Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch
painter who specialized in 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.
Vermeer worked slowly and with great care,
using bright colours and sometimes expensive
pigments, with a preference for lapis lazuli
and Indian yellow. He is particularly renowned
for his masterly treatment and use of light
in his work.
Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes.
"Almost all his paintings are apparently set
in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft;
they show the same furniture and decorations
in various arrangements and they often portray
the same people, mostly women."
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, and was thus
omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art
for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century,
Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich
Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who
published an essay attributing sixty-six pictures
to him, although only thirty-four paintings
are universally 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.
Life
For a long time, relatively little was known
about Vermeer's life. He seems to have been
devoted exclusively to his art, living out
his life in the city of Delft. Until the 19th
century, the only sources of information were
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". John Michael Montias added
a lot of details on the family from the city
archives of Delft, in his Artists and Artisans
in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth
Century.
Youth
On 31 October 1632, Johannes was baptized
in the Reformed Church. His father, Reijnier
Janszoon, was a middle-class worker of silk
or caffa. As an apprentice in Amsterdam, Reijnier
lived on fashionable Sint Antoniesbreestraat,
then a street with many resident painters.
In 1615, he married Digna Baltus. The couple
moved to Delft and had a daughter, Geertruy,
who was baptized in 1620. In 1625, Reijnier
was involved in a fight with a soldier named
Willem van Bylandt, who died from his wounds
five months later. Around this time, Reijnier
began dealing in paintings. In 1631, he leased
an inn called "The Flying Fox". In 1641, he
bought a larger inn on the market square,
named after the Flemish town "Mechelen". The
acquisition of the inn constituted a considerable
financial burden. When Vermeer's father died
in October 1652, Vermeer assumed operation
of the family's art business.
Marriage and family
In April 1653, Johannes Reijniersz Vermeer
married a Catholic girl, Catharina Bolenes.
The blessing took place in a quiet nearby
village, Schipluiden. 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 5 April.
According to the art historian Walter Liedtke,
Vermeer's conversion seems to have been made
with conviction. One of his paintings, The
Allegory of Faith, made between 1670 and 1672,
placed less emphasis on the artists’ usual
naturalistic concerns, and more on religious
symbolic applications, including the sacrament
of the Eucharist. Walter Liedtke in Dutch
Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
suggests it was made for a learned and devout
Catholic patron, perhaps for his schuilkerk,
or "hidden church." At some point, the couple
moved in with Catharina's mother, who lived
in a rather spacious house at Oude Langendijk,
almost next to a hidden Jesuit church. Here
Vermeer lived for the rest of his life, producing
paintings in the front room on the second
floor. His wife gave birth to 15 children,
four of whom were buried before being baptized,
but were registered as "child of Johan Vermeer".
From wills written by relatives, the names
of ten of Vermeer's children are known: Maria,
Elisabeth, Cornelia, Aleydis, Beatrix, Johannes,
Gertruyd, Franciscus, Catharina, and Ignatius.
Several of these names carry a religious connotation,
and it is likely that the youngest, Ignatius,
was named after the founder of the Jesuit
order.
Career
It is unclear where and to whom Vermeer was
apprenticed as a painter. Speculation that
Carel Fabritius may have been his teacher
is based upon a controversial interpretation
of a text written in 1668 by the printer Arnold
Bon. Art historians have found no hard evidence
to support this. The local authority, Leonaert
Bramer, acted as a friend, but their style
of painting is rather different. Liedtke suggests
Vermeer taught himself, using information
from one of his father's connections. Some
scholars think Vermeer was trained under the
Catholic painter Abraham Bloemaert. Vermeer's
style is similar to that of some of the Utrecht
Carravagists, whose works are depicted as
paintings-within-paintings in the backgrounds
of several of his compositions. In Delft,
Vermeer probably competed with Pieter de Hooch
and Nicolaes Maes, who produced genre works
in a similar style.
