Jan Vermeer

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• Born: October 1632
• Birthplace: Delft, Netherlands
• Died: December 1675
• Best Known As: Dutch painter of Girl With a Pearl Earring

Name at birth: Johannes van der Meer

Johannes (or Jan) Vermeer is now recognized as one of the great Dutch painters, but while he was alive he could barely make ends meet, and his artistic achievement was almost entirely ignored for 200 years after his death. Little is known about his personal life, other than he died poor and young and left behind a wife and eleven children. Vermeer is admired for his realistic style, his subtle use of color and light and his unusual and inventive brush technique, but fewer than forty of his paintings exist. His most famous works include domestic scenes such as Girl With a Peal Earring (1665) and The Music Lesson (1662-65), and tranquil landscapes such as The Little Street (1657-58) and View of Delft (1659-60).

Although his actual birth and death dates are unknown, Vermeer was baptized 31 October 1632 and buried 15 December 1675... During his career he used the names Johannes van der Meer, Johannes Vermeer and Jan Vermeer... He was played by actor Colin Firth in the 2003 film Girl With A Pearl Earring, which also starred Scarlett Johansson as the girl.

For more information on Johannes Vermeer, visit Britannica.com.

(b Delft, bapt 31 Oct 1632; d Delft, bur 16 Dec 1675). Dutch painter. He is considered one of the principal Dutch genre painters of the 17th century. His work displays an unprecedented level of artistic mastery in its consummate illusion of reality. Vermeer's figures are often reticent and inactive, which imparts an evocative air of solemnity and mystery to his paintings.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

The Dutch painter Jan Vermeer (1632-1675) of Delft transformed traditional Dutch themes into images of superlative poise and serenity, rich with emblematic meaning.

Rarely has such a small body of work supported such a l!rge reputation as that of Jan (Johannes) Vermeer. Most experts would agree O. 35 authentic works, with a few more on which opinions differ. For the most part his paintings are of Mode 3t size, and their subject matter appears to be commonplace.

The documented facts about Vermeer's life are scanty. He was born in Delft. His father was an art dealer and silk weaver who also kept a tavern, and Vermeer probably took over the business after his father's death in 1655. In 1653 Vermeer married a well-to-do Catholic girl from Gouda; they had 11 children. In the year of his marriage he became a master in the Delft painters' guild, of which he was an officer in 1662-1663 and 1669-1670. He seems to have painted very little and to have sold only a fraction of his limited production, for the majority of his extant paintings were still in the hands of his family when he died. His dealings in works by other artists seem to have supported his family reasonably well until the French invasion of 1672 ruined his business. He died in 1675 and was buried on December 15. The following year his wife was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Nothing is known about Vermeer's education and training as a painter. In part because verses written following the death of Carel Fabritius in 1654 mention Vermeer as his successor as Delft's leading artist, it has been suggested that Fabritius was Vermeer's teacher. Certainly Fabritius anticipated Vermeer's interest in perspective experiments and his use of a light-flooded wall as a background for figures. But Fabritius lived in Delft only after 1650, by which time Vermeer would have been well on his way toward the completion of his training.

Sixteen of Vermeer's paintings are signed, but only two are dated: The Procuress (1656) and The Astronomer (1668). A chronology of his works, based on their stylistic relationships with these two landmarks and on other considerations, has found general acceptance, though some points continue to be argued.

Early Works

The warm colors and emphatic chiaroscuro of The Procuress relate it to paintings of the Rembrandt school of the 1650s, but its subject matter and composition reflect an acquaintance with paintings of the 1620s by the Utrecht Caravaggists. Considered to be earlier than The Procuress are two pictures that resemble it because of the color scheme, dominated by reds and yellows, and because they are larger in size and scale than Vermeer's later works. Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is reminiscent of compositions by Hendrick Terbrugghen and Gerrit van Honthorst, who disseminated the Caravaggesque style in Holland. Diana and Her Companions, Vermeer's only mythological subject, is also redolent of Italy. It is his only painting of figures in a landscape setting.

