Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

Coming into this world in the seventeenth-century Holland during the golden age of the Dutch East Asia Company, it is not surprising that this woman from Delft became a world traveler. We are talking about here not a real person but a female figure depicted in Woman Holding a Balance by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), which he painted around 1664 and is said to be purchased initially by Pierter Clasz Ruijven (1624-1674) in 1674, the principal patron for Vermeer in Delft. Woman Holding a Balance then traveled to Amsterdam in 1696, to Nymphenburg Castle in 1825, to Paris in 1830, and from London to New York to Philadelphia in 1911. Privately owned by Joseph E. Widener of Philadelphia since 1915, Woman Holding a Balance finally found her permanent residence in Washington DC in 1942 as one of the prized possessions of National Gallery of Art at the bequest of the Widener family.

Finding her permanent residence in the US was not the end of travels for the woman in Woman Holding a Balance. As the reputation of Vermeer as a great artist became firmly established among art historians in the twentieth century, as exemplified by the first solo exhibition of his work in Rotterdam in 1935 with an accompanying statement like, “Next to Rembrandt the figure of Vermeer rises above all other artists of the great age of the seventeenth century,”¹ the woman in Woman Holding a Balance has attracted great demand for her presence at exhibitions all over the world. In this capacity as a great attraction at exhibitions, Woman Holding a Balance started travelling again from her home in Washington DC to such cities as Philadelphia, Berlin and London in 1984, the Hague in 1996, Osaka in 2000, New York and London in 2001, Madrid in 2003, Amsterdam in 2009, Munich in 2011, and Detroit in 2012. This year, 2017, she has traveled to Paris and Dublin before returning to her home in Washington DC in October.

Such high demand for her presence is understandable, considering that Woman Holding a Balance, despite its small size measuring 40.3×35.6 cm, is no doubt a great work of art by a great artist. Indeed, Woman Holding a Balance is one of those paintings by Johannes Vermeer, which is universally admired today by art lovers all over the world for its masterful representation of exquisite balance between light and darkness and its well-structured composition of the things depicted in the painting. Though considered only a minor painter at the time, Vermeer painted Woman Holding a Balance around 1664 at the height of his artistic creativity when he painted such masterpieces as: Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (c.1663-64), Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (c.1664-65), Woman with a Pearl Necklace (c.1664), A Lady Writing (c.1665), The Girl with the Red Hat (c.1665), and Girl with a Pearl Earring (c.1665-66).

Indeed, the only other woman more popular than the woman in Woman Holding a Balance among female figures Vermeer painted may arguably be the girl in Girl with a Pearl Necklace. Depicting a young girl with a charming profile, Girl with a Pearl Necklace is often called Vermeer’s Mona Lisa, and has been made into a novel and a movie.² If it is so popular, what is the reason behind the popularity of Woman Holding a Balance? What was the message that Vermeer wanted to convey to us viewers?

It is to be noted that Woman Holding a Balance used to be called Woman Weighing Gold because of the remarkable similarity between this painting and Woman Weighing Gold Coins (c.1664) by Pierter de Hooch (1629-1684). Art historians have long debated whether it was Vermeer or de Hooch who first got an idea for painting a woman in the act of weighing. Besides the remarkable similarity between the two paintings, what adds to the debate is the fact both artists were working in Delft as members of the Guild of St. Luke, though de Hooch was in Amsterdam in 1664. Another factor that needs to be taken into account in settling the debate is the fact that de Hooch originally had the figure of a man seated at the far side of the table, which he later painted over. Whether it was Vermeer or de Hooch who borrowed the idea from the other, the current title of Woman Holding a Balance stems from the discovery made at the restoration work in 1994, in which microscopic analysis showed nothing sitting on the scales, although gold and pearls are distinctively painted as lying on the table.

Art historians have also debated about whether the woman in Woman Holding a Balance is pregnant, because of her bulging belly, or whether she was just wearing the costume fashionable in Delft around that time. It has also been suggested that the painting depicts the secular image of the Virgin Mary, who intercedes on behalf of the faithful Christians on the occasion of their final judgment. This interpretation is made plausible by the picture of The Last Judgment on the wall. Moreover, it is known that Vermeer had converted to Catholicism before his marriage to Catharina Bolnes in 1653. According to this interpretation, the painting is an allegorical depiction of the last judgment, which Vermeer symbolically represented by the figure of a woman in the act of weighing.

