A Painting Pilgramage
A couple years back we found ourselves in Amsterdam with the good fortune of tickets to the Vermeer Retrospective exhibit at the Rijksmuseum. I wrote an ART LOOK on it, VERMEER IN AMSTERDAM. Our good Dutch friends, Monique Van Der Toorn and Lennard Van Splunter, accompanied us on a most delightful day, the likes of which still seem only last week in the joyful center of our Art Looking hearts. We meandered through this “blockbuster show” amidst a large crowd, and saw the captivating life’s work of Johannes Vermeer, (1632-1675, only 43 years on planet earth). It was a stupendous experience to see these works of Vermeer all in one place. Many of the works in the show are so much mentioned in the annals of Art History, and represent the Golden Age of the late rennaissance period of Dutch Painting that took the world by storm. Vermeer gave us a window into the sublime nature of Holland in the 1600’s. He turned the “domestic” scenes of everyday Dutch Life into the “divine” scenes of timeless tranquilty and grace. Clearly he did. But something was missing in this show of all shows of his near perfect outpouring of art work—and that was his MOST FAMOUS painting that I had waited so long to see in the flesh: “The Allegory of Painting,” or commonly called “The Artist in His Studio.”
I was not only “bummed” that this painting was absent, I actually felt gypped by the “art powers that be” for leaving out this key masterpiece. It would be like going all the way to Florence and not being able to see Michelangelo’s David. Or a trip to New York to take in a Metropolitan Opera to be told the place is closed down because the singers are on strike. But the fact of the matter was this. “The Allegory of Painting” by Vermeer is owned by the Austrian Republic and is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Because so many people come to the Museum to see that particular masterpiece, the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna would not loan the painting to the Rijksmuseum for this major Vermeer retrospective. Art Museum rivalries got the better of them, and the Austians would not succomb to the good will of sharing for the sake of a special exhibition that would put no fame or fortune in their own pocket. So they decided to keep the most famous Vermeer in their clutches, damned whatever the public thought of its exclusion from the retrospective in Holland of their native son. This would be like Amsterdam holding the major rights to playing a principal Mozart Symphony in a Mozart Music Festival in Vienna, and not releasing the rights for it to be played.
Though I was crestfallen, I knew I needed another strategy if I was to see this painting in the flesh in this lifetime. Well, the Painting Gods lined up this new possibility and made it happen a couple years later. In comes Dace Silina from Latvia, one of our Breathwork students and organizers who permanently moved to Austria to reboot her whole life there. She invited us to come to do our work in Vienna. So off we went in early July of 2025, two years after meeting the rest of Vermeer’s painting genius in Amsterdam, headed for Vienna. My meeting with “The Allegory of Painting” was obviously predestined in another way. Take a breath and flow into this Divine Providence from a totally different angle. The approach was Divine. I was embarked on a new “painting pilgimage!”
An Encounter with Holiness
I had not been to Vienna… ever. I know not why? It is one of the most beautiful cultural cites in all of Europe, with the creative clout of the musical likes of Beethoven, Mozart, & Strauss—and the more recent painting contributions of Klimt. Every building in Vienna seems to beckon back to that belle epoch before the devastating wars that raged in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. The avenues seem to reap the fruits of poetic genius, and the clarity of a dedication to beauty. Granted, this could be a romanticized version of my yearnings for the mythical perfection of bygone days, but something in the atmosphere of Vienna puts forth a priority that we can all have a glimpse of Beauty in our daily lives, no matter what the era, because we simply deserve to be uplifted by Life. This is the message. There is a Holiness in the experience of Beauty, and might this be the Truth we spiritual aspirants are seeking? I found something of this Truth as Beauty in Vienna, in my Holy Encounters.
There was of course one thing on my mind in this “painting pigrimage,” and that was a meeting with “The Allegory of Painting” by Vermeer, which had been robbed from me two years before by a stingy staff of the Kunsthistoriches Museum powers that be to withold such things. But here I was in the conservatory of aesthetic preservation, with the royalty of an art collection that stretched back centuries to encapsulate the highest contribution to the Art of the Westen World. Being a painter myself, though, I wanted more than ever to meet with that moment of creativity that all painters face—that moment of truth awakening when you face the daunting blankness of the canvas and have to decide what on earth will you paint on it?
Not much is known about Vermeer. He married a Catholic woman and converted to Catholicism under the pressures of his Mother-in-Law to embrace the “true faith.” He had 13 children with his wife, three of whom died before their first year. They lived in his Mother-in-Law’s house, a moderately prosperous lifestyle, in which Vermer converted a couple of the rooms of this spacious house into his studio. Much as in the scene of this famous work, “The Allegory of Painting,” Vemeer’s world unfolded in this domicile of Dutch domesticity, with the members of his immediate family acting as his models and souces of scintillating, light-filled subject matter.
In all Vermeer paintings there is this matter of the light. The clear but soft brightness of light filtering through the front windows of the interior space sheds an almost holy illumination of what could be seen as common, yet, transformed into something truly celestial. Who could picture themselves so carressed by the painter’s gentle touch that their very contenance sings of dimensions grounded in the actual, yet transcendently illuminated into a visage of angelic quietude? Vermeer’s paintings are portals into that heavenly state. One cannot look closely at the mastery of his characters without conjuuring within themselves a pure appreciation for the gracious fact of joyously feeling alive!