After these three diverse experiments, which may have owed something to Vermeer's familiarity with works in his father's stock of art, he painted the Girl Asleep at a Table, in which he retained the warm palette of his other early pictures but in terms of subject matter and composition plunged into the mainstream of current Delft painting. The room with an open door, through which the adjoining brightly lighted room is visible and which is typical of Vermeer's Delft contemporary Pieter de Hooch, went back to early Netherlandish tradition. For Vermeer it was the first attempt to place a figure in the defined space of a room, a problem that preoccupied him throughout the rest of his career. The effect of sharp recession also was a prominent feature of Vermeer's compositional mode from then on. The quality of self absorption seen in this painting contributed to his most characteristic emotional effects. Subtle allusions to meanings beyond the obvious one, which have made this picture the subject of much discussion, were also found in Vermeer's later works.

All these tendencies were brought under full control for the first time in the Soldier and Laughing Girl. This painting also marked the transition between Vermeer's early and mature works in that pointillé (gleaming highlights of thick impasto), which brightens the paint surface, appeared for the first time.

Mature Period

Vermeer's two town views, the Little Street and View of Delft, have been called "the first plein-air pictures of modern painting." The View of Delft has been in the 20th century one of the most admired of all paintings. Marcel Proust's appreciation of it enhanced its charms for many observers.

Vermeer's style just before 1660 is also well represented by The Cook. The rich paint surface with its extraordinary tactile quality, the monumental figure perfectly balanced in space and engrossed in a humble task performed with the dignity due a solemn rite, and the intense color scheme dominated by yellow and blue all show Vermeer at the height of his powers. Before long his paintings tended to become more delicate and detached, with more diffused light and a smoother surface, as in the Lady Weighing Gold, which is an allegory of God's judgment of man.

Following these great works, which are assumed to have preceded and immediately followed 1660, come the "pearl pictures." The Concert of about 1662 and the Woman with a Water Jug of perhaps a year later display the dulcet charms of this period.

Late Works

More complicated compositions and especially more elaborate space representations mark the major works of the last decade of Vermeer's life. The Allegory of the Art of Painting (ca. 1670) is large and complex in both composition and meaning. On the whole it is untainted by the hardness and dryness that marred his later works, such as the Allegory of the Catholic Faith.

Characteristics of Vermeer's Art

Vermeer was criticized for exaggerating the perspective of his interior settings until eyes accustomed to reality as seen through the camera lens recognized that his perspective was in fact accurate. When the painter is very close to the nearest object in his composition, for example, only 2 feet from it, an object of equal size that is 4 feet from his eye will be depicted, correctly, as half the size of the first. Vermeer arranged his objects to achieve such contrasts. The effect of this practice is to make the voids in a sense tangible. The space is built up along with the objects in a construction of cubic solidity.

It has been suggested that Vermeer used a camera obscure in composing his pictures and that this accounts for both his striking compositions and his peculiarities in handling colors and values. Delft in his time was a center of optical experimentation and lens making, and it would not be surprising if artists there availed themselves of optical devices in their work. The unique qualities of Vermeer's paintings must, however, be attributed to his artistic personality, whether he did or did not make use of mirrors or lenses in attaining them.

The figures and objects Vermeer painted belong to their environment in a special way that heightens the impression that what he is depicting is a block of space with all that it contains rather than solids separated by voids. He renounced the contours that in most paintings distinguished between figures and their setting. Instead, the outlines of his objects are insubstantial; they unite the elements of his paintings rather than separate them.

Vermeer's manner of modeling, too, was exceptional. He built his figures with planes of contrasted values, omitting the graduations of tone that most painters use to model the form. In his mature works he punctuated his subtle patterns of light and shadow with pointillé.

The figures of Vermeer, fixed in their enveloping space as a fly is fixed in amber, deny any possibility of the disruption of their perfect poise. They exist in a realm of abstract beauty. The quietness, serenity, order, and immutability of the world of Vermeer's art provide, for those with a taste for such virtues, intimations of immortality. Perhaps that is why this painter, whose works appear to be as forthright and clear as the light of day, has always been felt to be mysterious.

Further Reading

A thorough study of Vermeer's life and work is Pieter T. A. Swillens, Johannes Vermeer: Painter of Delft (1949; trans. 1950). It is especially valuable for information about the historical background, including all relevant documents, and for technical analyses of the paintings and Vermeer's system of perspective. Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer (1953), is a sensitive examination of Vermeer's stylistic development and provides much comparative material that clarifies the place of his works in relation to contemporary painting. Ludwig Goldscheider, ed., Johannes Vermeer: The Paintings (1958; 2d ed. 1967), is noteworthy for its fine plates, including original-size details in color and in black and white.

