What’s the significance of the discovery of a naked Cupid in a 350-year-old painting by Vermeer? After years of study, the hidden figure was revealed in the “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window” painting, housed at the Dresden Gemäldegalerie. It was a sensational find.
The film traces the many twists and turns that this picture has experienced in its history. The justification for re-exhibiting the painting in its new form is a sensation: the Cupid was apparently painted over after the artist’s death.
The enigmatic paintings of Jan Vermeer have fascinated art lovers for centuries. His oeuvre has been one of the most difficult for experts to conclusively decipher and has frequently been the subject of controversial discussions on a global level. Now, a gallery in the German city of Dresden has assembled the world’s top Vermeer aficionados, high-tech imaging techniques and plenty of cash. Why? Because what began as a regular restoration of a painting has now resulted in the radical alteration of an iconic image.
But who decides how paintings from the past should be analyzed? And how to respond to any surprising findings? This film ponders the prerogative of interpretation in art, in the past and the present. Will the revelation of Cupid finally help to uncover the enduring secrets of Vermeer?
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A truly remarkable painter, one of my favorites.
They were a bunch of sicko pervs , no mystery there lol
I don’t like the curtains. It makes me want to cut them out. Lol
The Democrats worship ignorance so they censor. America is a land on lies and dead. Destroying art leads to an increase in the murder rate.
I think Vermeer painted it over. There’s no mystery to it now and mystery was Vermeer’s stock-in-trade.
We, as humans, crave drama in art. Since caves. Can be a man hunting a cow or a couple discussing their relationship (like in Edward Hopper paintings). This picture gives us the thrill of what is happening in the girl's head. Psychological drama. Also the fruits spreaded on table gives motion. Like some furious reaction just had happened before. Amazing piece.
Looks like after restauration being less dark this is now a on of the top Vermeers i guess..
this amazing documentary but not wit the f…… subtitles at the center of the screen !!! horrible!!! product of some idiots.
Humanity has suffered a long line of arrogant fools who think they are "restoring" great works or monuments only to be seen as the arrogant destroyers they really are. Some nobody putting a painting under scalpel to scrape away centuries of meaning to "restore" a painting to that person's own modern interpretation is and should be a crime against all of us. Let's just hope that American nobody isn't given the power to "restore" the curtain that might have been there and destroy one of the world's great art works in the Girl with a pearl earring! What's next, changing the title to They with a pearl earring?! Stop f-ing with our art!
Let's just hope that they don't allow anyone, an American, a German…, to alter works and keep taking samples and keep degrading great works in an effort to apply today's views of what is good to destroy art that belongs to all of humanity. There is a thin line between what someone did to alter a Vermeer work centuries ago and what some nobody is doing to re-alter that same work to fit what they think is "right". Careful , careful lest you be the one condemned through history for destroying not "saving" or "restoring" our art.
Background music is from one of favorite composers – Michael Nyman – as heard in various movies by Peter Greenaway, such as The Draughtsman's Contract and Zed & Two Noughts.
Why would you have the CC's set to only show in the very center of the screen? No point in watching this.😠
Disturbing touching of old books with bare hands. This leaves oils, sweat from skin on paper, ink 😫
Does Vermeer knows so many years after His death ,people examine his paintings and be interesting
So Cupid suggest love letter ?
Could be ,She get letter informed Her ,the husband or someone loved one died
Because He has 10 kids ,well the Mother care for kids ,He has time to paint
Is it just me, or did they just drop a bomb with that playing card business at the end, and then were just kinda like 'Kay, bye!'?
Superb!
The music tunes starting over and over from the beginning was really annoying. Especially the piano one.
His name was Johannes Vermeer. So not Jan.
I note that the cupid in this painting is the same child in the same pose as the one in 'Lady Standing in front of a Virginal' The one in Girl REading a Letter has a sad or disappointed look on his face while the other has a dumb wooden look. Do we know who the little boy was? and how he came to pose for Vermeer?
But this is absurd. If the Cupid's hand with the card has been painted over by Vermeer when he painted the curtain, then surely it was Vermeer who painted out the Cupid.
An excellent video. Thanks!!!
This video manages to avoid answering all the interesting questions regarding the covering up and uncovering of the hidden cupid in Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window:
• What are the competing theories, if any, as to why the cupid was covered up?
• How is it known that someone other than Vermeer decades later covered up the cupid?
• Was there an internal debate about uncovering the cupid and, if so, what was that about and why did the pro-uncovering side prevail?
• What were the “cutting edge” techniques (aside from a scalpel) used in the process?
• How much of the covering was removed (we see various amounts at various points in the video) and, if the entire covering was not removed, why not?
• What is the playing card referred to briefly at the end and is that covered by the green curtain? If so, is that something that Vermeer himself covered up?
Instead we get some weird and superfluous chatter at the end about the role of museums. If there was some relevance of that to the uncovering of the cupid, I missed it.
And I’ll add that the animations by VR Plunge were both fascinating to watch and just a bit off to me—the edges of the girl were a bit too sharp, the reflection in the window was frozen while the girl’s head moved ever so slightly, and the location of the house on what appeared to be a sandy bank 41:29 seemed, well, not quite right—I imagine there would have been an actual street (maybe the Oude Langendijk where Vermeer’s house was located) outside the place.
Abbie Vandivere, the conservator at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, 3:39 is rocking some gorgeous amethyst purple and dark violet dreads, a bit of a change from the blue color she had at the time of the technical examination of The Girl with the Pearl Earring in 2018. (You can catch a glimpse at 27:30 and a lot more in the video “Which is the Real Girl with a Pearl Earring?” on YouTube.) No matter what, she’s always a delight to see.