Understanding the initial ownership paths of Vermeer's body of work: After Andrew Graham-Dixon

Andrew Graham-Dixon, acclaimed Caravaggio biographer, has recently published a book titled Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found and, while I am still in its early stages, I found some enlightening revelations. I report on these early findings in this post.

Graham-Dixon's research has shown that a significant portion of Vermeer's work was done for one family; and ownership of those works stayed within the family until the death of the last member and a subsequent auction.

Six years after Vermeer's death, a married woman named Magdalene Peters van Ruijven also died. She was 27 years old at the time of her death and had only been married for 2 years to her surviving spouse Jacob Dissus. Magdalene had been the daughter of a heir (her father) to a brewing fortune and a mother who hailed from a wealthy Delft family. Both of her parents preceded her in death and she had inherited their possessions, a part of which was a collection of paintings.

Magdalene's will bequeathed her assets to her spouse and the Delft city records still show the enumeration of those assets. According to the Recorder, a total of 20 Vermeer paintings were passed from Magdalene to her husband; 2/3 of Vermeer's known production. According to Graham-Clark, this list had been discovered and published by John Michael Montias 30 years ago.

Following Magdalene's death, Jacob, for one reason or another, was obligated to share her estate with his father; inclusive of six Vermeers. It is not clear under what circumstances Dissus regained, or retained, ownership of those paintings but all 20 were found in his print shop upon his death in 1695. His paintings were sold at auction in Amsterdam subsequent to his death.

The Delft recorder had not assigned names to any of the paintings but the Amsterdam auctioneer did (as shown below). Two of the paintings are unknown and are presumed lost.

Graham-Dixon sees this collection as unique in a number of ways. First, it was built around the works of a single painter. Vermeer had begun working for the Van Ruijven's about 1657 -- while he was in his mid-20s -- and, for the next 13 years, painted almost exclusively for them. At the end of this period he more or less gave up painting. Graham-Dixon noted that this was unusual in the "annals of patron-artist relationships."

The collection was fuirther unique in the way that the family cherished and preserved the holdings. Graham-Dixon asserts that Vermeer's lack of visibility in the art world was due to this fact. He had done most of his work for them and they held it tightly to their collective chests.

One of the paintings included in the auction was unnamed, but due to the description, Graham-Dixon contends that it "can be plausibly identified as The Art of Painting." If that is the case, it would have been purchased subsequent to Vermeer's death as he had retained control of it during his lifetime and, further, it was inherited by his widow post his death. It had been sold by the Administrator against her will. If bought by the van Ruijvens, it would have been the daughter, or the Mom, making the purchase as the Dad had died by this time. To round out the possibilities, the painting described in the listing could have been a second version of The Art of Painting (now lost) or could have been a different painting altogether (also lost).

A total of 20 Vermeers had been recorded at the time of Magdalene's death yet 21 of his works were offered at the auction. Graham-Dixon offers two alternatives: (i) Dissus bought another Vermeer between 1683 and 1695 or (ii) the Recorder failed to identify one of the other paintings in the inherited assets as a Vermeer.

The third unique bit about this collection was that it (i) amounted to 2/3 of Vermeer's total production and (ii) contained almsot all of the paintings on which his modern reputation has been built. The figure below captures the Vermeer works that were not included in the auction and categorizes them according to Graham-Dixon's characterization.

According to Graham-Dixon, the two genre paintings, on the basis of the same coat of arms appearing in a stained-glass window in each of them, seem to have been commissioned by the same family. He added The Love Letter to the genre category because it "follows the convention of Dutch genre painting in a straightforward way." It is not known who purchased this piece originally.

The Astronomer and The Greographer were commissioned by a director of the Dutch East India Company. Allegory of the Catholic Faith was commissioned by an Amsterdam Burgher.

As shown in the figure above, seven Vermeer-typical paintings were created for non-Ruijven patron(s). With the exception of Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, it is unclear who commissioned these paintings.

To Graham-Dixon it is clear that "with few exceptions, Vermeer created his most distinctive and memorable pictures for the Ruijven family."

In the Footsteps of Piero della Francesca: The Milan sequel -- Madonna and Child with Saints, Angels and Federico da Montefeltro (1469 - 70)

"... the painting ... is sublime. Serene, sculptural, luminous, muted in color and masterly in its creation of an illusionistic space, the altarpiece crystallizes the extraordinary talents of its creator, Piero della Francesca." Thus does Judith Dobrzynski (Masterpiece: Underwriting and Outstanding Altar, The Wall Street Journal, 3/5/22) describe the work Madonna and Child with Saints, Angels and Federico da Montefeltro. The painting, housed in Milan's Pinocoteca di Brera, is also known by the names The Montefeltro Altarpiece, The San Bernardino Altarpiece, and The Brera Altarpiece. Karen and I had the honor of viewing it in situ on September 1 of this year. 

