Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter who spent his whole life in Delft, in the province of Holland, at the height of the Dutch Golden Age. He produced only a small number of pictures, mostly quiet scenes of women in domestic interiors lit by a window, and earned much of his living as an art dealer. Forgotten for nearly two centuries after his death, he is now ranked among the greatest painters of his age, famous for works such as The Milkmaid, View of Delft and Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Vermeer was baptised in the Reformed Church in Delft on 31 October 1632. Both his parents had roots in Antwerp. His father, Reijnier Janszoon, was born there and trained as a silk weaver in Amsterdam before settling in Delft, part of the wider movement of craftsmen and merchants from the southern Netherlands to the north during the Eighty Years' War against Spain. In Delft Reijnier ran an inn and from 1631 traded in paintings as a member of the painters' guild. Around 1640 he took the surname Vermeer. When he died in 1652, his son took over the family art business.

In April 1653 Vermeer married Catharina Bolnes, a Catholic from a wealthier family. Her mother, Maria Thins, at first opposed the match, and Vermeer probably became a Catholic before the wedding. The couple eventually moved into Maria Thins's house next to a hidden Jesuit church, where Vermeer painted in a room on an upper floor for the rest of his life. Catharina bore 15 children, of whom four died before baptism.

Where and with whom Vermeer trained is unknown. Suggestions include Carel Fabritius and the Utrecht painter Abraham Bloemaert, but there is no firm evidence. His work has affinities with the Utrecht followers of Caravaggio, whose paintings appear as pictures-within-pictures in some of his compositions.

On 29 December 1653 Vermeer joined Delft's Guild of Saint Luke, in a year marked by plague, war and economic crisis. The following year a gunpowder store exploded and destroyed much of the city. He was elected head of the guild in 1662 and several more times later, a sign of standing among his peers. Yet he worked slowly, perhaps three paintings a year, and much of his output went to one local patron, Pieter van Ruijven, and Maria de Knuijt, his wife.

His paintings are mostly genre scenes and portraits, plus two townscapes, View of Delft and The Little Street, and two allegories. Fewer than 50 are thought to have existed, and 34 survive. He used expensive pigments, above all natural ultramarine from lapis lazuli, more lavishly than any contemporary, and became known for his handling of soft, pearly light. Some modern writers, notably in two books published in 2001, have argued that he used optical aids such as the camera obscura; the theory remains disputed, and none appeared in the inventory of his belongings.

In 1672, the Dutch "disaster year", Louis XIV invaded the Dutch Republic and the art market collapsed. Vermeer could sell neither his own paintings nor the stock he dealt in. In 1675 he borrowed 1,000 guilders, and on 15 December that year he died after a short illness, aged 43. His widow, left with 11 children and heavy debts, told her creditors that the strain of the war had driven him into a frenzy that killed him within a day and a half.

Outside Delft Vermeer was barely known, and a major 1718 survey of Dutch painters scarcely mentioned him, so his works were often credited to others. In the 1860s the German museum director Gustav Waagen and the French critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger revived his reputation. In the 20th century the forger Han van Meegeren sold fake Vermeers, some of them to the Nazis. In 2023 the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam gathered 28 of his paintings in an exhibition that drew more than 650,000 visitors.

Our 1650 map shows the Dutch Republic of Vermeer's youth, and the 1700 map shows it after the French wars that ruined him.