Rembrandt and Vermeer – two ways of painting light

The difference between Rembrandt and Vermeer is clearest in the light. Rembrandt (1606–1669) in Amsterdam let a warm, concentrated light strike out of deep darkness and built up his colour thickly, so that the surface almost becomes relief. Vermeer (1632–1675) in Delft painted cool, even daylight from a window on the left, with smooth surfaces and tiny points of light. Rembrandt was famous, prolific and dramatic; Vermeer painted only about 35 known pictures and was almost forgotten for 200 years.

Facts

Two painters of the same Golden Age

Both belong to the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, when the republic was the richest country in Europe and burghers bought paintings for their homes. But they led very different lives. Rembrandt moved from Leiden to Amsterdam in 1631, became the city's most sought-after portrait painter, had pupils and a large workshop and went bankrupt in 1656. He painted, etched and drew, and he portrayed himself throughout his life.

Vermeer lived all his life in Delft, a smaller town, and worked slowly. He painted almost only interiors with one or two figures in the same bright room, and about 35 paintings are regarded today as his. After his death he fell into oblivion until a French critic brought him to attention in the 1860s. See the guide The Dutch Golden Age and the period The Golden Age.

Rembrandt's light: out of the darkness

Rembrandt had learned from the followers of Caravaggio to let a sharp light fall into a dark room. He made it his own: the light is warm, golden yellow, and often comes from a source you cannot see. It picks out a face, a hand or a collar and leaves the rest in brown gloom. The technique is called chiaroscuro; read more in the guide Sfumato and chiaroscuro.

In the lit passages he laid the paint on thickly, with a knife or a coarse brush, so that it builds up a relief that catches real light. The dark passages are thin and transparent. Standing close you see traces of the brush everywhere; from a distance they merge into skin, metal and fabric. This is called impasto, and it is in the glossary.

Vermeer's light: through the window

In Vermeer the light almost always comes from a window on the left. It is cool, even daylight that spreads over a white wall, a map, a jug and a woman reading or pouring milk. The shadows are never black but grey, blue or green. He used expensive ultramarine, made from lapis lazuli, even in shadows and white surfaces, which gives the pictures their clear tone.

The surface is smooth, but on shiny objects he placed tiny bright dots, almost like pearls of light. That is why it has long been debated whether he used a camera obscura, a dark box with a lens that casts an image on a plate; the question is unresolved. His neighbours in Delft, such as Pieter de Hooch, painted similar rooms with the same daylight. See Looking at art: light.

The Night Watch versus Girl with a Pearl Earring

The Night Watch of 1642 is a group portrait of a civic guard, over four metres wide. Instead of lining the men up in a row, Rembrandt had them break ranks in motion, with the captain and the lieutenant in the light and the rest in half-darkness. It is a scene, almost theatre. The name came later, when the varnish had darkened; the scene takes place in daytime.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is barely half a metre high. It is not a commissioned portrait but a tronie, a study of a face and a turban. The background is dark, as in Rembrandt, but the light falls softly from the left and the face has almost no contours. The pearl consists of only a few brushstrokes. Put them side by side in Compare: the one is loud, the other silent.

People and stories

Rembrandt likes to tell stories. He painted biblical scenes, mythology and portraits full of life and age, and his late self-portraits show a man who hides nothing. Wrinkles, weariness and debt are visible, and that is why they seem unusually honest. His figures act, move and feel.

Vermeer almost never tells a story. His women read letters we are not allowed to read, weigh pearls or look out of a window, and we do not know what they are thinking. Time stands still. Where Rembrandt shows a moment of action, Vermeer shows a moment of stillness. Both paint light, but for entirely different reasons.

Where to see them

The Night Watch hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which also has several Vermeers, among them The Milkmaid. Girl with a Pearl Earring is in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, together with Vermeer's View of Delft and Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson. In the Rijksmuseum the two painters hang in the same large room, the Gallery of Honour. The rest of Vermeer's paintings are scattered across museums in Europe and the USA.

If you want to know how dark varnish and later interventions have affected how the paintings look, read the guide How do you date a painting? The question of Dutch and Flemish is sorted out in Dutch or Flemish painting? And anyone who wants to compare with an older painter in the same region can look at Frans Hals in Haarlem.

How to tell them apart

Exercise

Where does the light come from in most of Vermeer's interiors?