Piero della Francesca, Madonna and
Child with Saints, Angels and
Federico da Montefeltro, 1469 - 1470

The Patron

The painting was ordered by Federico da Montefeltro to honor either his late wife (died 1472) or their newly born son. Federico had also been considering his mortality and had chosen the church of San Bernardino as the site of his mausoleum. The painting was intended to be installed therein. 

Who was Federico? Also known as Federico III da Montefeltro KG, he “was one of the most successful mercenary captains of the Italian Renaissance” and lord of Urbino from 1444 until his death in 1482. 

According to blog.der-leiermann.com:

Few names embody the paradox of the Italian Renaissance as fully as that of Federico da Montefeltro. He was a condottiere, a man of war who spent his life on the battlefield and whose power rested on military discipline. Yet at the same time he was one of the greatest patrons of his age, a humanist who supported philosophy and science, who gathered artists and architects around him and transformed Urbino into a radiant island of culture.

According to the Uffizi, Piero was a frequent guest at Federico's court, "finding himself in a cultured and refined atmosphere which would soon become one of the most important cultural and artistic hearts of Italy."

So Federico had the cultural pedigree and financial resources to solicit the creation of a masterpiece from the artist and Piero's appreciation for the court augured well for timely and successful completion of the effort.

The Painting

Style

All sources characterize this painting as a "sacred conversation" a genre which, according to Dobrzynski, originated in the first half of the 15th century and "replaced the traditional triptych and polypytch altarpieces." The sacred conversation pieces generally included Mary and Jesus flanked by saints and, in some cases, donors "in a single architectural space." The scene for these conversations were frequently the church apse.

Construct

The construct of the paintings and its interpretations are presented in the following annotated diagram. The annotations are drawn mostly from the Dobrzynski article.

Disposition

According to breraplus.org, the altarpiece came from the Church of San Bernardino in Urbino to Brera after the Napoleonic absolutions. Subsequent restorations and studies have revealed that the current instance of the painting has been reduced in size from its initial implementation

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In late-November 2025 I toured the cities wherein Piero della Francesca did most of his work and where many of his existing works are still displayed. I have previously written about the precipitating factors -- as regards the trip -- as well as  early experiences and will continue to flesh out the entirety of the trip over time. I have also previously described post-trip Piero experiences in Massachusetts and the foregoing falls into that latter category.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Norton Museum of Art's RAW: In Retrospect exhibition.

Over the last few days I have been exploring Norton Museum of Art's Recognition of Women in Art: In Retrospect exhibition and the included works of Jenny Saville and Marío Berrío included therein. Today I turn to the works of Njideka Akunyili Crosby.

Njideka, according to one source, "burst onto the art scene in 2010 with her large-scale mixed media works that mix figurative painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and collage. Her layered compositions of interiors combine her LA surroundings with images from her birth country Nigeria and recall the complexity of contemporary experience."

The Crosby works on show at the In Retrospect exhibition were Rebranding My Love (2011), The Beautyfull Ones, Series #1b (2014), and Super Blue Omo (2016).

Rebranding My Love was the earliest of the three paintings on display and shows a male lying diagonally across a bed with a black female perched partially on his back. The outline of the male's body is painted in white while the upper portion of the arm and back is decorated with a variety of images. The visible parts of the female's body are, likewise ,decorated with images. The bed is covered with a paneled coverlet, each panel inlaid with an image. The coverlet has a dominant yellow coloring furthest away from the viewer and striking blues and browns closer in. There are prominent parts in the female's hair. The background is a jarring orange with varying gradations of intensity as you move from right to left.

The artist's husband is white and I see her saying here that she can provide a foundation of her culture for him to lay on, and she can wrap him in her cultural norms and practices, but there will always be a part of him that will remain "untouched." 

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Re-branding My Love, 2011

The Beautyfull Ones portray Nigerian youths, some of whom are Crosby's own family members. Series #1b is a portrait of her sister at about 10 years of age, "filtered through Diego Velázquez's portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos."  I have included a copy of the Prince's portrait for comparison purposes.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, 
The Beautyfull Ones, Series #1b, 2014

Diego Velazquez, Prince Baltasar Carlos

When compared, the opulence of the Prince's regalia is replaced by a patchwork of photographs. The Crosby work includes an "intricate layering of xerox transfer, paint, pastel and colored pencil, creating a matrix of interlocking planes" (christies.com).

