It was previously known that there was a male figure in the painting; who he was and what he was doing in the scene has largely remained a mystery, however, and now, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York institution that owns the work, has conducted further research on it.

The Art Newspaper first reported word of these new studies this week during a symposium held in tandem with Vermeer’s current retrospective at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Martin Bailey, author of the Art Newspaper report, stated the man in A Maid Asleep “probably represents a self-portrait of Vermeer,” referring to a painting by Nicolas Maes, a contemporary of Vermeer, as possible proof.

Queried about this, a Met spokesperson confirmed that a team of collaborators including conservator Dorothy Mahon and research scientist Silvia Centeno had been scanning A Maid Asleep, which is not included in the Rijksmuseum show. Their full findings were not available, however, and the Met is planning to release them at a later date.

“We are pleased that our ongoing investigation has revealed more information about the man painted out in the background of A Maid Asleep,” Mahon and Centeno said in a statement to ARTnews. “XRF mapping and technical imaging have proven a step forward in the study of works of art with the aim of bringing more understanding to the artist’s intentions and the meaning of the paintings. We look forward to continuing our study of this and the other paintings by Vermeer in The Met’s collection.”

A Maid Asleep is one of Vermeer’s acclaimed domestic tableaux featuring a lone woman, although it once featured more elements—a dog is also believed to have originally been painted into the background alongside the man. Because there was a man in this painting initially, some believe it might have been a seduction scene, a recurrent subject in Vermeer’s oeuvre.

As it stands now, A Maid Asleep is ambiguous, a composition that feels intentionally unresolved owing to the significant negative space around the subject. It came in at #11 on an ARTnews ranking of Vermeer’s paintings.

News of Mahon’s studies on the painting coincides with a wealth of research now being conducted on well-known Vermeer paintings. The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds a painting that was long thought to be a copy and is now being revisited as a bona-fide Vermeer; the National Gallery of Art owns another that recently had its attribution downgraded.

The Headlines

WINNER’S CIRCLE. Down in Australia on Friday, the Art Gallery of New South Wales announced the 2023 winner of the prestigious Archibald Prize, an open competition with a purse of AU$100,000 (about US$67,300). That lucky artist is 29-year-old Julia Gutman, who is the 13th woman to take the crown since the start of the annual event in 1921, the Guardian reports. Her piece shows the singer Montaigne, aka Jessica Cerro. The Sydney Morning Herald (which did a live blog of the prize press conference) spoke with Gutman, who said, “I’m not going to break into song, but it is really surreal.” At the event, the AU$50,000 ($33,600) Wynne Prize for landscape painting was awarded to Zaachariaha Fielding, and the AU$40,000 ($26,900) Sulman Prize for a subject painting, genre painting or mural went to Doris Bush Nungarrayi.

THE ART KING. The big day is almost here. King Charles III will be crowned on Saturday at Westminster Abbey in London—the 40th monarch to undergo the ceremony there over the past millennium, BBC News reports. Charles’s taste is often described as conservative (especially when it comes to architecture), but he also “is the most culturally attuned monarch for well over a century,” Alex Marshall writes in the New York Times. The former Prince of Wales studied trumpet and cello, loves Shakespeare and the opera, has commissioned a dozen musical pieces for the coronation, and had a watercolor he painted accepting into the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 1987. (He submitted the work under a pseudonym: Arthur George Carrick.) Would you like to see some of his creations? Tatler Asia has five examples.

The Digest

Artist Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong and writer Judy Chui-Hua Chung have been selected to create a memorial for the victims of the Los Angeles Chinese Massacre of 1871, when 18 Chinese men were lynched. It will be built largely along Los Angeles Street in the city’s downtown. [Los Angeles Times]

Using X-ray tech, the Metropolitan Museum of Art examined Vermeer‘s A Maid Asleep (ca. 1656–57) and found that it once included a man working at an easel with a paintbrush—probably a depiction of the artist himself! [The Art Newspaper]

Hauser & Wirth has named as its Charitable Partner of the Year The House of AWT Project (Artists Working Together), the legendary ballroom house that runs programs to support at-risk Black and Brown LGBTQIA+ youth and young adults. [ARTnews]

