Customer Reviews

Vermeer's Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown Apprentice

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The "scholarship" advanced here is a tribute to an ultimately ineffable admixture of a few truths, many half truths, an avalanche of free associations, and whole oceans of utter fantasy. Words can't convey how silly this book is. There is no Occam's Razor at work here, as claimed. Rather, it's the Dragon in My Garage, complete with non sequiturs encased in a fallacy of composition vat. I wonder how Chuck Close feels about Binstock's thesis that his favorite portrait, Vermeer's Girl with a Red Hat, one of the most nuanced, sophisticated paintings in the world and among the most beautifully conceived and executed works in all of Vermeer's oeuvre, was actually made by a teenage girl (but it's quite possible the image represents one of Vermeer's daughters). How does Walter Liedtke feel about being quoted so badly out of context here, a quote only a few pages away from where Binstock asserts Vermeer never signed his famous Girl with a Pearl Earring, when in fact he did (with an IVMeer on the top left portion of the painting, visible on the original if one looks closely?

The pink highlight in the eye and the dot of blue between the lips of the Girl with a Flute that Binstock points out are reversed in the Girl with a Red Hat. But in the latter work they contribute to a sense of playful charm and plasticity; in Girl with a Flute, they're muddied, trapped in listless shadows, in need of further refinement. Surely this painting and the Girl with a Red Hat depict the same girl wearing exotic head gear and, even if the paintings were not meant as pendants, were conceived as reciprocal artistic exercises to showcase the skills of the painter. The former painting, although exhibiting passages of the master's touch--in the hat, the jacket, the outlines of the face, and the background tapestry (likely the same one shown in The Astronomer), has many awkward passages uncharacteristic of Vermeer's refinements, including the eyes and mouth, the hands, the flute, the bureau and the highlights in the brass knobs. One could imagine a teenaged girl who aspires to be a painter doing her thing in these areas of the painting. But only a charlatan would assert such a claim as fact. As Liedtke, and others, have concluded, Vermeer likely did not finish the painting. Subsequently, others attempted to do so in their own style and fashion, in the process rather substantially diminishing the painting's quality.

I could go on and on showing Binstock's mistakes and his Brobdingnagian leaps of faith, such as his assertion that the Sotheby's catalogue vouches that the Young Woman Seated at the Virginals is Vermeer's second daughter Elizabeth, when in fact it states "Any such identification is... speculative" (based upon little more than fictive ruminations from the novelist Tracy Chevalier and the British columnist Simon Jenkins). But this would be cruel, especially to Amazon readers, who should also be forewarned that the reproductions of Vermeer's paintings are of very poor quality in this book.

Binstock is no iconoclast. His effort here is a risible attempt at provoking controversy. But his loopy, sloppy methodology is embarrassing at many levels, including what appears to be an utter lack of editorial judgement on the part of his publisher. No serious scholar would recommend this cynical, contemptible book. Those seriously interested in knowing more about Vermeer should read the many other good books available, including Liedtke's most recent, Vermeer: The Complete Paintings; Anthony Bailey's excellent View of Delft; and of course Michael Montias' Vermeer and His Milieu. Better yet, see the original paintings themselves, and look with discernment. Vermeer is one of those artists whose paintings reward close and repetitive observation.

I found this book fascinating, readable and very informative. Binstock has a genuinely fresh perspective on both a star of the art world and the process by which such stars are made. I admire his ability to step away from standard wisdom and reconsider, for instance in being the first Vermeer scholar to attempt a chronological ordering of his work. He tries to explain inconsistencies others have left unexplained; no one can be correct 100% of the time but at least he is trying, and I enjoy following his reasoning.

The portait of Vermeer's family life, including the revelation of the identity of the "unknown apprentice", is immensely interesting and lots of fun. On the whole I find Binstock's conclusions very plausible. They may upset some but his path to them is authentic and he does an excellent job backing them up.

I think this is a good book for anyone who wants to learn about Vermeer as well as enjoy his paintings. Through his eloquence, his passion for his subject and an remarkable knack for identifying, connecting and making sense of critical detail, Binstock encourages us to grasp the whole of the man and the artist as best we can. To him, Vermeer and other artists are fit objects of passion and vital interest for anyone who has been moved by the works. I am not an art historian but I felt the respect the author has for me as someone who (like him) loves Vermeer.

Any library strong in art history will relish Vermeer's Family Secrets: it provides a powerful ion-depth collection offering new solutions to the riddle of the 'Sphinx of Delft', providing the first detailed examination of Vermeer's family member as models and offering re-interpretations of essential documents about Vermeer. Over 180 black and white images and over sixty color plates accompany insights key to understanding Vermeer and his era.

Binstock has done what most art historians have failed to do in the past: apply rigorous scholarship into a fun, amusing, tour de force read. He has combined the canonical works on Vermeer and taken them one step further, presenting convincing arguments that piece together a plausable history of the "Sphinx of Delft."

The other reviews here unfairly portray the book as academic, but anyone with an interest in Vermeer, art history or art in general would be fascinated by the conclusions made, and the methods used along the way.

This book presents some interesting new ideas about the sources of and for work attributed to Vermeer. The argument could be made quite convincingly in a 15-page monograph, complete with illustrations, but instead is buried under hundreds of pages of badly-written and apparently unedited fluff. (Try to count the number of paragraphs that begin with the phrase "In my view," for example.)

My advice: find a copy at your local library (which is where mine is going) and skim it.

A book more likely to be enjoyed by the author's fellow art historians and students than the non-academic reader who only admires great art.

The young scholar Benjamin Binstock writes with remarkable enthusiaum and deep knowledge while strongly asserting his numerous convictions, which include the suprising one that a Vermeer daughter--not the father--was responsible for several key paintings heretofore attributed to Johannes Vermeer, including "Girl with a Red Hat."

Showing his youth, Dr. Binstock types likely art historian skeptics to his theory as "magpies" or "ostriches." It will be interesting to see, as time unfolds, whether other Vermeer experts adopt Dr. Binstock's novel convictions.

Meanwhile, the whole intellectual kitchen sink is thrown into this book from the details of Vermeer's actual home, to Rembrandt, to Hieronymus Bosch, to religion, to etc. etc. (And, "didactics" is a word that apparently must be used by anyone writing about art.) While at times very interesting, this was simply a tough book for me to read from cover to cover.

If you are quite interested in the detailed history of Vermeer's art, this is a book for you to purchase. For all others, just buy a nice conventional art book of this master's (or his daughter's?) beautiful paintings.

As an aside, I think the author's dust jacket photograph (in shadow and light) was inspired by the self-portrait of Rembrandt on page 252.