On 29 December 1653, Vermeer became a member
of the Guild of Saint Luke, a trade association
for painters. The guild's records make clear
that Vermeer did not pay the usual admission
fee. It was a year of plague, war and economic
crisis; Vermeer was not alone in experiencing
difficult financial circumstances. In 1654,
the city suffered the terrible explosion known
as the Delft Thunderclap, which destroyed
a large section of the city. 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 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, who had a couple of his
paintings as collateral.
In 1671, Gerrit van Uylenburgh organised the
auction of Gerrit Reynst's collection and
offered thirteen paintings and some sculptures
to Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg.
Frederick accused them of being counterfeits
and had sent twelve back on the advice of
Hendrick Fromantiou. Van Uylenburg then organized
a counter-assessment, asking a total of 35
painters to pronounce on their authenticity,
including Jan Lievens, Melchior de Hondecoeter,
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and Johannes Vermeer.
In 1672, a severe economic downturn struck
the Netherlands, after Louis XIV and a French
army invaded the Dutch Republic from the south.
During the Third Anglo-Dutch War, an English
fleet and two allied German bishops attacked
the country from the east, causing more destruction.
Many people panicked; courts, theaters, shops
and schools were closed. Five years passed
before circumstances improved. In the summer
of 1675, Vermeer borrowed money in Amsterdam,
using his mother-in-law as a surety.
In December 1675, Vermeer died after a short
illness. In a petition to her creditors his
wife later described his death as follows:
...during the ruinous war with France he not
only was unable to sell any of his art but
also, to his great detriment, was left sitting
with the paintings of other masters that he
was dealing in. As a result and owing to the
great burden of his children having no means
of his own, he lapsed into such decay and
decadence, which he had so taken to heart
that, as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in
a day and a half he went from being healthy
to being dead.
He was buried in the Protestant Old Church
on 15 December 1675. 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 relieve
her of debts owed to Vermeer's creditors.
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 two chairs,
two painter's easels, three palettes, ten
canvases, a desk, an oak pull table, a small
wooden cupboard with drawers and "rummage
not worthy being itemized". Nineteen of Vermeer's
paintings were bequeathed to Catharina and
her mother. The widow sold two more paintings
to Hendrick van Buyten in order to pay off
a substantial debt for delivered bread.
Vermeer had been a respected artist in Delft,
but 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. Several factors contributed
to his limited oeuvre. Vermeer never had any
pupils and therefore there was no school of
Vermeer. His family obligations with so many
children may have taken up much of his time,
as would acting as both an art-dealer and
inn-keeper in running the family businesses.
His time spent serving as head of the guild
and his extraordinary precision as a painter
may have also limited his output.
Style
Vermeer may have first executed his paintings
tonally, like most painters of his time, using
either monochrome shades of grey, or a limited
palette of browns and greys, over which more
saturated colors were applied in the form
of transparent glazes. No drawings have been
positively attributed to Vermeer, and his
paintings offer few clues to preparatory methods.
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. 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. 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
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 that Pieter
van Ruijven was Vermeer’s patron.
Vermeer's 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.
Theories of mechanical aid
Vermeer's painting techniques have long been
a source of debate, given their almost photorealistic
attention to detail, despite Vermeer having
had no formal training, and despite only limited
evidence that Vermeer had created any preparatory
sketches or traces for his paintings.
In 2001, British artist David Hockney published
the book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the
Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, in which
he argued that Vermeer - among other Renaissance
artists including Hans Holbein and Diego Velázquez
- used optics, and specifically some combination
of curved mirrors, camera obscura and camera
lucida, to achieve precise positioning in
their compositions. This became known as the
Hockney–Falco thesis, named after Hockney
and Charles M. Falco, another proponent of
the theory.
Working independently, in 2001 British architecture
professor Philip Steadman published the book
Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind
the Masterpieces, which specifically claimed
that Vermeer had used a camera obscura to
create his paintings. Noting that many of
Vermeer's paintings had been painted in the
same room, Steadman found six of his paintings
that are precisely the right size if they
had been painted from inside a camera obscura
in the room's back wall.
