The Great Artists: Johannes Vermeer 

大艺术家系列：约翰内斯•维米尔

We live in a world saturated with false glamour. In truth, the problem does not lie with glamour itself, but with the things we have collectively agreed to regard as glamorous. Progress wouldn’t be found in eradicating the whole idea of glamour from our lives. Instead, what we need to do is direct our admiration and excitement more wisely: to turn it upon the things which genuinely do deserve prestige.

我们生活的世界充斥着虚假的魅力。实际上，问题并不在于魅力本身，而在于那些我们一致认定的有魅力的事物上。然而，因此而摒弃生活里的一切魅力是不可取的。相反，我们需要更明智的定位我们的鉴赏目标和兴奋点：专注于真正值得欣赏的事物上。

One of the fundamental things artists can do for us is turn the spotlight of glamour in the best – and most helpful – directions. They can identify things that we tend to overlook but which, ideally, we should care about a great deal. And by the tenderness, beauty, skill and wisdom with which they portray these things, we too can come to see their true worth.

艺术家可以为我们做的其中一件最基本的事就是把突显魅力的聚光灯调整到最佳状态，最好是，调整到最佳位置。我们总是会忽略一些值得我们用心关注的事物，而艺术家可以识别出这些事物。通过欣赏他们用温情、美丽、技巧和智慧描绘出来的这些事物，我们也能看到它们真正的价值。

The Milkmaid, 1657-8 倒牛奶的女仆，1657-8 

Serving women – and bread and milk – were not regarded as especially exciting in the late 1650s, when Johannes Vermeer painted this picture. He didn’t seek out a model who was already highly admired. Instead he spent his time looking very carefully at a scene which he happened to love, but which most people at the time would have considered boring and not worth a moment’s consideration. 

17世纪50年代末，约翰内斯•维米尔创作了这幅图画，那时，女仆、面包和牛奶并不被认为是特别令人兴奋的事物。维米尔并没有找一个备受推崇的人物作为模特，相反，他倾其一生都在仔细观察他所热爱的那种场景，而这种场景对当时的大多数人来说是无聊的、不值得留意的。

Vermeer saw in the serving woman pouring milk something that he felt deserved prolonged contemplation and admiration. He thought something really important was going on. By worldly standards, it’s a pretty humble situation. The room is far from elegant. But the care with which she works is lovely. Vermeer is impressed by the idea that our true needs might be quite simple. Bread and milk are really rather satisfying. The light coming through the window is beautiful. A plain white wall can be delightful. 

维米尔从倒牛奶的女仆身上看到了一些他认为值得深思和钦佩的东西。他认为这一场景正酝酿着一些真正重要的东西。从世俗的标准来看，这是一个很不起眼的场景。房间很简陋，但女仆小心工作的样子很可爱。维米尔十分认同这一观点：我们真正的需求可能很简单，有面包和牛奶就足够了。从窗户透过来的光线很迷人，它使普通的白墙变得赏心悦目。

Vermeer is redistributing glamour by raising the prestige of the things he depicts. And he’s trying to get us to feel the same way. The milk maid is a kind of propaganda (or an advert) for homely pleasures. 

维米尔通过提高他所描绘的事物的名望来重新分配魅力。他也努力使我们有同样的感觉。倒牛奶的女仆是一个宣传家常乐事的形象大使。

The Lacemaker, 1669-1671 花边女工 1669-1671

Consider the painstaking, skilful – and commercial – business of making lace: Vermeer paints the self-employed business woman with the devotion and care that would, traditionally, be paid to a military hero or a great political leader. 

想一想辛苦的、有技巧的、商业化的制作花边的工作：维米尔倾注所有的耐心，专心致志地刻画了一位正在编织花边的个体户女工，而依照惯例，只有在描绘一位战斗英雄或是伟大的政治领袖时，一个画家才会如此专注。

Vermeer was born in 1632 in the small and beautiful city of Delft, where his father was a modestly successful art dealer-cum-innkeeper. Vermeer stayed there most of his life. He never travelled away from Delft after his marriage (aged 21). He hardly even left his pleasant house. He and his wife, Catharina, had ten children (and many more pregnancies) and he did a great deal of painting in the front rooms on the upper floor. Vermeer was a slow painter and – in fact – not only a painter. He continued the family businesses of innkeeping and art dealing and he became the head of the local guild of painters. In contemporary terms, his career was not a huge success. He wasn’t especially famous during his lifetime. He didn’t make a lot of money. 

1632年，维米尔出生在美丽的小城代尔夫特，他的父亲是小城里小有名气的画商和旅馆老板。维米尔一生的大部分时间都住在那里。在他21岁结婚后，再也没有离开过代尔夫特，甚至很少离开令他舒适的家。维米尔和他的妻子凯瑟琳娜有十个孩子（怀孕的次数更多）。他在顶楼的前厅里作了大量的画。他作画的速度很慢，但实际上，他不只是一个画家。他继承父业，继续经营旅馆和卖画，同时也是当地画家公会的领导人。在现在看来，他的事业不算很成功，因为他在世期间并不是特别有名，也没有赚很多钱。

He was in fact an exemplary member of (in those days) a newly important kind of person: the middle-class individual. Vermeer was in his teens when Holland (or technically the Seven Provinces) became an independent state – the first ‘bourgeois republic’ in the world. In contrast to the semi-feudal aristocratic nations that surrounded it, Holland gave honour and political power to people who were not at the pinnacle of society: to merchants, administrators, prosperous artisans and entrepreneurs. It was the first country in the world to be recognisably modern. 

