RKD STUDIES

C. Richard Johnson, Jr.

August 17, 2017

This appendix provides a list of weave matching pairs among Vermeer’s paintings on canvas in the order of their discovery. Also noted are the title and L-number, collection, dates, and the publication announcing each weave matching pair. L-numbers are based on the sequencing of Vermeer’s paintings in [Liedtke, 2008]. The dates are from http://www.essentialvermeer.com/ spanning the range of dates estimated in three scholarly oeuvre catalogues by [Wheelock, 1997], [Liedtke, 2008] and [Franits, 2015]. The range of the dates can be quite substantial. Only the first six of these weave matching pairs are mentioned in [Johnson, 2017a] as the seventh and eighth were not discovered until after the final text of [Johnson, 2017a] was submitted to the publisher.

For weave matching pairs current wisdom dictates that artists would make use of canvas from the same roll, presumed to be bought at the same time, in a relatively short time frame, such as one year or two at the most. This would more likely be true for the larger pieces, but less so for smaller scraps. Some of the weave matches do not concur with this bit of current wisdom, especially the pair Woman with a Lute (L14) and A Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid (L31) which are dated at least five years apart by Wheelock, Liedtke, and Franits. This discrepancy motivates a careful re-thinking of the dating of Vermeer’s paintings.

References

• [Franits, 2015] W. Franits, Vermeer, London/New York 2015.
• [Johnson, 2017a] C. R. Johnson Jr., ‘Exploiting Weave Maps’, in: C.R. Johnson Jr. (ed.), Counting Vermeer: Using Weave Maps to Study Vermeer's Canvases, RKD Studies, The Hague (RKD) 2017, chapter 6.
• [Johnson, 2017b] C. R. Johnson Jr., ‘Vermeer’s Canvas’ in: Views on Vermeer, the online companion to the exhibition Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry, exh.cat. Washington DC (National Gallery of Art) October 2017.
• [Johnson and Sethares, 2017a] C.R. Johnson Jr. and W.A. Sethares, ‘Canvas Weave Match Supports Designation of Vermeer's Geographer and Astronomer as a Pendant Pair’, in: Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9 (2017), issue 1, http://jhna.org/index.php/vol-9-1-2017/348-johnson-sethares (DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.17) (date consulted: May 2017).
• [Johnson and Sethares, 2017b] C. R. Johnson Jr. and W. A. Sethares, ‘Hunting for Weave Matches: Computation in Art Scholarship’, submitted to special issue on Digital Art History of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (2017), issue 12.
• [Liedtke, 2008] W. Liedtke, Vermeer. The Complete Paintings, Antwerp 2008.
• [Liedtke, Johnson, and Johnson, 2012] W. Liedtke, C.R. Johnson Jr., and D.H. Johnson, ‘Canvas Matches in Vermeer: A Case Study in the Computer Analysis of Fabric Supports’, Metropolitan Museum Journal 47 (2012), pp. 99-106.
• [Wheelock, 1997] A. K. Wheelock, Jr., Vermeer: The Complete Works, New York 1997.