The Astonishing Marvel that is the Frick Collection

November 14, 2019 at 8:56 pm (Art, New York City)

So, you enter the galleries and the first thing you see is this:

It is ‘Officer and Laughing Girl’ by Jan Vermeer, painted some time between 1665 and 1660.

The man beside me was also staring intently. I said to him, Isn’t it amazing to be standing here, in front of this? He smiled and nodded, unable to speak.

It was some time before I was able to move. But move one must; there is ever so much more to see….

For one thing, two more Vermeers:

Girl Interrupted at Her Music, c.1658-1659

 

Mistress and Maid, c. 1667

The light falls on her dress;
Words cannot express what this color means.
It seems as though the rays of the sun have settled on the fabric,
And are blazing forth anew.

Yet she is oblivious of her own beauty,
Focused instead on this conundrum brought to her by a maid.
A moment of profound import?
A matter of some urgency, or a botched laundry order?

We cannot know; will never know,
Can only wait, and stare, and wonder, at this moment in time
Captured forever by a genius artist.

A mystery within a mystery.