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Young Woman with a Water Jug, c.1662, Jan Vermeer
The gate that silence opens up within us leads to light. Light exposes with an almost merciless radiance and, in the exposure, reveals the beauty of the real. Vermeer always painted this holy light. He may seem, on first looking, to be depicting a young woman, standing at a half-opened window, wrapped peacefully in her own thoughts, but she and her surroundings are merely the pretext. Vermeer’s intensity is focused on the light itself, only visible to us as it falls on the material world. It shimmers on the woman’s white headdress, glimmers on the copper of the jug and ewer, glimmers with ineffable softness on the walls. Every element in the painting celebrates the presence of light, revealing and transforming. No painter has ever believed more totally in light than Vermeer – and hence the profoundly contemplative nature of his art.