Fun music trivia: Hamilton Leithauser, the lead singer of the reunited indie-rock legends the Walkmen, worked as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art back in the day. Museums are a good place to work, he told columnist Nate Freeman. “No matter what you’re doing you’re always at least surrounded by cool stuff.” [Vanity Fair]

Sotheby’s is offering NFTs that once belonged to the cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which went under last summer. The firm’s liquidator is consigning the material, which includes a Chromie Squiggle, a Zombie CryptoPunk, and more. [Benzinga]

The Teiger Foundation announced that it has given $4.2 million to dozens of groups and individuals for “curator-led projects, coalitions, and climate action within the field of contemporary art.” Consult the full list of recipients for hints about some toothsome-sounding upcoming shows. [Artforum]

The Kicker

VIVA LA VIDA. In the New York Times, Penelope Green has a vivid profile of Alexandra Auder, a yoga instructor, parody influencer, and now memoirist, whose new book, Don’t Call Me Home, covers growing up in the legendary Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan with her mother, the Warhol “superstar” Viva, in the 1970s and 80s. (Viva and Auder’s father, filmmaker Michel Auder, split when their daughter was young.) After college at Bard, the newly published writer said she had difficulty figuring out what to do. “I was like, ‘What the hell? I’m not prepared for this,’ ” she told the Times. “I didn’t know how to have a job. I’d never seen that. I’d only seen these weird artists.” It seems she figured it out. [NYT]

Unlike many artists of his stature, Vermeer produced very little work (that we know of, at least). Fewer than 40 of his paintings remain, although the exact number of works he created changes according to whom you ask and as new research emerges. Paintings thought to be copies are sometimes authenticated as bona fide Vermeers, and recently a work long credited to him had its attribution stripped.

It is rare to have a large number of Vermeers in one place at the same time, and so it is no surprise that the current Vermeer retrospective at the Rijksmuseum has become a sensation, selling out its hundreds of thousands of tickets in two days and sparking interest across the globe. The Rijksmuseum attributes 37 paintings to Vermeer, 28 of which have been brought to Amsterdam for the show—an unprecedented number for any single exhibition devoted to him. Almost all of those paintings are the domestic tableaux for which the artist is now so highly regarded. Girl with a Pearl Earring, his most famous piece, has made the short trip from The Hague for this exhibition, and masterpieces have made longer sojourns from London, New York, and elsewhere.

But what is the best Vermeer, and why? ARTnews endeavored to find out. Below is a ranking of all of Vermeer’s works, from a downgraded treasure to one of the greatest allegories ever made. The dates and titles for each work mentioned here—which can vary, depending on which institution or scholar is citing them—are done according to the list in the back of the Rijksmuseum exhibition’s catalogue, recently published by Thames & Hudson.

The Art Newspaper reports that, at a recent symposium, Arie Wallert averred that the late 17th-century painting Lady with a Guitar is “a painting by Vermeer.” This contradicts the museum’s own information about the work, which clearly states that the work is a copy of another similar painting from ca. 1672 that’s held by the Kenwood House in London.

The Kenwood painting also features a female sitter strumming an instrument. Save for one noticeable alteration (that of the woman’s hairstyle), this painting’s composition and subject matter look nearly identical to those in the Philadelphia Museum one.

“The Philadelphia Museum of Art is grateful for past and continuing contributions of scholarship to the discourse around Lady with a Guitar, which has been identified in the John G. Johnson Collection as a copy after Vermeer,” Sasha Suda, the museum’s director, said in a statement. “Our conversation at the museum now is focused on the wonderful impossibility that this work of art remains on earth, in our care, and that historic works of art connect people and ideas through time. The future of Lady with a Guitar at PMA will be to inspire discussion, embracing scholarship, and to seek more knowledge and enlightenment from this mysterious painting nearly 350 years after its creation.”

Wallert, who was formerly a specialist with the Rijksmuseum, the Amsterdam institution now mounting a once-in-a-lifetime Vermeer retrospective, reportedly said that the Philadelphia artwork is in a “shocking” condition. In her statement, Suda said the painting, which entered the collection in the 1930s, is currently “in a highly compromised state” after “prior conservation efforts.” By comparison, the Kenwood House picture is well-known, but it does not figure in the Rijksmuseum show on view now.

