Going Dutch
We had the good fortune of finding ourselves in Amsterdam in April 2023, which allowed us to take in the fabulous exhibition in the Rijksmuseum that presented nearly all of the extant paintings of Johannes Vermeer. Although the COVID-19 pandemic was still underway, we masked up and joined the crowds of people who patiently waited their turn to stand before each of the marvelous works on display, including The Astronomer, featured above. What a treat!
The exhibition also brought to mind an extraordinary documentary we had seen some years earlier, Tim’s Vermeer. The film chronicles the extensive – some might say obsessive – efforts of an inventor named Tim Jenison to duplicate Vermeer’s painting techniques so as to determine whether he employed a camera obscura to aid in creating his art.
Anthony Lane, whom you may know from his many movie reviews, recently published an insightful article about Vermeer in The New Yorker, from which we drew the quotation found in this week’s acrostic. If you wish to read the full article, you can find it in the April 26, 2026, print edition or online under a different title (“The Violence in Vermeer”).
The acrostic includes a variety of other Dutch treats, including references to The Love Letter, another painting by Vermeer, and to The Night Watch, a painting by Rembrandt. And what acrostic about Vermeer would be complete without nods to Girl with a Pearl Earring (the painting, the novel, and the film)? In connection with Clue/Answer E., here’s a scene from the latter: