Andrew Graham-Dixon: evaluation

Transcript context

…Would the Dutch painters have seen van Eyck’s and other Low Country paintings? The best ones. Diana and Her Nymphs (c. 1653–1654) — early Vermeer, borrowing the foot-washing of Flemish altarpieces. Mauritshuis, The Hague. I don’t know what paintings Vermeer would have seen, but I’m sure that he had seen paintings by van Eyck. It’s quite hard to piece together what they would have seen. There were dealers in Amsterdam dealing in really wonderful paintings of that school. Flemish art is around because, after all, the Low Countries is the Low Countries. Yes, it’s been divided into North and South. I think he would be familiar with that tradition. For example, there’s an early painting in the Mauritshuis of Diana and her companions. I think there’s this very strong Christian undertow to this classical painting where you’ve got a basin and a cloth, and one of Diana’s nymphs is washing her feet, much as Mary Magdalene washes the feet of Christ in Flemish altarpieces. It looks so much like the paraphernalia that you’d see in a Flemish altarpiece that Vermeer must have seen one of those altarpieces to borrow that from it. When you think about contemporary art, which has become quite controversial in the United States, how healthy is the current state of affairs in general?…

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