{"id":5730,"date":"2014-04-04T10:52:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T08:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/?p=5730"},"modified":"2016-12-22T17:33:09","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T16:33:09","slug":"art-in-novels-the-responsive-eye-of-novelist-donna-tartt-reading-the-vermeers-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2014\/04\/04\/art-in-novels-the-responsive-eye-of-novelist-donna-tartt-reading-the-vermeers-masterpiece\/","title":{"rendered":"Art in novels: the responsive eye of novelist Donna Tartt reading the Rembrandt&#8217;s masterpiece"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 {\n\t\t\t\tmargin: auto;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-item {\n\t\t\t\tfloat: left;\n\t\t\t\tmargin-top: 10px;\n\t\t\t\ttext-align: center;\n\t\t\t\twidth: 33%;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 img {\n\t\t\t\tborder: 2px solid #cfcfcf;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {\n\t\t\t\tmargin-left: 0;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes\/media.php *\/\n\t\t<\/style>\n\t\t<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-5730 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2014\/04\/04\/art-in-novels-the-responsive-eye-of-novelist-donna-tartt-reading-the-vermeers-masterpiece\/the_anatomy_ldetail\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"137\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/The_Anatomy_Ldetail-.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-5732\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-5732'>\n\t\t\t\tRembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (detail), 1632. Oil on canvas, 169.5 x 216.5 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis,\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2014\/04\/04\/art-in-novels-the-responsive-eye-of-novelist-donna-tartt-reading-the-vermeers-masterpiece\/34-2\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"136\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/34.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-5731\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-5731'>\n\t\t\t\tRembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (detail), 1632. Oil on canvas, 169.5 x 216.5 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis.\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2014\/04\/02\/a-special-goldfinch-to-renovated-the-house-of-the-girl-with-the-pearl-erring\/the_anatomy_lesson\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"113\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/The_Anatomy_Lesson.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632. Oil on canvas, 169.5 x 216.5 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis,\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-5712\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-5712'>\n\t\t\t\tRembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632. Oil on canvas, 169.5 x 216.5 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis.\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><br style=\"clear: both\" \/>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>After <strong>Donna Tartt<\/strong>&#8216;s description of one of the rare <strong>Carel Fabritius<\/strong>&#8216;s canvases we posted two days ago in relation with the restoration of the Mauritshuis, here another effective passage from the same book. The protagonist, Theo Decker, remembers his mother reading for him one of the Rembrandt&#8217;s masterpieces\u00a0while visiting a fictional exhibition titled \u201cPortraiture and nature morte: Northern masterworks of the golden age\u201d at the Met. A few minutes later the explosion of a bomb inside the museum kills the woman.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cNow, Rembrandt,\u201d my mother said, \u201cEverybody always says this painting is about reason and enlightenment, the dawn of scientific inquiry, all that, but to me it&#8217;s creepy how polite and formal they are, miling around the slab like a buffet at a cocktail party. Although \u2013 \u201c she pointed\u201d \u2013 \u201csee those two puzzled guys in the black there? They&#8217;re not looking at the body \u2013 they&#8217;re looking at us. You and me. Like they see us standing here in front of them \u2013 twp people from the future. Startled. \u02bdwhat are you doing there?\u02bc Very naturalistic. But then\u201d \u2013 she traced the corpse, midair, with her finger \u2013 \u201cthe body isn&#8217;t painted in any very natural way at all, if you look at it. Weird glow coming off it, do you see? Alien autopsy, almost. See how it lights up the faces of the men looking down at it? Like it&#8217;s shining with its own light source? He&#8217;s painting it with that radioactive quality because he wants to draw our eye to it \u2013 make it jump out at us. And here\u201d \u2013 she pointed to the flayed hand \u2013 \u201csee how he calls attention to it by painting it so big, all out of proportions to the rest of the body? He&#8217;s even turned it around so the thumb is on the wrong side, do you see? Well, he didn&#8217;t do that by mistake. The skin is off the hand \u2013 we see it immediately, something very wrong \u2013 but by reversing the thumb he makes it look even more wrong, it registers subliminally even if we can&#8217;t put our finger on it, something really out of order, not right. Very clever trick\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, 2013.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After Donna Tartt&#8216;s description of one of the rare Carel Fabritius&#8216;s canvases we posted two days ago in relation with the restoration of the Mauritshuis, here another effective passage from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1793],"tags":[1667,1668,864],"class_list":["post-5730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-to-be-discovered","tag-carel-fabritius","tag-donna-tartt","tag-rembrandt"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}