There are only 37 paintings that scholars agree can be attributed to Vermeer. Some 28 of them are currently in the sold-out Rijksmuseum show. Recently, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. made headlines when experts with the museum stripped the Vermeer attribution from a painting in its collection. Somewhat controversially, the Rijksmuseum curators chose to treat that work as a bona fide Vermeer anyway.

Related Articles

11 Must-See Masterpieces at the Rijksmuseum

Rijksmuseum Authenticates Three Vermeer Paintings Ahead of Blockbuster Exhibition in 2023 

“One of the fascinating things is once you’ve seen a Vermeer, you never forget it,” said Wheelock, who cocurated his own Vermeer blockbuster in 1995 for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. “Beyond being beautiful, they somehow speak very directly to people as somehow reaching deep inside them. They make us feel better about ourselves.”

Co-organized with the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Wheelock’s “Johannes Vermeer” brought together 21 Vermeers, a record gathering only surpassed by the current Rijksmuseum exhibition. Several paintings, like the NGA’s Girl with a Flute (1664–67), had recently been cleaned ahead of the 1995 exhibition.

Wheelock retired from the NGA in 2018 after more than 40 years. He is currently a senior adviser to the Leiden Collection, a lending library of Old Masters, which loaned Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (ca. 1672–75), one of the few Vermeer works still in private hands, to the Rijksmuseum exhibition.

ARTnews spoke to Wheelock by phone, shortly after his visit to TEFAF in Maastricht last week, about his memories of the NGA exhibition, his thoughts on why demand for Vermeer has only grown exponentially, and the additional logistical issues Rijksmuseum faced in mounting their Vermeer retrospective nearly 30 years after his.

A Series of Compounding Issues

Wheelock began working on his Vermeer exhibition about nine years before it opened. In addition to the scholarly research and painting conservation that went into mounting a show of this scale, securing loans was one of his biggest concerns in the run-up to the exhibition. Recalling the stress of how many Vermeers would actually be assembled when the show opened, Wheelock said, “When you contact somebody, and they don’t answer how long do you wait before you inquire again? How do you find the route in to make an opportunity to borrow a painting?”

The exhibition opened to the public on Sunday, November 12, 1995. The week prior it seemed like the show would have only 19 Vermeers, still a feat. But just a few days before two more works arrived: The Geographer (1669) from the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and Woman with a Pearl Necklace (ca. 1662–64) from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. The Städel hadn’t received its export license for the painting from the German government until the previous Friday, and the Gemäldegalerie’s then director Henning Bock hand-delivered the painting. They were both installed on the same day.

“That night, thus, was the first time that I saw the show together! I remember vividly how the guards just let me sit there for a while to take it all in. It was an amazing experience,” Wheelock said.

Wheelock’s exhibition was also the victim of two government shutdowns during its run, as a Republican-controlled House pushed to make deep spending cuts in exchange for approving the federal budget. (The National Gallery of Art is a federally funded museum, though it is not part of the Smithsonian Institution.) The museum closed on November 14, two days after it opened, before reopening for a couple weeks, and then closing once more on December 16 before reopening on December 27 via private funding—for the Vermeer exhibition only—while the second shutdown lasted until January 6.

As this was happening, Wheelock had to reassure the European museums that had lent to the show that their priceless masterpieces were secure, and the show would eventually reopen. “One of the toughest things was to actually persuade European colleagues that the paintings are safe and that they shouldn’t take them back,” he said. “I had to have some very difficult discussions with colleagues from Europe about those issues. One of the diplomatic things that I’m most proud of is we kept all the paintings here—that was a real challenge.”

Issues with Time and Space

Taking place before online ticket sales or social media, the NGA’s Vermeer exhibition exceeded expectations, proving that art lovers would line up—even in the winter months—to get a chance to see high-caliber shows by one of art history’s most important figures. According to the museum, more than 300,000 people saw the paintings.

“We knew it was going to be popular but we had no clue,” Wheelock said, noting that the museum had done some modest publicity to advertise the show. In addition to advance tickets, the NGA made 2,500 tickets available each day on a first-come, first-serve basis. Lines stretched for hours on some days, and a handful of people even camped overnight.

Even though the National Gallery of Art is one of the largest museums by square footage in North America, capacity proved to be a major issue for the 1995 exhibition due to room occupancy limits. “The problem was back then is that people stayed much, much longer than normal in an exhibition,” Wheelock said. “They just didn’t want to leave. It was that special to be among these Vermeers.”

