Sunlight

Vermeer has been the darling of the art world, and loads of people outside that hallowed circle, for years, and in “Why We Want to Live (and Work) in That Vermeer Light” Emily Barger and Larry Buchanan (The New York Times, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/upshot/vermeer-light-buildings-apartments.html) start to get at why.

As they report “Sunlight wields enormous power in our interior spaces. It can drive up the value of real estate and alter the mood of a room. It can clarify the work on your desktop and create warmth on a cool day. No light bulb can do all that. . . . Over the course of our reporting, we came to think about this light — distinct from the blaze of a fluorescent light bulb — as the warm glow in a Vermeer painting. Dan Kaplan, a New York architect, put this idea in our heads. . .  The subjects he [Vermeer] paints aren’t particularly remarkable. But with great natural light, even everyday scenes become transcendent. . . . Vermeer’s light is not the mysterious holy light of a religious painting, but the ordinary daylight that floods through an open window. The farther you get from the window, the more that light dissipates.”

For more information on the power of natural light, read this article.