Whatever it was Vermeer intended to represent, what is remarkable about the woman in Woman Holding a Balance is the sense of serenity exuded by the calmness of her body and the concentration of her mind on the act of weighing. In fact, she appears as if she is meditating while totally immersed in the act of weighing. While depicting a similar scene, this type of spirituality is missing from de Hooch’s Woman Weighing Gold Coins. Perhaps Vermeer was seeking the sense of serenity that was lacking from his turbulent daily life, which included his dealing with his sometimes-difficult mother-in-law, the death of his children, and paying off the debt left by his father. Perhaps it was his faith in Catholicism that prompted Vermeer to paint Woman Holing a Balance. Whatever may be the background behind it, Woman Holding a Balance is hugely popular and is attracting a sold-out crowd of her admirers daily in Dublin, which is understandable as Ireland is a Catholic country that promotes tourism today as a spiritual undertaking.³

1. Ben Broos and Arthur K. Wheelock (eds.), Johannes Vermeer, Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1995, p. 60.
2. Chevalier, Tracy, Girl with a Pearl Necklace, London: HarperCollins, 1999.
3. “Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting,” 17 June - 17 September 2017, National Gallery of Ireland.

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

Visitors are greeted with the soft plucking sound of the harp as they open the door to walk into St. Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney, a popular tourist destination as the starting point for scenic tours of Killarney National Park and the Ring of Kerry. Considering that the harp is a national symbol of Ireland, it may not come as surprise that someone came up with the idea of using the plucking sound of the harp as the doorbell. But this is a cathedral. What is the significance of the sound of the harp used as the doorbell of a cathedral, a house of worship? Walking into the cathedral, visitors are told about what the sound of the harp is intended for, which is to remind them of Celtic Spirituality. But what is Celtic Spirituality? To understand what Celtic Spirituality means requires us to look back briefly into the history of Ireland, which is the story of a nation shaped by invasions by foreigners, or outsiders.

The Celts are said to be the first wave of foreigners, or outsiders, who came to Ireland during the Iron Age, which started around 600 BCE. We may recall that the Celts were the first large wave of settlers in England and Europe as well. The Celtic tribes who settled in Ireland gave the Irish their language and art, an important cultural heritage for them that has been transmitted and preserved to this day. Since the Celtic legacy is so important for their national identity, the Irish no longer regard the Celts as foreigners, or outsiders.¹

In contrast to the Celts, the subsequent waves of people who came to Ireland were definitely “foreigners,” or “outsiders,” in that they came to this lovely island as invaders for plundering, conquest, or colonization. The Vikings, whose first recorded invasion took place in 795, came to Ireland as aggressive plunderers who wreaked havoc on the early settlers. To their credit, however, the Vikings gradually started to settle down—mainly on the East coast of Ireland—and build their own towns to continue their maritime activities, including Dublin, which traces its history to a Viking settlement.

By far the most controversial invaders to Ireland in its history were the British, or the Anglo-Normans, with King Henry II coming to overwhelm and subjugate Ireland in 1171. The year 1171, when Ireland was added as the lands of the king of England, marks the beginning of the agonizing history for the Irish of political exclusion, economic exploitation, and social discrimination. The arrival of the British invaders saw much of the island fall into the hands of the ruling English aristocrats. The history of Ireland has since been the history of conquest and colonization by the British, and of resistance and rebellion on the part of the Irish.

What has made the history of Ireland since the British invasion so agonizing for the Irish is the bitter conflict between the invaders and the invaded regarding their faith that would last well into the twentieth century. Protestantism, or the reformed version of Christianity, which the British brought with them would clash with Catholicism, which had taken root in Ireland since the fifth century when bishops sent by the Pope came to Ireland, notable among whom was St. Patrick who would become the patron saint for the Irish. The Irish have attempted numerous acts of resistance and rebellion against the British invaders who became colonizers of their lands. One such act of rebellion and resistance often quoted in history books took place in 1258, when the native rulers challenged the British by recognizing Brian O’Neill as High King of Ireland. O’Neill’s tenure as High King of Ireland was short-lived, however, for his forces were defeated by the colonists at the battle of Down in 1260, with his severed head sent to England for public display at the Tower of London. The violent end of this act of resistance and rebellion was actually the beginning of the long history of resistance and rebellion by the Irish against the British invaders, which would continue for centuries until the end of the twentieth century, when the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998.²

Among the acts of resistance and rebellion by the Irish that took place during the twentieth century, two events are often cited. One was the Easter Rising of 1916, which is known by the much-quoted line, “A terrible beauty is born,” that appears in a poem titled Easter 1916 by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), first published in the New Statesman in 1920.³ The other was Bloody Sunday of 1972, which was made into a song titled Sunday, Bloody Sunday by the pop group U2 that begins with the line, “I can’t believe the news today,” one of the songs included in their album, War, released in 1983.