Vermeer, Then and Now

Though the Vermeer mania is as real as it was 30 years ago, that wasn’t always the case. He wasn’t well-known during his lifetime outside of his hometown of Delft; his importance to art history wasn’t established until the 19th century. What has long fascinated Wheelock and countless others about Vermeer’s paintings is their sheer beauty, employing a delicate use of color and light and careful attention to composition.

Even beyond that, Wheelock said there’s also a permanence, timelessness, and quietude to these works. Though subjects are shown going about everyday activities, like reading a letter or opening a window, there’s a gravitas and grandeur to their inner lives through Vermeer’s use of subtle gestures and expressions, Wheelock explained.

“Look at how beautiful and how important and significant that seems in the Vermeer painting,” Wheelock said. “You take from Vermeer something special that comes back to speak to you directly and internally.”

A key difference between the 1995 show and the current one is that after its debut at the NGA, it traveled to the Mauritshuis, meaning that Europeans didn’t have to travel across the Atlantic to see it. But since the Rijksmuseum is the only venue for “Vermeer,” Wheelock said that is likely what caused the exhibition to sell out so quickly, especially given that the logistics that went into a planning this show means it is likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that may never be matched again. “That adds an element that this is not something to miss, you may never have that opportunity again,” he said.

Plus, the Rijksmuseum launched an extensive international publicity campaign to promote the new exhibition, “creating a demand beyond anything you can probably handle,” Wheelock said, adding that as with the 1995 show it’s likely that “nobody is going to want to leave quickly.”

The Rijksmuseum is now tasked with managing an extremely popular, sold-out show thousands of people are still desperate to get tickets for, with unverified listings on eBay selling tickets for several hundred euros.

“There’s already sense of anger that they can’t get tickets,” Wheelock said. “That’s not something you want to see happen at all. You want it to be seen a positive experience to have brought these paintings together so people can see them and have experience of the overarching view of Vermeer and what he did throughout the course of his career.”

The Rijksmuseum has made it very clear they’re not giving special access to anyone, including journalists and critics because, according to the museum, “due to the great interest, the maximum number of press accreditations has now been reached.”

For those still desperate to see the exhibition, Wheelock ventured that Amsterdam hotels might “have acquired blocks of tickets, that if you get a room in a hotel, you will get a ticket to the show,” and if you happen to make the trek to Amsterdam “maybe you’re lucky and call up while you’re there and tickets become available,” he said.

Barring seeing the exhibition, there’s no better way to honor Vermeer’s legacy than to experience the region of his birth, Wheelock said: “There are lots of other great shows in the Netherlands right now. So maybe you go enjoy the Netherlands and the tulips and other exhibitions.”

“Due to huge demand for extra tickets for the Vermeer exhibition, the website is experiencing problems,” the Rijksmuseum announced on Monday. “Ticket sales have been shut down until further notice. Sorry for the inconvenience. We are working hard to resolve the situation.”

After it was announced in 2021, the Rijksmuseum declared the show the “first and last” retrospective for the artist. The exhibition includes 28 of the 37 known paintings by Vermeer, among them loans from institutions in Japan and the US, making it the most comprehensive show by the 17th century master ever.

As a result, demand for the hotly anticipated, critically acclaimed exhibition has continued, selling out only two days after it opened. The museum said it was “working hard to ensure more people have the opportunity to see the exhibition,” including extended operating hours until 10 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings.

There are still thousands of people desperately in search of tickets to see the exhibition before it closes on June 4. As of press time, the website Ticketswap received 7,407 requests for tickets to the Vermeer exhibition but only sold 497.

On eBay, listings for tickets for the Vermeer exhibition have sold for significantly higher than the original price of €30. One auction listing for two tickets on Monday closed at €433, a markup of 1,343 per cent. ARTnews was not able to confirm if the tickets listed were legitimate.

“At the moment there are no more tickets available for Vermeer,” the Rijksmuseum said on Sunday, just two days after the show opened to the public. “To ensure that the public can have a pleasant visit to the exhibition, the number of available tickets is limited.”

But the museum hinted that it would find ways of opening the show to more visitors, writing that it was “working hard to ensure more people have the opportunity to see the exhibition.”