Vermeer, Jan (or Johannes, 1632–1675), Dutch painter. In 1653, Vermeer entered the Delft Guild of St. Luke as a painter, joining his father, who had registered with the guild as a picture dealer in 1631. It is not known with whom Vermeer learned his craft, but scholars have speculated that he studied either with Leonard Bramer (1596–1674) in Delft or with one of the Dutch followers of the Italian master Caravaggio who were active in Utrecht.

Only months before joining the guild, Vermeer married Catharina Bolnes (c. 1631–1688), a Roman Catholic from a distinguished family in Gouda. Vermeer, who was born to Protestant parents, probably converted to Catholicism at this time. Allegory of Faith of c. 1672–1674 is Vermeer's only painting with a specifically Catholic message. Here, the personification of faith takes communion before a painted crucifixion. An apple (signifying original sin) and a snake crushed by a stone (emblematic of the victory of Christ, the cornerstone of the church, over Satan) lie at her feet. As this work was likely tailored to adhere to the taste of the Catholic patron who commissioned the work, it is unwise to ascribe the meaning of the image to Vermeer's personal beliefs. It is not clear what, if any, impact Vermeer's religious orientation had upon his work.

The classical subject and large format of Vermeer's early Diana and Her Companions of c. 1655 suggest that Vermeer initially aspired to become a history painter, but by the late 1650s he shifted his focus to the genre interiors that would dominate his mature works. Vermeer first calmed the boisterous tavern scenes and curtailed the overtly sexual overtures of musical companies pictured by earlier Dutch genre painters. The girl in Officer and Laughing Girl (Frick Collection, New York), for example, sits calmly cupping her beverage in both hands; only her broad smile, and the soldier's bravura body language, indicate any attraction in this encounter. Similarly, Vermeer dispensed with melodramatic lighting in favor of more subtle plays of light. Many of Vermeer's early genre paintings are heavily dependent on the work of Pieter de Hooch (1629–after 1684), who was active in Delft until c. 1661. Vermeer followed de Hooch's innovative and illusionistic spatial recessions and surface effects sculpted from natural light before developing a personal aesthetic in the late 1660s based upon abstracted light and coolly crafted distances between viewer and subject. These later works, such as Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid (National Gallery of Art, Dublin) that focus on women in domestic interiors seemingly provide entrée via the empty foreground but pen the figures behind middle ground obstructions. The light that pours in from the window fails to warm as it illuminates opaque, porcelain features and cool gray-green fabrics that hang straight in crystalline folds while it dissolves the table carpet into pools of unmodulated color. In this way, Vermeer gradually traversed the gulf between illusion and artifice.

Responses to Vermeer's paintings have focused most frequently on moralizing interpretations. Suspended from a larger narrative context, Vermeer's figures have been seen as behavioral models. Vermeer's women who entertain men away from Dutch society's watchful eye, like those in The Concert (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston) may have been examples of unacceptable behavior, while his solitary, domestic women like The Milkmaid (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) may have been viewed as what Wayne Franits termed "paragons of virtue." Readings of this kind gain credence when positioned in relation to Vermeer's Woman Holding a Balance of c. 1662–1664, in which the subject's ordinary activity takes on moral implications: her action is overshadowed by the representation of the biblical weighing of souls pictured immediately behind her.

Modern scholars have been as interested in how Vermeer painted as they have been in what he painted. Vermeer's spatial compressions and blurred perimeters suggest the influence of the camera obscura, a device that translated, but could not record, three-dimensional vignettes into two-dimensional reflections. Scholars concur that Vermeer was familiar with the device's optical effects, but a debate has arisen around the extent of Vermeer's use of the instrument. Some argue that Vermeer reproduced the camera's image in paint, while others have stressed a less dependent relationship. Delft was a center of optical experimentation due in part to the presence of the scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), but as seventeenth-century Dutch art theory encouraged verisimilitude to be combined with artfulness, it seems unlikely that an artist of Vermeer's stature merely replicated what was before him. In either case, Vermeer's canvases exhibit a meticulous buildup of forms and tones executed with a highly controlled brush.

