Flying Fox?
Although there is a bat called the flying fox (Pteropus), that’s not what we are talking about.
Our Flying Fox is the place where Vermeer’s father Renyier Janz lived and presumably where Vermeer was born on one day in late October, 1632. The Flying Fox was also an inn. It was only a few steps from the cardinal points of Vermeer’s life in Delft: the Guild of St Luke where he would meet with his fellow artisans and painters and a few steps from the much larger Mechelen, where Vermeer’s father would move once his business began to prosper. Mechelen was a stone’s-throw across the Markt was Oude Langendijk where Vermeer would settle qwith his wife, mother-in-law and where he would produce 14 children and many of his masterworks. Looking out north from the second floor over the Markt below, he could still see Mechelen.
By the way, the image to the left was taken from the approximate location (if this isn’t it, it is only a door or two away) of the Flying Fox looking across a small canal and upwards to the towering Nieuwe Kerk in Delft.
It is very likely that Vermeer developed his vocation for art in the Flying Fox. Reynier, like other hustling innkeepers, kept a stock of paintings to sell hung on every wall because inkeeping and painting went naturally together in the Netherlands. Painters, like Delft citizens, gathered to drink beer, talk, fight, make peace, do business and enjoy a bit more light and air than their claustrophobic homes usually afforded. Reynier knew the local painters, their commerce and clients. Shop talk was the norm.
But even if the Flying Fox and Delft were small, they were connected to the world by its chamber of the Dutch East Indies Company. This first publicly financed venture traded in every known corner of the earth and brought back to the Netherlands some of the objects we see in Vermeer’s painting: beaver furs used to make the felt hat on the gentleman’s head in the Officer and Laughing Girl, the Chinese bowl in the Girl at an Open Window, and the Turkish carpets so precious that the Dutch spread them over their tables rather than on the floor. Then there are the precious Chinese porcelains, lemons from Spain and even silver pieces from South American mines (on the table of the Woman Holding a Balance). Vermeer needn’t travel, the wares and ideas of the world came to his feet.
The internet connects everyone to everyone else each from our own little Delft. Welcome to the Flying Fox, from wherever you may come.