The Vermeer show has been hotly anticipated since it was first announced in 2021, when the Rijksmuseum declared the show the “first and last” retrospective for the artist. There’s good reason for such hyperbolic language, as there has never before been a more comprehensive Vermeer show mounted.

Experts have also closely watched the show for the new research about Vermeer that has emerged as a result. Alongside that scholarship, there have been efforts to review old information about Vermeer, with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC even stripping the Vermeer attribution from one painting in its collection. That work is still presented within the Rijksmuseum show as an authentic Vermeer, however.

The Rijksmuseum’s show has garnered rave reviews. The New York Times’s Jason Farago wrote, “Really, the show is just about perfect: perfectly argued, perfectly paced, as clear and uncontaminated as the light streaming through those Delft windows.” The Guardian critic Adrian Searle awarded the show five stars, writing, “The last big Vermeer show, in The Hague, was a febrile, crowded experience. Here, the art has room to breathe.”

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is set to change that, as this week it opens the largest exhibition of Vermeer‘s work to date, with 28 paintings on view—seven of which have not been on display in the Netherlands in over 200 years. The exhibition has been made possible by global museum loans from such institutions as the Frick Collection in New York and the National Gallery in Washington D.C.

The son of an art dealer, Vermeer lived and worked in Delft as a painter, an art dealer, and the head of the St. Lucas art guild. He was raised a Calvinist reformed Protestant, but converted to Catholicism upon his marriage. He had 11 children who survived beyond childhood. The new exhibition follows themes that Vermeer took up during his life such as domestic interiors, religion, musical seduction, and daily life.

Though Vermeer was moderately successful during his lifetime, receiving recognition in Delft and the Hague in the Netherlands, his works experienced a revival in the 19th century with the rise of the camera. This technology picked up on techniques that Vermeer had incorporated into his paintings, including his use of light and illusionism.

The show comes on the heels of new technical research conducted on the paintings, with Mauritshuis in the Hague and the University of Antwerp, using advanced Macro-XRF and RIS scanning technologies. (The same technologies were used on Rembrandt’s painting The Night Watch.) Changes made by Vermeer (and others) to his work have shed light on the artist’s approach and overall practice, as well as the lives of the works themselves. (Last year, the museum released details on the underpainting of The Milkmaid, which included previously unknown details of the piece.) Research will continue after the exhibition’s close and will be presented at a symposium in 2025, in conjunction with the 350th anniversary of Vermeer’s death.

Ahead of the new exhibition, which will be on view through June 4, ARTnews spoke with Gregor Weber, the head of the department of fine arts at the Rijksmuseum and co-curator of the show.

ARTnews: This exhibition is the largest showing of Vermeer’s work thus far. What was the impetus behind it?

Gregor Weber: The last big monographic exhibition about Vermeer was at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the Mauritshuis in the Hague in 1995–96. We are now a generation farther away from that. After nearly 30 years, it is necessary to show the work of Vermeer and others like [Pieter] de Hooch and Rembrandt [Harmenszoon van Rijn] as artists of the Netherlands.

The Rijksmuseum has never dedicated an exhibition to Vermeer until now. Since the last showing, there have been advancements in our understanding of the artist and his work. There was also a nice opportunity to showcase the Vermeer paintings on loan from the Frick Collection while it’s undergoing a rebuilding process. The show includes three paintings from the Frick, four from the Rijksmuseum, three from Mauritshaus, and others from museum partners in Washington D.C., London, Berlin, Dresden, and Frankfurt.

AN: It’s great that you could arrange this kind of global collaboration. How did you first conceive of the show?

GW: We were glad to have a selection of 28 Vermeer paintings for the exhibition. We had to consider the arrangement, how to best display them, and how visitors would approach them. We decided to arrange the show based on themes that Vermeer had considered throughout his career, in particular this interplay between the inner and outer world. He paints the inside of Dutch houses, for example, but opens these interiors with a woman’s gaze looking beyond the frame and windows left open to the outside world. Such elements and details as open windows and letters really drive this concept. He also captures male and female courtship through music making as an invitation to the beholder.

AN: Your research considered the role of Vermeer’s conversion to Catholicism. How did that inform the way you approached the exhibition?