Vermeer may have been able to practice such a labor-intensive method because he benefited from patronage, a rarity for Dutch painters of the period. John Michael Montias posited that as the Delft citizen Pieter Claesz van Ruijven (1624–1674) owned twenty of the approximately thirty-five known paintings by Vermeer, van Ruijven must have functioned as at least a de facto patron. He might, for example, have paid Vermeer for the right of first refusal on the artist's paintings. Such economic support would have freed Vermeer from the demands of the open market by enabling him to labor over each painting, confident that he would be adequately compensated for his efforts. Vermeer may have supplemented whatever income he generated from his painting by operating as an art dealer. These reasonably reliable sources of income would also explain Vermeer's extremely limited output, as he must not have felt pressure to produce his paintings in volume for the market.

The benefits of patronage apparently were not able to see Vermeer through the recession that followed the French invasion of the Netherlands in 1672. In 1676, a year after his death, his widow testified to her husband's creditors that Vermeer had amassed considerable debt in the 1670s because he had been unable to sell either his own paintings or those by other painters. She also stated that supporting their eleven children, all still minors, had exacerbated the family's financial situation. Like his fellow painters Rembrandt and Frans Hals, Vermeer apparently died in the throes of financial turmoil.

Bibliography

Franits, Wayne E., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer. Cambridge, U.K., 2001.

Montias, John Michael. Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History. Princeton, 1989.

Vermeer and the Delft School. Edited by Walter Liedtke. Exh. cat. New York and London, 2001.

Wheelock, Arthur K. Vermeer and the Art of Painting. New Haven, 1995.

—CHRISTOPHER D. M. ATKINS

A seventeenth-century Dutch painter. He is known for painting domestic scenes of great clarity and repose, with subtle uses of light and shade.

"Vermeer" redirects here. For other uses, see Vermeer (disambiguation).

Johannes Vermeer
The Art of Painting
Born	Baptized 31 October 1632(1632-10-31) Delft, Dutch Republic
Died	15 December 1675 (aged 43) Delft, Dutch Republic
Nationality	Dutch
Field	Painting
Movement	Baroque
Works	About 35 paintings have been attributed
Influenced by	Carel Fabritius, Leonaert Bramer, Dirck van Baburen?

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer (baptized on 31 October 1632 as Johannis, and buried in the same city under the name Jan on 16 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.^[1]

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours, sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for cornflower blue and yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work. ^[2]

Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death; he was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries.^[3][4] In the 19th century Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Thoré Bürger, who published an essay attributing sixty-six pictures to him, (although only thirty-five paintings are firmly attributed to him today). Since that time Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Contents 1 Life 1.1 Youth 1.2 Marriage and family 1.3 Career 2 Style 3 Works 4 Legacy 5 References 6 External links

Life

Delft in 1652, by cartographer Willem Blaeu

Relatively little is known about Vermeer's life. He seems to have been exclusively devoted to his art, living out his life in the city of Delft. The only sources of information are some registers, a few official documents and comments by other artists; it was for this reason that Thoré Bürger named him "The Sphinx of Delft".^[5]

Youth

On October 31, 1632, Johannes was baptized in the Reformed Church.^[6][7] His father, Reijnier Janszoon, was a middle-class worker of silk or caffa (a mixture of silk and cotton or wool).^{[Note 1]} As an apprentice in Amsterdam Reijnier lived in the fashionable Sint Antoniebreestraat, then a street with many resident painters. In 1615 he married Digna Baltus, and in 1620 Reijner and his wife had a daughter, who was baptized as Gertruy.^{[Note 2]} In 1625 Reijnier was involved in a fight with a soldier named Willem van Bylandt, who died from his wounds five months later.^[8] Around the same time Reijnier started to deal in paintings, but in 1631 he leased an inn called "The Flying Fox". In 1641 he bought a larger inn at the market square, named after the Belgian town "Mechelen". The acquisition of the inn constituted a considerable financial burden.^{[Huerta 1]} When Vermeer's father died in 1652, Vermeer replaced him as a merchant of paintings.