The artist talks about "flipping the script" of the Prince's painting. The color scheme in the Prince's portrait is dark with lighter grey tones along the arms. The color scheme in her sister's portrait is reversed. The darkness comes with the arms while the attire is grey-white.

Artchive describes Super Blue Omo as a genre painting associated with the Postcolonial art movement. "The composition is rich with layers, not only in its physical appearance but also in its cultural and historical implications, inviting a deep and reflective engagement from its audience."

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Super Blue Omo, 2016

The title of the painting supposedly hearkens back to a detergent that was widely advertised and sold in the artist's homeland during her childhood. The image on the TV is in some way related.

A light blue color permeates the artwork and is contrasted by the deep blue square on the back wall. As is Crosby's practice, the painting is suffused with images from a variety of sources emplaced on almost every available surface.

The TV is angled to allow viewing from the sofa but the subject is herself angled away from the TV and staring into the distance. The tea/coffee setting is for two but there is only one person present. The angle of the table to the sofa is suggestive of someone pushing that table back in order to leave the scene and the subject could be looking at whatever that person is doing.

A very well-aligned piece.

Norton Museum's Recognition of Women in Art: In Retrospect -- Select María Berrío works

Yesterday I introduced Norton Museum of Art's Recognition of Women In Art: In Retrospect exhibition and the works of Jenny Saville included therein. Today I turn to the works of María Berrío.

María grew up in Colombia but moved to New York City to complete her Fine Arts education; she now lives and works in the city. Her artwork, according to Norton Museum of Art literature, "reflects on her upbringing and experience through intricate collages which demonstrate the complexity of identity through a multicultural lens." 

According to The Women's Studio:

Berrio’s intricate collage technique animates the works’ surfaces. The images are constructed on very large stretched canvases. Using paper like paint, Berrío lays down narrow strips of cut paper – either painted or printed – to contour a human body or a gnarled tree. She then adds tiny flakes to represent flowers or leaves. She draws in some details such as the faces and hands of the people or the eyes and delicate beak of a bird. The flatness of the surface gives her work a faceted, jewel-like appearance.

The pieces included in the Norton Museum exhibition are The Quiet Undoing (2020), Anemochory (2019), and The Woman in the Dunes (2022).

The Quiet Undoing has a woman with crossed legs reclining in a chair with her posture oriented towards the viewer and with bougainvilleas plastered over the wall behind her. The chair does not seem to be appropriately positioned to support her weight/posture and she is somewhat squeezed into the lower left hand side of the painting so that the bougainvilleas can be the focus. While the scene looks like a painting in this rendition, an in-person view clearly shows the leaves and flowers as collages and the same holds true for the floor tiles.

María Berrío, The Quiet Undoing, 2020

In describing this work, the artist states:

Bougainvillea is one of my favourite flowers. It reminds me of growing up in Colombia, where you can see its splendour everywhere in absurd abundance. One of the reasons I wanted to paint this flower was because of its “paper-like” quality: when I see them, they remind me of the paper I use to create my paintings.

When I imagine this village I am creating, I imagine warm weather, a breeze that carries the smell of the sea. A town where flowers are blooming everywhere, where gorgeous cascades of bougainvillea drift down the walls of homes. Where people sit and wait for the day to pass, where there are no hurries or time constraints, no need to be anywhere, just the need to be present.

That’s where the woman depicted in this painting is. She is sitting and contemplating her present. Her arms and legs are crossed and she seems pensive. The air, I imagine, is heavy, thick with humidity. The bougainvillea behind her is a riotous symbol of life, a life that is blooming, lush and wild, a life which is behind her.

This was the last piece I created for this exhibition. On reflection, I think of this painting as a manifestation of my own hopes and desires: a warm afternoon, a calm atmosphere, a day of contemplation, a day of silence and reflection. The months that have accompanied the making of the works for this show have been full of noise and fear ...This last piece was me trying to take a deep breath, trying to smell the sea, trying to cultivate the same hope, endurance, and adaptation that animate the figures of my work.’ – María Berrío.