GW: In the catalog and the arrangement of the exhibition, Catholicism plays a minor role. He painted Allegory of the Catholic Faith [1670–74], Christ in the House of Mary and Martha [1654–55], and Woman Holding a Balance [ca. 1662–64], which pick up on Catholic themes. We have three paintings together that speak not to an outer world, but rather to an inner one. In these paintings, Vermeer speaks to the soul through religious themes and motifs. But he also painted very fashionable subjects at the time, too, that were very opposite of these Catholic themes such as young people coming together to make music and to drink wine.

AN: Tell me about the collaborative research project that the Rijksmuseum has been working on with Mauritshuis.

GW: We conducted a lot of technical research on 11 of Vermeer’s paintings. We have quite a bit of equipment in our studio, as a result of Operation Nightwatch. Some paintings will stay at the Rijksmuseum after the show so that we can continue to examine and research them. This kind of research will continue to be an ongoing process and the technical research will be published about two or three years later.

For the show, it is interesting to show the changes Vermeer made in some of his paintings. It helps us to better understand his decision making during the painting process. We are a little bit closer to Vermeer not only conceptually, but also in his practice.

AN: Is there a sense of why Vermeer made these changes?

GW: Each case is different and some changes were made by restorers or others. In Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window [1657–58], for example, there was a cupid floating on the wall that was later painted over by someone else.

AN: How did discoveries from the conservation project influence the scope of the exhibition?

GW: The research doesn’t impact the whole show, but it influenced our knowledge of several paintings. In The Milkmaid, Vermeer painted over a board with jacks and also a fire basket in the foreground. We have an illustration of this hanging on the wall so that visitors will get a sense of how he thought through and developed solutions in his work. One can see that Vermeer really considers composition, light, and color.

AN: What are some key takeaways from the show?

GW: Vermeer was a master of painting light, which means that he understood the rules of light. For instance, warm yellow light creates blue coat shadows. As a keen observer of the world, Vermeer used this in his work. And, at the time, he was the only one doing it.

His use of the camera obscura also influenced the way he painted details and distance. There are places in his paintings where there are sharp lines and other things that are blurred or appear out of focus. Other artists at the time were painting everything in focus.

Part of my research on Vermeer’s depictions of Catholicism picks up on this use of the camera obscura because the Jesuits wrote a lot about it as a tool to explain the light of God entering into believer’s souls. I think Vermeer was interested in how his neighbors, who were Jesuits, used the camera obscura as a tool for theological, educational, and devotional purposes, which he then incorporated into his paintings. Interest in Vermeer’s work was reignited when the camera was developed in the 19th century because of his ability to paint details in a similar photographic view.

The Headlines

IT IS BLOCKBUSTER TIME. The Rijksmuseum’s hotly anticipated Johannes Vermeer blowout does not open until Friday, but it has already sold an astonishing 200,000 tickets, the Associated Press reports. The Amsterdam institution has extended its hours so that more people can pay the exhibition a visit. Treasures await there: It features 28 of the 37 paintings that are generally ascribed to the 17th-century Dutch master. The early reviews are rapturous. Adrian Searle gave it five shining stars in the Guardian . “The last big Vermeer show, in The Hague, was a febrile, crowded experience,” he writes. (That was in 1996.) “Here, the art has room to breathe.” In the Washington Post, Philip Kennicott says that the show “is beautifully designed , with dramatic reveals and poignant sightlines,” and he proposes that it is “almost certainly . . . the last great Vermeer show of a passing age in the history of museums, grand narratives and Western culture.” You have until June 4 to get to the Netherlands to catch it.

THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR. The Des Moines Art Center in Iowa has tapped Kelly Baum to be its next director, the Des Moines Register reports. Baum is coming to the Hawkeye State from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she is curator of contemporary art, and she succeeds Jeff Fleming, who is retiring after a quarter-century leading the museum. She starts in May. Over in California, Larry J. Feinberg is retiring as director and CEO of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art later this year, after 15 years at the helm, Noozhawk reports. Feinberg said that he plans to write and travel.