Marriage and family

View of Delft (1660–61)

In 1653 Johannes Reijniersz Vermeer married a Catholic girl named Catherina Bolnes. The blessing took place in a nearby and quiet village Schipluiden.^{[Note 3]} For the groom it was a good match. His mother-in-law, Maria Thins, was significantly wealthier than he, and it was probably she who insisted Vermeer convert to Catholicism before the marriage on April 5.^{[Note 4]} Some scholars doubt that Vermeer became Catholic, but one of his paintings, The Allegory of Catholic Faith, made between 1670 and 1672, reflects the belief in the Eucharist. Liedtke suggests it was made for a Catholic patron, or for a schuilkerk, a hidden church.^{[Liedtke 1]} At some point the couple moved in with Catherina's mother, who lived in a rather spacious house at Oude Langendijk, almost next to a hidden Jesuit church^{[Note 5]}. Here Vermeer lived for the rest of his life, producing paintings in the front room on the second floor. His wife gave birth to 14 children: four of whom were buried before being baptized, but were registered as "child of Johan Vermeer".^{[Note 6]} From wills written by relatives, ten names are known: Maria, Elisabeth, Cornelia, Aleydis, Beatrix, Johannes, Gertruyd, Franciscus, Catharina, and Ignatius.^{[Montias 1]} Quite a few have a name with a religious connotation and it is very likely that the youngest, Ignatius, was named after the founder of the Jesuit order.^{[Note 7]}

Career

The Milkmaid (c. 1658)

The Astronomer (c. 1668)

It is not certain where Vermeer was apprenticed as a painter, nor with whom, but it is generally believed that he studied in his home town. While Vermeer owned some paintings or drawings by Carel Fabritius it was suggested that Fabritius was his teacher. The local authority, Leonaert Bramer, acted as a friend but their style of painting is rather different.^[9] Liedtke suggests Vermeer taught himself and had information from one of his father's connections.^{[Liedtke 2]} Some scholars think Vermeer was trained under the Catholic painter Abraham Bloemaert. Vermeer worked in a similar style as some of the Utrecht Carravagists. In Delft Vermeer probably competed with Pieter de Hoogh and Nicolaes Maes who produced genre works in a similar style.

On December 29, 1653, Vermeer became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke, a trade association for painters. The guild's records make clear Vermeer did not pay the usual admission fee. It was a year of plague, war and economic crisis; not only Vermeer's financial circumstances were difficult. In 1654, the city of Delft suffered the terrible explosion known as the Delft Thunderclap that destroyed a large section of the city. ^[10] In 1657 he might have found a patron in the local art collector Pieter van Ruijven, who lent him some money. In 1662 Vermeer was elected head of the guild and was reelected in 1663, 1670, and 1671, evidence that he (like Bramer) was considered an established craftsman among his peers. Vermeer worked slowly, probably producing three paintings a year, and on order. When Balthasar de Monconys visited him in 1663 to see some of his work, the diplomat and the two French clergymen who accompanied him were sent to Hendrick van Buyten, a baker.

In 1672 a severe economic downturn (the "Year of Disaster") struck the Netherlands, after Louis XIV and a French army invaded the Dutch Republic from the south (known as the Franco-Dutch War). Not only the French burned and robbed country estates. During the Third Anglo-Dutch War an English fleet, and two allied German bishops attacked the country from the east, tried to destroy the countries hegemony. Many people panicked; courts, theaters, shops and schools were closed, and five years passed before circumstances improved. In the Summer of 1675 Vermeer borrowed money in Amsterdam, using his mother-in-law as a lien.

In December 1675 Vermeer fell into a frenzy and suddenly died, within a day and a half. Catharina Bolnes attributed her husband's death to the stress of financial pressures. The collapse of the art market damaged Vermeer's business as both a painter and an art dealer. She, having to raise 11 children, asked the High Court to allow her a break in paying the creditors.^{[Montias 2]} The Dutch microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who worked for the city council as a surveyor, was appointed trustee. The house, with eight rooms on the first floor, was filled with paintings, drawings, clothes, chairs and beds. In his atelier there were rummage not worthy being itemized, two chairs, two painter's easels, three palettes, ten canvases, a desk, an oak pull table and a small wooden cupboard with drawers.^{[Montias 3]} Nineteen of Vermeer's paintings were bequeathed to Catherina and her mother, and the widow sold two other paintings to the Hendrick van Buyten in order to pay off quite a debt.

Vermeer had been a respected artist in Delft, but he was almost unknown outside his home town. The fact that a local patron, Pieter van Ruijven, purchased much of his output reduced the possibility of his fame spreading.^{[Note 8]} Vermeer never had any pupils; his relatively short life, the demands of separate careers, and his extraordinary precision as a painter all help to explain his limited oeuvre.

