical, social, and professional circles. They both lived and worked within a small area in and near the Market Square; the distance between their homes could be walked at a leisurely pace in three minutes. In a town whose population then numbered less than twenty thousand, these exact contemporaries had both attained positions of social and political standing. Leeuwenhoek was already recognized by his fellow citizens as someone engaged in scientific pursuits, while Vermeer was known as a painter of note even outside of Delft; the 1664 inventory of the painter Johan Larson, who lived in The Hague, listed a tronie, or picture of a head, by Vermeer. Both men had connections to the city government. Leeuwenhoek was the chamberlain of the Sheriff’s Chamber, and, in 1661 and 1662, Vermeer was appointed headman of the Guild of St. Luke. (He served a later term in 1672.) These two positions intersected in various ways. In 1661 the artists of Delft had built themselves a new guildhall, which stood on the site of city property, the Old Men’s House Chapel. The guildhall was on the Voldersgracht, right behind the Market Square—close to Vermeer’s birth home, his family’s tavern, and Leeuwenhoek’s workplace in the Town Hall.

  The board of the guild, called the “headmen,” was chosen every year on October 18 (St. Luke’s Day). It consisted of six board members; the custom was that two members would be painters, two glassmakers, and two “china potters,” or faience makers. The board met every four weeks in the guild chamber at five in the afternoon; anyone who missed a meeting was fined twenty-four stuivers. The board was responsible for enforcing the rules of the guild and setting fines for offenders; for example, if a master did not properly register his apprentices, he was fined thirty stuivers (one and a half guilders, or twenty-two dollars) per day.

  Each year the guild would supply a list of names, two for each vacant post, to the Town Hall, and the burgomasters and aldermen would choose the administrators of the guilds from the list. As someone privy to the deliberations of the burgomasters, for whom he worked, Leeuwenhoek would have known that Vermeer had been appointed headman of the St. Luke’s Guild even before the painter did.

  Leeuwenhoek was well acquainted with a number of men who were members of the St. Luke’s Guild at the same time as Vermeer. His stepfather and stepbrothers had been members; though his stepfather had died in 1646, his brother-in-law Jan Molijn was still a guild member, as was Jan’s brother Gerrit. Leeuwenhoek may also have been related to two other Delft painters, both members of the guild: Mateus de Bergh (also called Mateus van den Berch) and his brother Gillis. Mateus and Gillis were sons of the sailmaker Daniel de Bergh, who sold Vermeer an iceboat—popular with children for gliding over the frozen canals—for eighty guilders in the winter of 1660. (Unfortunately for Vermeer’s children, the canals failed to freeze for the next two winters.) Leeuwenhoek’s mother’s family was called Van den Berch or Van der Bergh, and it could be that she met her second husband through her artist relatives. And we have seen that Leeuwenhoek was related by marriage to Cornelis de Man. So Leeuwenhoek would have had many opportunities to socialize with artists.

  Through his artist relatives, or through his connections at the Town Hall, Leeuwenhoek would surely have been invited to some of the large feasts often held at the St. Luke’s Guildhall. The guilds, which had previously taken part in Catholic festivals, had transferred their former religious rituals to secular celebrations; after the Reformation the guild feasts became known for their intricate rites and customs, in which members and their guests would be bestowed honors of wine pouring, toast making, and meat carving. Indeed, carving became so elaborate an art that books were published to detail the proper way to carve on formal occasions. Visitors may be forgiven for suspecting that all the ceremony was just a way of formalizing an opportunity to get as drunk as possible: Théophile de Viau complained that “all these gentlemen of the Netherlands have so many rules and ceremonies for getting drunk, that I am repelled as much by them as by the sheer excess.” A visitor to the annual feast of the schutters (militia shooters) in Dordrecht reported, “I do not believe scarce a sober man to be found amongst them, nor was it safe for a sober man to trust himself amongst them, they did shout so and sing, roar, skip and leap.”

  Leeuwenhoek and Vermeer shared other acquaintances. Both men were on friendly terms with Jan Boogert, a lawyer and notary public in Delft. In 1677 he signed an attestation as a witness to Leeuwenhoek’s observations. His father, François, another notary public, was also known to both Leeuwenhoek and Vermeer; he had drafted a legal document for Leeuwenhoek in 1656 and had attended the wedding of Vermeer and Catharina Bolnes. And both Vermeer and Leeuwenhoek knew the diplomat, natural philosopher, art enthusiast, and camera obscura–user Constantijn Huygens, whose life exemplifies the close-knit relation between artists and natural philosophers in seventeenth-century Holland.

