VERMEER'S GENIUS VERACITY : HONOURS PRECIS

 

The intimacy of Johannes Vermeer's domestic scenes can seem almost voyeuristic. Some of his figures look at you as if turning towards an intruder. Yet they are also tantalisingly inscrutable, glimpsed from a distance or sealed in private reveries.

In '' Woman in Blue Reading a Letter'', you see the light but not the window it is pouring through. You see the letter but not the words.

He died in 1675, penniless at 43 after the outbreak of war ruined the Dutch art market and him. Little-known for the next two centuries, today he is an artistic deity.

At the heart of the Rijksmuseum's mesmerising homage is that exquisite combination of intimacy and distance.

Painted more than 350 years ago, his subjects still seem hauntingly alive, but their thoughts and secrets will for ever be theirs alone.

As well as any painter, in other words, Vermeer did something that painting may do best : he captured the eternal mystery of other people.

The World Students Society thanks The Economist.