Style

The Girl with the Wineglass (c. 1659)

Girl With a Pearl Earring (1665), considered a Vermeer masterpiece

Vermeer produced transparent colours by applying paint to the canvas in loosely granular layers, a technique called pointillé (not to be confused with pointillism). No drawings have been positively attributed to Vermeer, and his paintings offer few clues to preparatory methods. David Hockney, among other historians and advocates of the Hockney-Falco thesis, has speculated that Vermeer used a camera obscura to achieve precise positioning in his compositions, and this view seems to be supported by certain light and perspective effects which would result from the use of such lenses and not the naked eye alone. The extent of Vermeer's dependence upon the camera obscura is disputed by historians.

There is no other seventeenth century artist who early in his career employed, in the most lavish way, the exorbitantly expensive pigment lapis lazuli, or natural ultramarine. Vermeer not only used this in elements that are naturally of this colour; the earth colours umber and ochre should be understood as warm light within a painting's strongly-lit interior, which reflects its multiple colours onto the wall. In this way, he created a world more perfect than any he had witnessed.^{[Liedtke 3]} This working method most probably was inspired by Vermeer’s understanding of Leonardo’s observations that the surface of every object partakes of the colour of the adjacent object.^[11] This means that no object is ever seen entirely in its natural colour.

A comparable but even more remarkable, yet effectual, use of natural ultramarine is in The Girl with a Wineglass. The shadows of the red satin dress are underpainted in natural ultramarine, and, owing to this underlying blue paint layer, the red lake and vermilion mixture applied over it acquires a slightly purple, cool and crisp appearance that is most powerful.

Even after Vermeer’s supposed financial breakdown following the so-called rampjaar (year of disaster) in 1672, he continued to employ natural ultramarine generously, such as in Lady Seated at a Virginal. This could suggest that Vermeer was supplied with materials by a collector, and would coincide with John Michael Montias’ theory of Pieter Claesz van Ruijven being Vermeer’s patron.

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. His works are largely genre pieces and portraits, with the exception of two cityscapes and two allegories. His subjects offer a cross-section of seventeenth century Dutch society, ranging from the portrayal of a simple milkmaid at work, to the luxury and splendour of rich notables and merchantmen in their roomy houses. Besides these subjects, religious, poetical, musical, and scientific comments can also be found in his work.

Works

The Music Lesson or A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman, c. 1662-65; Vermeer

See also: List of paintings by Johannes Vermeer and Category:Vermeer paintings

Only three paintings are dated: The Procuress (1656, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie), The Astronomer (1668, Paris, Louvre), and The Geographer (1669, Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut). Two pictures are generally accepted as earlier than The Procuress; both are history paintings, painted in a warm palette and in a relatively large format for Vermeer — Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (Edinburgh, National Gallery) and Diana and her Companions (The Hague, Mauritshuis).

Vermeer's mother-in-law, Maria Thins, owned Dirck van Baburen's 1622 oil-on-canvas Procuress (or a copy of it), which appears in the background of two of Vermeer's paintings. The same subject was also painted by Vermeer. After his own The Procuress almost all of Vermeer's paintings are of contemporary subjects in a smaller format, with a cooler palette dominated by blues, yellows and greys. It is to this period that practically all of his surviving works belong. They are usually domestic interiors with one or two figures lit by a window on the left. They are characterized by a serene sense of compositional balance and spatial order, unified by a pearly light. Mundane domestic or recreational activities become thereby imbued with a poetic timelessness (e.g. Woman Reading a Letter at an Open Window, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie). To this period also have been allocated Vermeer's two townscapes, View of Delft (The Hague, Mauritshuis) and A Street in Delft (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).

A few of his paintings show a certain hardening of manner and these are generally thought to represent his late works. From this period come The Allegory of Faith (c 1670, New York, Metropolitan Museum) and The Letter (c 1670, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).

The often-discussed sparkling pearly highlights in Vermeer's paintings have been linked to his possible use of a camera obscura, the primitive lens of which would produce halation and, even more noticeably, exaggerated perspective. Such effects can be seen in Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman (London, Royal Collection). Vermeer's interest in optics is also attested in this work by the accurately observed mirror reflection above the lady at the virginals.