当时，他实际上是新兴而重要的一类人的典型代表——个体的中产阶级。维米尔十几岁的时候荷兰成为了一个独立的国家（严格意义上说，只有七省独立）——世界上第一个资产阶级共和国。不同于周围的半封建贵族国家，荷兰把尊荣和政治权利给予了那些不属于社会顶层的人：商人、管理人员、正在发展壮大的工匠和企业家。荷兰是世界上第一个公认的现代化国家。

The Girl with the Pearl Earring, 1665 戴珍珠耳环的少女，1665

A great insight of Christianity – which is ultimately detachable from the surrounding theology – is that everyone’s inner life is important, even if on the outside they do not seem particularly distinguished. The thoughts and feelings of an apprentice tailor count for as much (from a spiritual point of view) as those of a General or an Emperor. 

基督教教义里有一条十分深刻的见解——这一见解完全可以脱离神学而存在，它认为每个人的内心世界都是很重要的，即使在外面的世界里他们看起来不是那么出众。从精神学的角度讲，一个学徒裁缝的思想感情同一个将军或一个国王的思想具有同等的价值。

Vermeer paints The Girl with the Pearl Earring with the same kind of consideration. She isn’t anybody famous or important in the eyes of the wider world. She isn’t rich. The earring that she wears is nice, but it is a minor trinket by the standards of the fashionable world. It is the one rather pricey thing she owns. But she’s not in need of justice – she’s not downtrodden or badly treated by the world. She is (for want of a better term) ordinary. Yet, of course, in herself she is (like everyone) not in the least ordinary: she is uniquely, mysteriously and profoundly herself. 

The Little Street, 1657-8 小街，1657-8 

The picture which best sums up Vermeer’s philosophy, The Little Street, has become one of the most famous works of art in the world. It has pride of place in Amsterdam’s great Rijksmuseum; it is insured for half a billion euros and is the subject of a mountain of learned articles. 

《小街》已经是世界上最著名的画作之一了，这幅画最好的总结了维米尔的哲学思想。它被放在阿姆斯特丹国家博物馆里最显眼的位置，投保金额为五亿欧元，同时它也是众多学术论文讨论的主题。

Yet the painting is curiously – and pointedly – out of synch with its status. Because, above all else, it wants to show us that the ordinary can be very special. The picture says that looking after a simple but beautiful home, cleaning the yard, watching the children, darning cloth – and doing these things faithfully and without despair – is life’s real duty. 

但是，很奇怪，这幅画描绘的场景和它高贵的地位很明显的不一致。这是因为，这幅画最想要传递给我们的思想是：平凡之事也有十分特别的意义。它告诉我们，踏踏实实的做好这些家庭琐事——照看简朴而美好的家，打扫庭院，看顾孩子，织补衣物——且保留平和的心态，才是真正地履行生活的责任。

It is an anti-heroic picture: a weapon against false images of glamour. It refuses to accept that true glamour depends on amazing feats of courage or on the attainment of status. It argues that doing the modest things, that are expected of all of us, is enough. The picture asks you to be a little like it is: to take the attitudes it loves, and to apply them to your life. 

它是一幅反英雄主义的画作：是一种武器，来反对代表虚假魅力的形象。它不认同这一观点：拥有令人惊叹的勇气或崇高的地位才拥有真正的魅力。它认为，只要我们大家做好应该做的各种小事就足够了。这幅画期望我们采取它所提倡的态度并应用于实际生活。

If a good, decent society had a founding document, it could be this small picture. It is a central contribution to the world’s understanding of happiness. 

如果一个文明良好的社会有一个奠基性文件的话，那么非这幅小画莫属。在帮助世界人民理解幸福的定义上，它做出了重要贡献。

Vermeer did not live long. He died in 1675, still only in his early forties. 

维米尔英年早逝。他死于1675年，那时他才刚四十出头。

View of Delft, 1660-1 代尔夫特城风光， 1660-1

But he had communicated a crucial – and hugely sane – idea: much of what matters to us is not exciting, urgent, dramatic or special. Most of life is taken up dealing with things which are routine, ordinary, humble, modest and (to be honest) a touch dull. Our culture should focus on getting us to appreciate the average, the everyday and the ordinary. 

但是他却传达给我们一个至关重要的、相当明智的思想：许多对我们来说重要的事都不是令人振奋，紧张刺激，扣人心弦或是尤为特别的。我们生命的大部分光阴都遵循既定的路线，用来做那些平常、普通甚至有些枯燥的小事。我们的文化应该教我们学会欣赏平凡的人，平凡的日子和平凡的事情。

When Vermeer painted the town where he lived he didn’t choose a special day; the sky is neither very overcast nor especially sunny. Nothing is happening. No celebrities are around. Yet it is, as he has taught us to recognise, all very special indeed.

当维米尔描绘他居住的小镇时，他并没有选择一个特别的日子；天空既不是特别阴暗又不是特别晴朗。没有特殊的事情发生。周围也没有名人出现。但是，正如维米尔教给我们的那样，画里的一切又都很特别。