On Balance --- Day 6/257

Walk: Hood on another v. hot day out here
Distance: 1 mile, 6 exercise/asana/flexion

Pieter de Hooch, Woman Weighing Coins, c. 1664, oil on canvas

                      Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664, oil on canvas

In our materialistic times, Ciwt was struck by what seemed to be portraits of pure greed painted by two of the finest Dutch genre masters and now on view in Washington, DC.  She couldn't help but also by struck - as always - by the supreme genius of Vermeer.  de Hooch was an exceptionally talented painter whose canvasses radiate warmth, glow actually.  If you were to see just his painting above you would be deeply drawn in; wowed actually.  But, next to Vermeer, well...

But Ciwt wanders.  No, the subject here is not 'greed is good.'  In the first painting, de Hooch's, the woman is attending to daily husbandry duties at a historical time when the value of coins was directly related to their weight.  Vermeer is painting about something more timeless and elevated: balance and humility in life.  Behind her is a painting of Christ who would be the ultimate evaluator of the worth of a person's life, and Vermeer's woman is a permanent reminder of the difference in weight between the human and the spiritual realms.