Legacy

• Vermeer's View of Delft features in a pivotal sequence of Marcel Proust's The Captive.
• The book Girl with a Pearl Earring and the film of the same name are named after the painting; they present a fictional account of its creation by Vermeer and his relationship with the model.
• Salvador Dalí, with great admiration for Vermeer, painted his own version of The Lacemaker and pitted large copies of the original against a rhinoceros in some now-famous surrealist experiments. Dali also immortalized the Dutch Master in The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table, 1934.
• Dutch composer Louis Andriessen based his opera, Writing to Vermeer (1997-98, libretto by Peter Greenaway), on the domestic life of Vermeer.
• Greenaway's own film A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) contains a plot line about an orthopedic surgeon named Van Meegeren who stages highly exact scenes from Vermeer paintings in order to paint copies of them.
• Han van Meegeren was a Dutch painter who worked in the classical tradition. Lured by the huge sums an authentic Vermeer would command, van Meegeren forged several works in Vermeer's style in several of his own paintings with the intention of selling them as works of Vermeer.^[12]
• Upon the rediscovery of Vermeer's work in the 19th century, several prominent Dutch artists, including Simon Duiker, modelled their style on his work.
• Susan Vreeland's novel Girl in Hyacinthe Blue follows eight individuals with a relataionship to a painting of Vermeer. The novel follows a reverse chronology from the current period to the time of Vermeer.

References

Notes

1. ^ His name was Reijnier or Reynier Janszoon, always written in Dutch as Jansz. or Jansz; this was his patronym. As there was another Reijnier Jansz at that time in Delft, it seemed necessary to use the Pseudonym "Vos", meaning Fox. From 1640 onward he had changed his alias to Vermeer.
2. ^ In 1647 Gertruy, Vermeer's only sister, married a frame maker. She kept on working at the inn helping her parents, serving drinks and making beds.
3. ^ In the 17th century it was common for the upper classes to marry outside the city walls, maybe for romantic reasons, or most likely, to avoid criticism because of their religious beliefs.
4. ^ Catholicism was not a forbidden religion, but tolerated in the Dutch Republic, due to the Dutch Revolt. Services were held in hidden churches (so-called Schuilkerk) and Catholics were restrained in their careers, unable to get high ranking jobs in city administration or the national government. After 1648 some people were tired of the religious wars and returned to the Catholic church.
5. ^ A roman-catholic chapel is found nowadays at this spot
6. ^ When Catherina Bolnes was buried in 1688, she was registered as the "widow of Johan Vermeer". In the seventeenth century Johannes was a popular name and spelling was not consistent. The name could be spelled in the Dutch (Johan or Johannes), French (Joan), Italian (Giovanni), Greek (Johannis), or other style depending on background, education or family tradition.
7. ^ As the parish registers of the Delft Catholic church do not exist anymore, it is impossible to prove but very likely that his children were baptized in a hidden church.
8. ^ Van Ruijven's son-in-law Jacob Dissius owned 21 paintings by Vermeer, listed in his heritage in 1695. These paintings were sold the year after in Amsterdam in a much studied auction, published by Gerard Hoet.

Citations

1. ^ "Jan Vermeer". The Bulfinch Guide to Art History. Artchive. http://www.artchive.com/artchive/V/vermeer.html. Retrieved 21 September 2009. 
2. ^ "An Interview with Jørgen Wadum". Essential Vermeer. February 5, 2003. http://www.essentialvermeer.com/interviews_newsletter/wadum_interview.html. Retrieved 21 September 2009. 
3. ^ Barker, Emma, et al. The Changing Status of the Artist, p. 199. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-300-07740-8
4. ^ If largely unknown to the general public, Vermeer's reputation was not totally eclipsed after his death: "While it is true that he did not achieve widespread fame until the nineteenth century, his work had always been valued and admired by well-informed connoisseurs." Blankert, Albert, et al. Vermeer and his Public, p. 164. New York: Overlook, 2007, ISBN 9781585679799,
5. ^ "Vermeer: A View of Delft". The Economist. 1 April 2001. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5037/is_200104/ai_n18271955. Retrieved 21 September 2009. 
6. ^ "Vermeer's Name". Essential Vermeer. http://www.essentialvermeer.com/vermeers_name.html. Retrieved 21 September 2009. 
7. ^ "Digital Family Tree of the Municipal Records Office of the City of Delft". Beheersraad Digitale Stamboom. 2004. http://www.archief.delft.nl/main.asp?lang=en. Retrieved 21 September 2009. "The painter is recorded as: Child=Joannis; Father=Reijnier Jansz; Mother=Dingnum Balthasars; Witnesses=Pieter Brammer, Jan Heijndricxsz, Maertge Jans; Place=Delft; Date of baptism=31-10-1632." 
8. ^ Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History By John Michael Montias [1]
9. ^ "Vermeer biography". National Gallery of Art. http://www.nga.gov/feature/vermeer/bio.shtm. Retrieved 21 September 2009. 
10. ^ Essential Vermeer Retrieved September 29, 2009
11. ^ B. Broos, A. Blankert, J. Wadum, A.K. Wheelock Jr. (1995) Johannes Vermeer, Waanders Publishers, Zwolle
12. ^ Dolnick, Edward (2008). HarperCollins. ISBN 0060825413, 9780060825416. 

