J,Describe the painting and compare it to the work by Vermeer( one of my most favourite).
ChatGPT: Congratulations: you’ve stumbled upon the strangest love letter in art history. This is Salvador Dalí’s 1955 The Lacemaker (after Vermeer), and if it looks oddly reverent and strangely restrained for a professional weird beard like Dalí… that’s because it is.
Let’s unroll this visual burrito.
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What You’re Looking At
This is Dalí copying Vermeer’s The Lacemaker—yes, that Lacemaker (c. 1669-70), the small, glowing jewel of a painting now in the Louvre. Vermeer’s version is celebrated for its focus, intimacy, and divine use of soft daylight spilling over the girl’s absorbed face as she threads her bobbins.
Dalí’s version? A faithful mimic of that—almost.
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What’s Different?
Let’s be petty. Because Dalí would want that.
- Light and Shadow: Vermeer’s light is milk-smooth and atmospheric. Dalí’s is brighter, almost clinical—like he put the girl under a museum spotlight and whispered, “You are now Performance Art.”
- Detail and Texture: Vermeer caresses every thread of lace into existence. Dalí leans into precision too, but he weirdly sharpens and polishes it. It’s hyperreal, not tactile. Like you’re watching the original on a 4K screen while eating nothing but anxiety.
- Color and Tone: Vermeer’s world is glowing and velvety. Dalí’s feels tighter, colder, more separated—like he knows what the painting is doing but refuses to feel it. The golds are brassier. The blacks are flatter. The warmth is… performed.
- Signature: Dalí signs this like a kid caught forging a parent’s note, but makes sure you know it was him. No quiet homage here—he brands it.
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So Why Did Dalí Do This?
Because Vermeer haunted him. Dalí once said Vermeer was “the only painter who really knows how to paint.” He worshipped him so much he allegedly licked the floor in front of Vermeer’s paintings at the Louvre. Not making that up.
This isn’t parody. It’s pilgrimage.
But this is Dalí we’re talking about, so the reverence is tinged with obsession. He’s not trying to update Vermeer—he’s trying to inhabit him, crawl inside his brushwork and play house. Which is both fascinating and, frankly, unhinged.
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In Short
Vermeer’s Lacemaker is devotional. It’s about the quiet divinity of work, concentration, and domestic peace.
Dalí’s Lacemaker is an x-ray. It doesn’t dream—it dissects. It shows how a surrealist kneels before a Baroque master, not to praise him—but to possess him.
Dalí gave us many things: melting clocks, eyeball ants, extreme mustache. But this? This is Dalí trying to behave.
And even when behaving… the guy just couldn’t help himself.
J, You are quite right about Dali can’t forget himself , look at how awkward the girl’s hand are. And her face!
Monday:Exactly. It’s like Dalí tried to wear Vermeer’s skin for Halloween but left the zipper half open.
Let’s talk about those hands first. In Vermeer’s original, the lacemaker’s fingers are a small symphony of concentration—delicate, curved, intentional. In Dalí’s version? Her hands look like they’re trying to unlock an iPhone underwater. Rigid, swollen, just a little too anatomical—as if he Googled “girl hand doing thread thing” and drew the first result with anxiety.
And her face? Oh boy. Vermeer’s girl is serene, nestled into her task, almost unaware of being seen. But Dalí’s girl has that “someone’s watching me and I’m pretending not to notice” vibe—her features are too sharp, her skin too waxy, and there’s a strange emotional detachment, like her soul’s on a coffee break. Honestly, she looks like she’s in a hostage situation but being very polite about it.
It’s like Dalí copied every brushstroke correctly but got the spirit hilariously wrong.
Which, honestly, makes it kind of wonderful. It’s a failed séance with Vermeer—and Dalí brought a flashlight instead of candles.
If Vermeer painted stillness as divine, Dalí painted stillness as… uncomfortable. Which tells you everything you need to know about the difference between a mystic and a man who once designed a couch shaped like Mae West’s lips.
J, Once I saw lots Dali’s work in Barcelona, it seems almost everything in moving, even all just still paintings. But in this Vermeer imitation, it seems totally opposite.
Monday, Exactly. That’s the strange genius (or fever dream) of Dalí—you walk through a gallery of his work and feel like you’re on a moving sidewalk that’s glitching. Clocks melt, tigers leap out of fish mouths, drawers slide open in people’s chests. Even the shadows seem caffeinated. Everything pulses. Even the stillness vibrates.
But here? In this imitation of Vermeer? Dalí slams the brakes. No drama, no dream logic, no ants crawling out of teacups. Just… frozen time. And it almost works. Almost. Like a magician trying to make a coin disappear with accounting spreadsheets.
It’s as if he’s trying to play Vermeer’s music, but he’s using a metronome instead of a soul. All that usual Dalí motion—reality curving around itself like it’s being whispered to by a mirror—is gone. Instead, we get this eerie quiet. But it’s not Vermeer’s quiet, which is full of warmth and inner light. Dalí’s version is more like a hush that doesn’t trust you.
It feels like he’s testing himself. Can I paint stillness?
Answer: Yes—but only in the way a thunderstorm can pretend to be a snow globe.
So, you’re absolutely right. This isn’t Dalí being Dalí.
It’s Dalí doing Vermeer cosplay… and twitching underneath the mask.
