Balance.

We’re studying Vermeer for six weeks, one painting a week, and we came around to my favorite of the group:  Woman Holding a Balance.   

In second grade, I focus on developing three very basic skills:  noticing the details and attributes of a work of art, recalling them, and describing them orally.   

When we started art last year, I had Oscar look at a painting for two minutes; then I would turn it over and he would tell me as many things as he could remember about it; then we would look at it again and try to find a few more details he had forgotten.

Now I let him study the paintings longer, make notes about them, then dictate to me a narration describing the art.  After he’s done I sometimes point out additional details and we discuss them.

At the National Gallery of Art website, I found an interactive online presentation about Woman Holding a Balance.  Oscar and I looked at it together for a while.  I thought it was pretty good except for a bit of psychobabble on the first page of the "Composition" section:

Woman Holding a Balance embodies a spiritual principle that is often manifest in Vermeer’s work: the need to lead a balanced life.

Um, yeah.  The balance is all about "the need to lead a balanced life."  That’s why there’s a painting of The Last Judgment on the wall behind her head.

Is "the need to lead a balanced life" really a major theme of Vermeer’s work?  I’m no expert.  There are only 33 paintings certainly attributed to him; you decide.