The history of Ireland as the story shaped by invasions is not limited to human invasions by foreigners, or outsiders. Figuratively speaking, invasions into Ireland also happened in such areas of Irish life as economy, social structure, and even food.

The Potato Famine of 1845-46 was, in a way, one notable example of such non-human invasions, for the potato was an invasive species of plants transmitted to Ireland by foreigners. The potato, brought back from the New World by the conquering Spaniards, began to be cultivated by Basque sailors’ families along the Biscay coast of northern Spain before the end of the sixteenth century. Then, fishermen, operating off the coast of Ireland from northern Spanish ports, transmitted potatoes to the Irish before 1650.⁴ The Irish, especially poor rural laborers, became so dependent on potatoes that when blight struck Ireland in 1845-46, which was another case of invasion in the form of a fungal disease called Phytophthora infestans that came from Europe, the great majority of the population had no reserves of food, resulting in what is now known as the Great Calamity, or the Great Potato Famine. Approximately one million people are said to have died during the famine, another million emigrating to America and elsewhere.⁵

While most invasions Ireland has seen in its history are tragic and traumatic, the recent history of Ireland does include invasions that the Irish have come to embrace gladly. Such is the influx of foreign capital into Ireland during the period of rapid economic growth from mid-1990s through mid-2000s, when Ireland was called the “Celtic tiger.” The new breed of invaders who came to Ireland during this period includes financial planners, investment bankers, and IT engineers. In fact, the influx of IT engineers, combined with the high level of education in Ireland, has made the information industry as the leading industry of Ireland. These recent invaders have brought with them their family members, including children. Thanks partly to the arrival of these immigrants, Ireland saw a rise in population, from 3.5 million in 1991 to 4.2 million in 2006, which is quite contrary to the history of Ireland as a nation of emigrants to other parts of the world.

The latest wave of human invasions to Ireland is the friendly invasion of people who come to this island of natural beauty and welcoming people as tourists, Killarney being a notable example of their popular destinations. This brings us back to the sound of the harp that greets visitors to St. Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney, which is intended to remind them of Celtic Spirituality. What is Celtic Spirituality, now? It is, we are told, “the distinctive capacity in all people to touch the Divine in the ordinary.”

These words carry special relevance this year, which marks the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther’s bold act of protest against the Catholic Church. As far as the Irish Catholics are concerned, however, the Reformation is an event that took place on the European Continent, as evidenced by the term “Continental Reformation” which they employ to refer to this historic event. Like so many other things, Protestantism, too, came to Ireland in the form of an invasion. By calling our attention to “the distinctive capacity in all people to touch the Divine in the ordinary,” the Irish church leaders seem to be asking us to go beyond Protestantism, or even Catholicism for that matter. To the Irish, this means to revisit their history and reconfirm their Celtic heritage. To others, it means to reflect on and reconfirm the innate spirituality that all of us possess. Call it the Buddha-nature, and that distinctive capacity in all people is the capacity we all possess to touch the true nature of reality in the ordinary. If so, the sound of the harp that greets visitors to St. Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney can be called the mindfulness harp, for its gentile sound awakens our heart to touch the Buddha-nature in all things in the world around us.

1. For early history of Ireland, see, for example: O’Kelly, M.J., Early Ireland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
2. For historical accounts of the troubled relationship between the British colonists and the Irish, see: Bartlett, Thomas, Ireland: A History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, and Ellis, Steven G., Tudor England: Crown, Community and the Conflict of Cultures, 1470-1703, London: Longman, 1985.
3. For a detailed account of Eater 1916, see, for example: Townsend, Charles, Easter 1916: the Irish Rebellion, London: Penguin Books, 2015.
4. How the potato brought back from the New World by the Spaniards affected different countries in Europe differently, see: McNeill, William, Plagues and Peoples, London: Penguin, 1979.
5. For a modern analysis of the Potato Famine, see, for example: Kinealy, Christine, This Great Calamity, The Irish Famine, 1845-52, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1994.