The typically Dutch, very beautiful brass or bronze candelabra does not contain a single candle.
The scene opens up. The curtain is drawn. This is a tapestry from the beginning of the 16th century, crafted in Spain.
According to some historians, this strange painting may have some political significance. The painter's
clothes, dating from the 1530s, when Holland was under Spanish rule and the sumptuous and colorful
tapestry could represent nostalgia for the culture, the taste for the arts and Spanish patronage, led by the
Duke of Alba. He was a dreadful politician, but a man who upheld the arts with all his strength and fervor.
The famous Thirty Year's War allowed the Dutch to rid themselves of Spanish rule.
The society of Great Merchants then came to power. This was a rich and prosperous society, but
exquisitely uncultivated and unconcerned with the arts.
The candelabra without a candle may be a way of showing this society's lack of glamor.
This explanation would help us in understanding artists' uneasiness during this period.
In Rembrandt's, Franz Hals' or Fabritius' biographies, we can find Dutch society's obtuse and opaque
incomprehension of the audacity of this new style of painting. In the preceding period, the most
avant-garde painters elicited the interest of the Spanish patrons.
This bitter climate might have been discreetly symbolized by Vermeer in the ARTIST IN HIS
STUDIO.