The Pursuit of Beauty
What is that Truth which is Beauty? What is that Beauty which is Truth? The two seem inextricably bound. And when they clearly join, there is an explosion of a Joy that transcends all limiting conditions, even the limitations of physicality itself. God so loved the world that he created a Vermeer to paint it. And this man of the brush stroked and daubled his way to make a replica in paint of the Divine Grace he saw before him. The things he paints are really there in his Love of Life, the gentle dictates of what is simple and true. This truth of the seen, rendered in a kind of holy depiction of the brightest and the best versions of ourselves, comes through almost 400 years after the days of their last creative strokes.
I am the beneficiary of Vermeer’s Pure Love of Truth, which is also his holy insight into Divine Beauty. It is fully grounded in the Holy Act of painting exactly what he saw. In so doing he took us across the bridge of the mundane into the ecstasy of the Holy. Who would know it? Who would see it? Clearly it is there for anyone with the eyes to see. Clearly it is there for anyone who desires a Holy Encounter with Truth as Beauty to give meaning to their inner Life of Pure Joy!
A Holy Relationship
There is a Holy Relationship established in any work of Art. There is the Artist, of course, and the object of his Creation. This requires a Medium, some physical material through which the Artist’s Creation is transmitted. And then there is the Receiver of this Creation. This would be the Audience. This would be YOU, who are reading this ART LOOK. This is the Holy Trinity that is Always present in any great work of Art. The Creator, The Object of Creation, and the Recipient of that Act of Creation.
This Holy Trinity is not subject to time. It could be just yesterday that Vermeer finished “The Allegory of Painting.” It might as well have been. Standing in front of it emits the newness of perfect Love that Vermeer felt when the culmination of his months of tasks and strokes came to a crescendo of perfection, and voila, he put forth an expression of the Divine Order that would live on into Eternity. He made contact with the Immortal, and in so doing transmitted this contact to us, through this Object of Creation, we are looking at four centuries later.
There is a Holy Relationship going on as well while the Artist is creating whatever it is. It is a Holy Trinity as well: There is the ARTIST, the SUBJECT, and the OBJECT of eventual transmission. These take place in the sacred studio of the Artist’s Holy Heart. His Relationship with Divine Forces is essential. This is the crucible of Creation, the fire in which the whole action of Creation takes place. It is an inferno of sorts that goes through many phases of inception, creation, destruction, mixing and moving, manipulating and surrendering to the directions of a Divine Impetus. The encounter with the Unknown is inevitable. It takes a constant nerve to face this Unknown Force down. The photographer Diane Arbus put it this way about the creative process:
“The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.,”
So Vermeer was feeling his way. But his level of certainty of skill and final vision was always guiding his Hand, his Brush, that became nothing short of the Hand of God directing the Sacred Brush of the Divine. He saw it through, always keeping site of His Muse, the Divine Mother of the best of his days on earth. Perhaps a daughter modeled for him in this painting. Nothing could be more tender. Nothing left out in his connection with the Love he had for Beauty, which was also his insistence upon Truth. It is a Holy Relationship extraordinaire. Why would you say “Holy?” Because It is Whole; It is True; It is Beautiful; It is Timeless; It is Infnite; It is Immortal; It is Supremely Joyous; It is Eternally Beautiful; It is Tranquilly Tender; It is Forever True!
Heralds of Eternity
We exist in time to go beyond time to the Timeless, to the Immortal. There are Heralds of Eternity all around us, trumpeting the glory of our own sacred existence. Who sees with the eyes of this glory? The Glory of God is all around us, and we have closed our eyes in a sleep of forgetfulness. We need great Artists with the vision of this glory to wake us up again. Vermeer in his “Allegory of Painting” does such a “wake up call” to the core of our very soul. Let the trumpet call and the truth be spoken, or painted in this case. Love is the way we walk in gratitude to hear this call, and to see this Glory of God in the Highest. It is nothing “special.” The Artist of this glory sees exactly what is there. He is Awake, and therefore unaffected by the stupor of unawareness. He sees the glory all the time. And we are fortunate that he or she takes the time to transmit it to us in an eternal expression. We have it forever in our storehouse of inspiration. We have it forever to Awaken ourselves.
There is a Hearld of Eternity in each one of us. There is a Trinity of the Creative Process there within us, fully intact. We have not yet sung our greatest song, or painted our most magnificent masterpiece. Yet, these are all within us. The stillness of the peace of God is ours to claim. And this is the trumpet sound of silence, that Hearald of Eternity God placed in us to be transmitted across time and space to the central core of our deepest yearnings.
We can know God in Truth, In Beauty, In the Eternal Joy of Life itself. Artists like Johannes Vermeer make this apparent. Only a sliver of their light is all we need. They give us meaning in a world of no meaning. They show us hope in that arena of struggle and strife, sickness and death. They extract us from the world of illusions, to overcome the sorrow of a tired humanity that has forgotten this Glory of God in Creation, of which we all are a part. Only a sliver of their brilliance is all we need to Awaken ourself. Their Love is there. Their Truth is there. And we join in their Beauty that is always there. Only a sliver is all we need. One small painting less than one meter square can Awaken us to Immortality. And who is ready now to Awaken? You have seen this to live your highest truth now, your Herald of Eternity you came to express!