  -3-

  In the decades since demonstrating his camera obscura to his artist friends, Constantijn Huygens had continued his ascent in political power and prestige, and had become even more immersed in the art world. In 1625 he had been appointed secretary to the stadtholder, Prince Frederik Hendrik of Orange. In 1630 Huygens gained the additional position of the reekenmeester, a financial administrator to the house of Orange, the ruling family of the Dutch Republic, for which he received a generous income of 1,000 florins (about $18,260 today) a year. To underscore his newly exalted social and financial status he purchased the estate and title of Zuilichem, in the province of Gelderland, becoming “Lord of Zuilichem.” Huygens, who had already been knighted by King James I of England, received the same honor from Louis XIII of France in 1632. When Frederik Hendrik died in 1647, Huygens continued in his capacity of confidential secretary to the new stadtholder, Frederik Hendrik’s son William II. On his behalf Huygens attended the final negotiations in Brussels in 1648 leading to the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Eighty Years’ War by officially granting the Dutch Republic independence from Spain.

  Huygens was also called upon for the almost constant negotiations between the Dutch Republic and England, especially once William II married Mary Henrietta Stuart, the eldest daughter of Charles I of England. William II died in 1650, instituting what was later known as the first stadtholderless period. Although Huygens worked hard to maneuver for the Orange family, he was unsuccessful in stopping the drive for a more republican form of government.

  One faction of the Dutch regents, the de facto patrician class of the Dutch Republic, led by Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis, tried to prevent the elevation of the son of William II, who had been born only eight days before the death of his father, to the office of stadtholder in the province of Holland. In 1654 they enacted the Act of Seclusion, which prevented any member of the house of Orange from being appointed to the office. This act was revoked in 1660, after the restoration of William’s uncle Charles II of England. After Charles regained the throne, there was increasing agitation by the Orangist adherents of the prince to give him a high office of some kind.

  In July 1667, just before the Treaty of Breda ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War, De Witt presented a political compromise to the States of Holland. He proposed that William be appointed captain-general
of the republic and assigned a seat in the Raad van State, the Council of State, which functioned as the executive committee of the republic. However, William would be excluded from the office of stadtholder. Three prominent Amsterdam regents added an addendum to abolish that position forever. The new law, entitled Perpetual Edict for the Preserving of Freedom, was enacted on August 5, 1667, transferring the political power and functions of the stadtholderate to the provincial states. This political situation would change only in 1672, a year of intense domestic unrest and war with England and France.

  During this period Huygens was kept busy with the political machinations of the house of Orange. He also had a growing family. His marriage in 1627 to Suzanna van Baerle was a happy one—producing four sons and a daughter—until Suzanna’s death shortly after delivering her daughter in 1637. They had a companionate partnership, and in verse Huygens celebrated her as being his intellectual equal, “two minds joined in a single mind.” This was not only Huygens’s assessment; Descartes also praised Suzanna’s intelligence, above the usual polite flattery of an acquaintance’s wife, telling Huygens—after sending him proof sheets of his Dioptrique—“If Madame de Zulichem [sic] would like also to add her own corrections, I would consider that an inestimable favor on her part. I would value her judgment, which is naturally excellent, far higher than that of many of the Philosophers, whose judgment art [formal training] has rendered extremely defective.”

  Huygens was part of the literary and musical circle known as the Muiderkring, or Muiden circle, after the Amsterdam residence of Pieter Cornelis Hooft, one of the leading Dutch literary figures of the day. Huygens himself would publish over 75,000 lines of original verse in seven languages, and translate some of the works of the English metaphysical poet John Donne into Dutch. Other participants in the Muiden circle included Joost van den Vondel, the most prominent Dutch poet and playwright, and Anna Roemers Visscher and her sister Maria Tesselschade, daughters of a wealthy merchant and both talented poets. Another member of this cosmopolitan circle was Francisca Duarte, a noted singer who was the sister of Huygens’s friend Gaspar Duarte, a Jewish diamond merchant (who also dealt in paintings) born in Antwerp, the son of Jewish refugees who had fled Lisbon in 1591. Huygens regularly did business with Duarte, for example to acquire jewelry given by William III to his cousin and bride Princess Mary of England as a wedding gift. Later, Gaspar’s son Diego Duarte, a wealthy jeweler in Amsterdam with strong musical interests, whose art collection listed more than two hundred works by Holbein, Raphael, Titian, Rubens, and others, would purchase one of Vermeer’s paintings. The picture, described in his inventory of artworks as “a small painting with a lady playing the clavecin [i.e., the virginal], with accessories,” was valued at 150 guilders (roughly $1,477 today) in 1682. It was probably one of Vermeer’s last two paintings, either Young Woman Standing at a Virginal or, more likely, Young Woman Seated at a Virginal. Huygens was probably involved in the sale of this painting, acting as an intermediary between his friend’s son and Vermeer.