Further reading

• Liedtke, Walter A. (2007). Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

1. ^ W. Liedtke, p. 893.
2. ^ W. Liedtke, p. 866.
3. ^ W. Liedtke, p. 867.

• Montias, John Michael (1991). Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History (reprint, illustrated ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691002897. 

1. ^ pp. 370-371
2. ^ pp. 344-345. The number of children seems inconsistent, but 11 was stated by his wife in a document for the city councel. One child died after this document was written.
3. ^ pp. 339-344.

• Huerta, Robert D. (2003). Giants of Delft: Johannes Vermeer and the Natural Philosophers: the Parallel Search for Knowledge During the Age of Discovery. Bucknell University Press. ISBN 9780838755389. 

1. ^ pp. 42-43

• Kreuger, Frederik H. (2007). New Vermeer, Life and Work of Han van Meegeren. Rijswijk: Quantes. pp. 54, 218 and 220 give examples of Van Meegeren fakes that were removed from their museum walls. Pages 220/221 give an example of a non-Van Meegeren fake attributed to him. ISBN 978-90-5959-047-2. http://www.quantes.nl/uitgeverij.php?aut=4. Retrieved 21 September 2009. 
• Schneider, Nobert (1993). Vermeer. Cologne. 
• Sheldon, Libby; Nicola Costaros (February 2006). "Johannes Vermeer’s ‘Young woman seated at a virginal". The Burlington Magazine (1235). 
• Steadman, Philip (2002). Vermmeer's Camera, the truth behind the masterpieces. Oxford University Press.  isbn= 0-19-280302-6
• Wadum, J. (1998). "Contours of Vermeer". in I. Gaskel and M. Jonker. Vermeer Studies. Studies in the History of Art. Washington/New Haven: Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Symposium Papers XXXIII. pp. 201–223. .
• Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. (1981,1988). Jan Vermeer. New York: Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-1737-8. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Johannes Vermeer

• (Videos): Vermeer: Master of Light - at the National Gallery of Art, Washington
  • Part 1: The Music Lesson
  • Part 2: Girl with the Red Hat
  • Part 3: Woman Holding a Balance
  • Part 4: Camera Obscura
• Vermeer's Woman Holding a Balance In-depth discussion of this painting in the National Gallery of Art along with discussion of the artist's life, conservation, illustration of related works.
• Essential Vermeer, In-depth coverage of Vermeer's life, works, and environment
• Jan Vermeer, Dutch Neoclassic Painter - Profile
• Entry in Britannica encyclopaedia
• www.Vermeer-Foundation.org Familiar biography and 111 images of works by Vermeer
• Virtual Vermeer, Familiar biography, interesting entries.
• Vermeercentrum, housed at the site of the former St. Lucas Guild in Delft. (The Vermeer Centre offers a visual voyage of discovery through the life, work and city of Johannes Vermeer.)
• Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Jan Vermeer. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
• Painting discovered in Vermeer

Persondata
NAME	van Vermeer, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Delft, Jan Vermeer
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Painter
DATE OF BIRTH	Baptized 31 October 1632
PLACE OF BIRTH	Delft, Netherlands
DATE OF DEATH	16 December 1675
PLACE OF DEATH	Delft, Netherlands

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