María Berrío, Anemochory, 2019

In Anemochory, 

Berrío hints at a desert setting by depicting a dragon blood tree, a species native to the island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean. The inverted quality of its roots suggests an allusion to immigrants. The figures in the painting appear to be in a dreamlike setting, in a state of limbo. One disheveled girl is flopped width-wise on a four-poster bed as though impatiently exhausted by the interminable wait for something interesting to happen. On a nearby chair, her more neatly garbed companion sits gingerly holding a large butterfly, her sidelong gaze betraying wistfulness. Considering Berrío’s interest in depicting displaced immigrant people, Anemochory can be interpreted as a representation of the uncertain yet hopeful pathway people take to migrate, embodied here by the landscape and the actions of the characters, which allude to the idea of waiting for the next step to take in this journey -- Perez Art Museum/Artillery Magazine

The Woman in the Dunes has a woman diagonally arrayed in the painting but, as in the case of The Quiet Undoing, she does not occupy the entire picture frame. Rather, the portion of the painting closest to her seems more formal and business-like than does the upper-right portion. The subject's knees are slightly raised, as is the hem of the pleated skirt, pulled up, as it is, by the subject's right hand. The subject has a somewhat rounded face with the chin twisted to the viewer's left.

María Berrío, The Woman in the Dunes, 2022

A brown briefcase stands on the subject's left side and there appears to be a pair of grey pumps just beyond it. Over towards the hint of a waterline one can see a white picnic bag and sandals, accessories more befitting the locale. My interpretation is of a young woman just about to transition from a hard day at work to the start of a relaxing weekend at the beach.

Norton Museum's Recognition of Women in Art: In Retrospect -- Select Jenny Saville works

 In 2011, West Palm Beach's Norton Museum of Art launched an exhibition series titled Recognition of Art by Women (RAW) "dedicated to honoring a contemporary female painter or sculptor." To date the institution has presented 10 exhibitions in the series and is now running a derivative exhibition called Recognition of Art by Women: In Retrospect which presents a limited selection from nine of the 10 artists showcased so far. I will showcase these selections -- individually -- over the course of the next few weeks beginning herein with Jenny Saville.

In 2011, Saville's self-titled exhibition was the first in the RAW series ad also her first career survey at a North American Museum. Literature accompanying the In Retrospect exhibition describes Saville's work as forging "a bold visual language that unites figuration and abstraction ... Saville's works evoke both sensuality and objectivity through large-scale, intricate paintings. Her subjects are sculptural, influenced by the Old European Masters  who inform her practice."

Her pieces Atonement Studies -- Central Panel (Rosetta) and Mnemosyme 1 were on display at RAW: In Retrospect.

Atonement Studies is a Neo-Expressionism piece. Artnet describes it as depicting a blind woman Saville met while living and working in Palermo, a subjcet the artist calls "the most beautiful woman I have ever photographed." Artnet points to the subject's "tilted head, parted lips, milky eyes and striking bone structure all illuminated by her peachy skin tone and blue-ish shadows as a feat of expressionist glory."

Jenny Saville, Atonement Studies --
Central Panel (Rosetta), 2005 - 06

Saville is an accomplished Draughtsperson. She captures time in this charcoal drawing by including several arms and legs in different locations to show the movement of an energetic child.

Jenny Saville, Mnemosyne 1, 2012

Untitled: An El Anatsui work at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art

I was recently introduced to the works of the Ghanian artist El Anatsui and I shared that moment with my readers. At the time of my introduction to the artist, i found out that one of his pieces was on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. I recently visited that institution to view the installed work.

The Smithsonain piece is titled Untitled and was created in 2009.

El Anutsui, Untitled, 2009

When compared to the Rain has no Father piece on display at the Denver Art Museum, Untitled, is less bounded and is suffused with gold color whereas the former had white/cream as the dominant color effect. The installation orientation differs also with the Denver piece displayed in a more head-on fashion while the Smithsonian piece had a more diagonal orientation.

The artist has emphasized that museum personnel have total control on how the pieces are deployed within their environment and there is evidence of fluidity in the display of the Smithsonian piece. The below is a screen capture from a video describing Untitled and it shows that, sometime in the past, the painting was displayed in a more straightforward fashion.

Screen grab, Untitled

The straigt-on display appears somewhat brooding, ominous, and jowly while the diaganol catches and reflects light more effectively.

The details shown below capture the differences in reclaimed material utilized in the construction of this piece and the amount of labor required to get individual pieces into the desired shape and then bound together into this "fabric."

Untitled, detail

Untitled, detail

Untitled, detail

Untitled, detail

The construction of these El Anatsui pieces are driven by desgin decisions made by the artist but required hours of effort by his team to bring the sheets to a position where they can be manipulated by museum staff into a structure that strikes a chord with the viewing public.

In the Footsteps of Piero della Francesca: The Massachusetts sequel -- Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels (1460 - 70) and Hercules (c. 1470)

In late-November 2025 I embarked on a tour of the cities wherein the Italian painter Piero della Francesca did most of his work and where many of his existing works are still displayed. This tour was titled In the Footsteps of Pierro della Francesca and was led by Learn Italy, a small English tour company. I have previously written about the precipitating factors -- as regards the trip -- as well as our early experiences and will continue to flesh out the entirety of the trip over time. 

