The Quest Will Go On...

   When I was about 18 years old, one of my mentors—Prof. DeWitt Whistler Jayne—introduced me to the art of the Dutch Reformation painters. In particular, I was moved by the slides he showed our class of the works of Jan Vermeer. Vermeer painted as though one of the paints on his palette was simply labeled "light." I later discovered that through scans and other studies it had been determined he obtained this effect by using as many as 27 layers of paint and varnishes of varying opacity, in which he suspended tiny dots of white or yellow pigment. This created a 3-dimensional sense of actual light—such that if someone were to turn out all the lights in the room you would swear the glow would continue to come in the window in a painting. When I learned that there was a relatively small number of his works surviving in the world, I resolved to add to my life list of goals: See in person every Vermeer in the world.  At the time there were 35 known, plus two over which there was some debate.

   Now, I actually had seen some as a small boy dragged into museums by his parents—but what I did not remember would not be counted.  It took 4 years to see my first, at a traveling exhibit at San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor, and six more for the second, which has since been stolen from Boston's Gardner Museum.  But then they came in bunches:  5 in the National Gallery, 7 in the 2 museums in New York, 9 I had not already seen in a giant show in the National Gallery that David Kuo got me into see when it appeared to be impossible.  Along the way there were disappointments—twice I traveled out of my way only to discover the paintings I wanted to see had been removed for conservation or loaned to other museums.  In the picture above I am in Vienna, on my way to a student conference to help with the Bible study.  It is April 4, 2004 and the white paper states the painting was removed 20 minutes before my arrival when the museum opened...  The other time this happened was in Dresden.  Along the way one of the disputed paintings was authenticated—but I managed to catch it on loan in Philadelphia while helping a student propose marriage to his sweetheart.  The other maybe was in the show in Washington.
   So at the start of my sabbatical all that remained were the 2 that I should have seen but missed:
Dresden and Vienna.  And I would be close to both those cities on this trip...