Good doesn't cut it: quality and quantity in the reception history of Vermeer

Guest lecture as part of the seminar "Art Criticism" (Kathrin Heinrich)

In the mid 18th century, the King of Saxony bought a Vermeer because he was told it was a Rembrandt, and he believed it. A few decades on, the King of France declined to buy a Vermeer because it was not a Rembrandt. Vermeer has always been good – anyone could see that. But good doesn’t cut it when you’re selling to kings, oil barons, financiers, and rappers. His example tells us that, across art history, from Old Masters to post-postmodernists, quality is not a given, but subject to trend and capital. In this lecture, Kristian Vistrup Madsen traces how value was attributed to Vermeer's paintings, and how value, over time, made us see those paintings differently.