Diederik Klomberg: Removals: Johannes Vermeer – The Geographer (2017)
“Vermeer created such intimacy, it is hard not to get personally touched when studying the paintings. It is surprising that we know so little about the painter and his models with whom we are able to feel so related with.
I wondered if these interiors would keep their own intimate character without these persons, in most cases the linchpin of the composition. What is left of these paintings when the central figure is taken out and the remaining parts – table, map, chairs, and window- are left behind? How do we experience that loss ? Does the painting also lose it’s quality of timelessness? And what will appear behind that missing person? How would the painter have filled up the pieces of the map, the plaster or the cabinet in the corner of the room?”