The dutch painter Gabriel Metsu has got it rough. Any show by Vermeer, his close colleague, is a blockbuster. The first Metsu survey in five decades just opened at the National Gallery in Washington, to zero fanfare. Things were once the other way around. For centuries, sophisticated audiences preferred Metsu's detail-filled storytelling to Vermeer's cryptic, detached observation. In 1662-five years before Metsu died, at only 38-the Amsterdam poet Jan Vos sang Metsu's praises: "Nature in her fruitfulness from spite alone can wither/Now she sees that life can be created from dead paint." All Vermeer got was a mention in a poem on another artist, written by a printer from Delft.
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