New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America

Prologue

Prologue In 1657, Johannes Vermeer reinterpreted the common Dutch visual image of the girl with a suitor in his Officer and a Laughing Girl. He placed a young woman, bathed in the pure light of an open window, at a table with a man, who appears largely in dark silhouette. A map of Holland and West Friesland hangs on the wall behind them. Cradling a glass of wine in her right hand, she smiles plainly at him, holding her left hand out and open. Perhaps Vermeer intended her gesture to suggest merely a welcoming of the man’s advances, although the eagerness of her gaze and the forward tilt of her body as she leans toward him lend a greater sense of urgency to her actions (Figure 1).¹ With the other elements of the painting, Vermeer indicates that the young woman’s entreaty has to do with the burgeoning Dutch commercial empire. Painting at the midpoint of the Golden Age, just after the Peace of Westphalia had finally secured Dutch independence from Spain in 1648, Vermeer 1. Johannes Vermeer’s depiction of the young woman’s status is somewhat ambiguous. The form of the woman’s hooftdoek, or kerchief, fits with the “Tied Cap” usually paired with the simple skirt and apron attire associated with women below burgher status in Dutch paintings from 1600 to 1650; see Dana L. Chapman, “Dutch Costume in Paintings by Dutch Artists: A Study of Women’s Clothing and Art from 1600 to 1650” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1986), 128–142. But, such caps were not reserved solely for representations of servants. For an example of this simple headwear worn with a more elaborate bodice, see Gabriel Metsu’s The Intruder, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Compare the outfit worn by the woman in Metsu’s painting to the simpler attire of the servant portrayed in Vermeer’s The Milkmaid (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). The dress worn in Officer and Laughing Girl appears in other Vermeer paintings and “can be defined as daily wear.” In 1681, concerns about overly fine clothing among servant women resulted in a sumptuary law obliging them to wear a jacket and apron instead of a gown; see Marieke de Winkel, “The Interpretation of Dress in Vermeer’s Paintings,” in Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker, eds., Vermeer Studies, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Studies in the History of Art, LV, Symposium Papers, XXXIII (New Haven, Conn., 1998), 328–330 (quotation, 329). Overall, Vermeer leaves open the question whether the young woman is a servant or of burgher status. FIGURE 1 •Officer and Laughing Girl. By Johannes Vermeer. Circa 1657. Oil on canvas (lined), 197⁄8 ×181⁄8 in. (50.5 × 46 cm). Henry Clay Frick Bequest.© The Frick Collection, New York Prologue 3 lived in a Holland already flourishing economically as a result of overseas expansion and new trade with Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The girl’s suitor is not just a local burgher; his clothing clearly identifies him as an officer. Not only did officers like him protect cities and towns at home, they also played important roles in the creation of empire. They sailed aboard the ships of the VOC and the WIC, participated in the Anglo-Dutch wars in the battle for Atlantic trade, and manned posts in Dutch colonies around the globe. Although Vermeer left much about the shadowy officer a matter of mystery , he included an overt reference to the expanding Dutch empire, specifically the growing Dutch trade along the east coast of North America, through one element of the man’s outfit: his unmissable, impressive hat. The hat dominates the center of the left half of the painting, its dark shape dramatically emphasized against the light from the window behind it. Made from beaver skins harvested by Mohawk and Munsee people of the midAtlantic coast, shipped through the Dutch colonial port of New Amsterdam on Manhattan, sold in the fur market of Amsterdam, felted in Russia, and steamed into the perfect shape in France or England, hats like these commanded high prices in seventeenth-century Europe. Vermeer does not show the officer’s face; to the viewer, he is just one of the many officers crowding the streets and towns of Holland during this period. But if the viewer fails to get a good look at him, it is impossible to overlook the...