Lopes, Dominic McIver - Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures

Mounted upon the wall behind the woman in Vermeer's Woman Holding a Balance is another painting, one whose subject is the Last Judgement (Fig. 1). The theme of judgement is repeated in the balance which the woman uses to weigh her goods. By juxtaposing moral and commercial evaluation, Vermeer draws our thoughts to evaluation in general and so to the evaluation of pictures in particular. Pictures are worth owning, some more than others. They sometimes make good decorations, adorning palaces, dentists' offices, and counting-houses. Some are displayed in public or private as badges of social status or group membership. Some impart lessons, as does the painting depicted in Woman Holding a Balance, or supply evidence for historical and scientific hypotheses, such as the claim that painters of Vermeer's time used the camera obscura. Very often, pictures are also objects of aesthetic evaluation. This book concerns the aesthetic evaluation of pictures, viewed in relation to other evaluations of them.