The Digest

Speaking of the Met: It has received a portrait of the Florentine banker Bindo Altoviti (looking very virile!) by the 16th-century artist Francesco Salviati—a gift from the trust of the late Aso O. Tavitian. It is the first painting on marble to enter the museum’s collection. Met director Max Hollein termed it a “transformative addition to our holdings of European paintings.” [The Met/Press Release]

Australia has selected Archie Moore to represent it at the Venice Biennale next year. The Kamilaroi and Bigambul artist works in a variety media to address identity and racism in Australia, and will be the second First Nations artist to represent the country with a solo show. [The Guardian]

A foundation that was started by the late Swiss real estate giant Bruno Stefanini is researching the provenance of the material in his vast collection, which includes 6,000 oil paintings and tens of thousands of other items. An expert panel will make binding decisions about restituting any Nazi-looted material. [The New York Times]

In a reversal of Trump-era policy, the U.S. Department of Defense said that prisoners who are allowed to leave Guantánamo Bay can bring with them art that they made there. A DoD spokesperson said that they can take a “practicable quantity” of art, but that the U.S. government maintains that it is its property. [The New York Times]

A new podcast, The Statue, dives deep into the story behind the popular Rocky statue that stands at the bottom of the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s hosted by Paul Farber, the cofounder of Monument Lab in the city; its latest episode looks at the artist who created the piece, A. Thomas Schomberg. [The Statue/WHYY]

A 14th-century synagogue has been identified by archaeologists in Utrera, Spain; it was hidden in a building that has variously served as a church, a hospital, and a bar. A historian’s writings from 1604 had suggested that it had once been a site of prayer for Jews. [The Associated Press/ABC News]

The Kicker

PAINT WHAT YOU KNOW. Less than a year before he died, in 2021, artist Wayne Thiebaud gave an interview to writer Jason Edward Kaufman in which he discussed a life-changing studio visit he had, early in his career, with Willem de Kooning. In the interview, which the Art Newspaperhas excerpted , Thiebaud says that his elder basically told him “you have to find something you really know something about and that you are really interested in, and just do that.” Thiebaud had worked in some restaurants, and so he decided to paint some pies. “I looked at it, and said, my god I just painted a bunch of pies,” the artist said. “That’s going to be the end of me as a serious painter.” Life: It’s full of surprises. [TAN]

In October, the curator of the National Gallery of Art, Marjorie Wieseman, said it was likely produced by “an associate of Vermeer—not by the Dutch artist himself, as was previously believed.” The announcement followed a long scientific and artistic analysis. The team of curators, conservators, and scientists concluded that the author had botched the layering of pigments, resulting in a coarse finish unlike the precise brushwork synonymous with Vermeer.

The gallery said the findings challenged long-held beliefs about Vermeer’s practice. He may not have been “a lone genius,” it said, but “an instructor or mentor to the next generation of artists.” 

The painting is currently on view in the current Washington, DC exhibition “Vermeer’s Secrets,” where it is labeled as a studio work.

Pieter Roelofs, the Rijksmuseum co-curator, told the Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool, “It is being lent as a ‘non-Vermeer’, but we will hang it as a real Vermeer.” He added that “the doubt will disappear during the flight over the ocean.”

The Rijksmuseum survey is set to be the largest exhibit ever of Vermeer’s work, with 28 paintings assembled for the first time. There are only 36 surviving paintings by Vermeer, so any change in attribution can have an immense impact on the academic scholarship and programming around the artist. 

A painting of Saint Praxedis has also been accepted as a Vermeer. Produced between 1640 and 1645, it is a copy of a work by the Italian artist Felice Ficherelli.

A small number of scholars, most vocally Arthur Wheelock, a Vermeer specialist formerly with the National Gallery of Art, believe its unidentified signature belongs to Vermeer. It was excluded from the “Young Vermeer” exhibition that traveled to the Hague, Dresden, and Edinburgh between 2010 and 2011.

The Art Newspaper reports that Saint Praxedis sold in 2014 at Christie’s for £7.2 million ($6.3 million) as a Vermeer, with support from a technical analysis at the Rijksmuseum. It will come to the Rijksmuseum next year from Tokyo’s National Museum of Western Art, where it is on loan from “a Japanese company,” according to the newspaper.

The last addition to the show is Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (1670–72), from Thomas Kaplan’s Leiden Collection. Despite some initial doubts about its authenticity, it was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2004, selling for £16 million (roughly $19 million).The painting was also deemed an authentic Vermeer following an examination at the Rijksmuseum.