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Johannes Vermeer's Painting Of The Woman Holding A Balance

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The early modern period was the transitional era that began to revolutionize the world into what people know it as today. The religious revolution led to the Protestant Reformation, an alteration of people’s way of thinking about God. The age of Discovery brought about exploration of the vast, unknown ocean, giving rise to global mapping of the world. The scientific revolution altered the way people of the modern period thought about and saw the world around them. The transformations that took place during the early modern era, is seen through Johannes Vermeer’s paintings, specifically the Woman Holding a Balance.
The Protestant Reformation challenged religious, political, and cultural beliefs. It began once people started to alter the way …show more content…

The silver being weighed on the balance, for example, is the center of the painting, showing her family’s wealth and proving their elect status. This is an important concept of this time period because silver coins were the objects of capital. She is weighing it on the balance because the value of the money is measured by the amount of silver in the coin. The woman is portrayed in a spotlight which symbolizes her holiness. Also, in the painting on the wall behind her there is a painting of The Last Judgement. There, Christ is judging her by saying she is good and elect because of her wealth shown in the fact that she is pregnant. In Timothy Brook’s book, Vermeer’s Hat, he states, “she handles money, but her calculating of the family’s wealth is as honorable and wholesome as the fecundity of natural increase that her pregnancy signifies.” Brook is conveying that the woman is not only handling her family’s money and wealth, but also stating that her pregnancy signifies her family’s wealth as well. During the times of the modern era, wealth was also measured in fertility and carrying on your lineage. Individuals strived to be seen as wealthy to prove to God and others around them of their elect …show more content…

Johannes Vermeer’s painting of The Geographer portrays Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek, father of microbiology, as the center of the painting. When describing Antonie in the painting, Brook states, "Leeuwenhoek poses as a man of science, not of business. Yet without scholars like him who devoted their energies to the accumulation of useful knowledge, the merchants would have not had their maps. The two impulses - knowledge and acquisition - worked together." The Geographer uses Leeuwenhoek to illustrate the scientific revolution, a time where people began to challenge previous known truths and accumulate knowledge about the world around them. The scientific revolution paved way for many intellectual discoveries. Nicolaus Copernicus put forth a theory of the heliocentric system, meaning the universe revolves around the sun, a fact known by scientists today. Sir Francis Bacon, known for establishing the scientific method, introduced the importance of inductive reasoning. A Methodology still used to this day by individuals all around the world. Galileo Galilei, accredited for many mathematical philosophies and the discovery of the telescope, led future scientists towards discovering the unknown world. These are just the few scientific minds that led the revolution that would propel the early modern era into the future with more and more

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