I have always assumed that I would see Piero paintings post that trip and made a mental commitment to treat those sightings as sequels. I had sequel-level experiences over the past weekend, encountering both Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels and Hercules.

Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels, Clark Art Institute

My research had identified Clark Institute as home to the Piero work Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels but the town of Williamstown, where it resided. was so far off my beaten path that a special trip would be required. I placed it on the back burner. 

Piero della Francesca, Virgin and
Child Enthroned with Four Angels,
1460 - 1470

This past weekend I went Boston for July 4th festivities and, while there, noticed that Williamstown was slightly less than 3 hours away by car. Further, the museum was open every day of the week. I had a car and made the time, setting off early in the morning so that I could be there when the museum opened.

The Clark Art Institute was founded by Robert Sterling Clark, Yale Engineer and beneficiary of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. He began collecting art in Paris where he had settled in 1910. He met Francine in Paris and the two were married in 1919. The couple considered a number of locations as potential sites for a museum to display their collection but eventually settled on Williamstown on account of the family's past asociation with Williams College. The Clark Art Institute opened for business in 1955.

The painting under discussion was commissioned by the Gherardi family -- rich merchants in the town of Sansepulcro -- as a devotional object for their private chapel. The painting shows the Virgin Mary and the Christ-child attended by angels. The angel wings are partly visible. The angel in red, according to the literature accompanying the displayed work, directs our attention to the infant reaching for the flower held by the Holy Mother. The angel in white casts a shadow across the base of Mary's throne suggesting that the painting hung to the right of a window.

Detail: Statue-like baby reaching out ...

Detail: ... for flower held by mother

Detail: Top of wings in red. Also note
symmetry in bejeweled v-neck

Detail: Folds in clothing appear as
though carved from stone

Detail: Intricate design details on
capitals and lintels

As is the hallmark of this artist, the painting is immaculately designed and architected: "In this enigmatic painting, the figures seem three-dimensional, like marble statues, and occupy a space inspired by classical architecture."

This was one of Clark's early purchases and eventually reached Williamstown in 1957.

Hercules, Isabella Gardner Museum, Boston

On the day following my visit to Clark Art Institute, I paid a visit to the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum to see the Piero della Francesca work in their collection.

Gardner Museum (museumsofboston.org)

Isabella Stuart Gardner and her husband traveled extensively through Europe and Asia and her experiences sparked a deep interest in arts and culture. She supplemented these experiences with classwork at Harvard where she met Bernard Berenson, her eventual art advisor. "Starting in the 1890s, she and Berenson worked together to assemble one of the most important art collections in the world, acquiring everything from major works of Italian Renaissance art to textiles to Chinese sculpture to French paintings made in the1800s.”

Construction on the museum began in 1899 and was completed in 1901. Installation of her collection took two years, with the museum opening to the public in 1903 under the name Fenway Court.

Hercules is a fresco fragment which was discovered in a room of Piero’s family home in Sansepulcro during the second half of the 18th century. The painting was initially displayed “in the upper corner of a room with the right edge bordering the wall.” Such a placement explicates the steep perspective of the image. The fresco was removed from the wall in the 1860s and did incur some damage during removal and transportation.

Hercules is Piero's only known secular work. Herein, the persona is atypically presented as a youth, with his only attire being a Lion's skin. The tail of the lion is seen between the legs of the subject. Rather than his strength being displayed in musculature, the attire implies that strength through a perceived killing of the Lion (probably with his bare hands), skinning it, and wearing the skin as a trophy.

Piero della Francesca, Hercules, 1470

The fresco was purchased by the Gardner Museum in 1903 from Joseph Linton Smith who had previously purchased it from the Florentine art dealer Elia Volpe. Transit out of Italy was delayed by the Italian Government with export rights finally granted in 1908. The piece was seized by US Customs upon its arrival for payment of duties and taxes. The fresco was released upon payment of said dues and taxes.

While at the Museum I came upon a portrait of Battista Sforza, Countess of Urbino. This was intriguing because I have been in pursuit of the Piero double portrait of her and the Duke for a while but have been unable to locate it on my visits to the Ufizzi. This is a striking facsimile of the portrait but, due to its dating, is a masterful copy of the original,

After Piero della Francesca, Battista Sforza,
Countess of Urbino, Late 18th century

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Encountering these two pieces has lit a fire under me to complete my series on the "In the Footsteps ..." series. I had been slightly overwhelmed by the amount of work required to fully cover the story of The Legend of the True Cross and had tried to everything but; I am now resolved.