Supporters of these theories have pointed
to evidence in some of Vermeer's paintings,
such as the often-discussed sparkling pearly
highlights in Vermeer's paintings, which they
argue are the result of the primitive lens
of a camera obscura producing halation. It
was also postulated that a camera obscura
was the mechanical cause of the "exaggerated"
perspective seen in Lady at the Virginals
with a Gentleman.
In 2008, American entrepreneur and inventor
Tim Jenison developed the theory that Vermeer
had used a camera obscura along with a "comparator
mirror", which is similar in concept to a
camera lucida but much simpler, and allows
for easily matching color values. He later
modified the theory to simply involve a concave
mirror and a comparator mirror. He spent the
next five years testing his theory by attempting
to re-create The Music Lesson himself using
these tools, a process captured in the 2013
documentary film Tim's Vermeer.
Several points were brought out by Jenison
in support of this technique: First was Vermeer's
hyper-accurate rendition of light falloff
along the wall. Another was the addition of
several highlights and outlines consistent
with matching the effects of chromatic aberration,
particularly noticeable in primitive optics.
Last, and perhaps most telling, is a noticeable
curvature in the original painting's rendition
of the scrollwork on the harpsichord. This
effect, caused by exactly duplicating the
view as seen from a curved mirror, matched
Jenison's technique precisely.
This theory remains disputed. Aside from the
accurately observed mirror reflection above
the lady at the virginals, there is no historical
evidence regarding Vermeer's interest in optics.
The detailed inventory of the artist's belongings
drawn up after his death does not include
a camera obscura or any similar device.
Works
Only three paintings are dated: The Procuress;
The Astronomer; and The Geographer.
Vermeer's mother-in-law, Maria Thins, owned
Dirck van Baburen's 1622 oil-on-canvas Procuress,
which appears in the background of two of
Vermeer's paintings. The same subject was
also painted by Vermeer. After creating 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 grays. Practically all
of his surviving works belong to this period;
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.
Vermeer's two townscapes, View of Delft and
A street in Delft, have also been attributed
to this period.
A few of his paintings show a certain hardening
of manner and are generally thought to represent
his late works. From this period come The
Allegory of Faith and The Love Letter.
Rediscovery and legacy
For two centuries after Vermeer's death, his
works were appreciated by a number of connoisseurs
in the Netherlands—although attributed in
many cases to better-known artists such as
Metsu or Mieris—but were largely overlooked
by art historians. The Delft master's modern
rediscovery began about 1860, when the German
museum director Gustav Waagen saw The Art
of Painting in the Czernin gallery in Vienna,
and recognized as a Vermeer the work which
was at that time attributed to Pieter de Hooch.
Research by Théophile Thoré-Bürger culminated
in the publication in 1866 of his catalogue
raisonné of Vermeer's works in the Gazette
des Beaux-Arts. Thoré-Bürger's catalogue,
which drew international attention to Vermeer,
listed more than seventy works by Vermeer,
including many he regarded as uncertain. The
accepted number of Vermeer's paintings today
is thirty-four.
Upon the rediscovery of Vermeer's work, several
prominent Dutch artists, including Simon Duiker,
modelled their style on his work. Other artists
who were inspired by Vermeer include the Danish
painter Wilhelm Hammershoi and the American
Thomas Wilmer Dewing. In the 20th century,
Vermeer's admirers included Salvador Dalí,
who 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.
Han van Meegeren was a 20th-century Dutch
painter who worked in the classical tradition.
Motivated by a blend of aesthetic and financial
reasons, van Meegeren became a master forger,
creating and selling many new 'Vermeers' before
being caught and tried.
References in other media
In the first volume of Marcel Proust's novel
In Search of Lost Time, entitled Swann's Way,
the protagonist Charles Swann is said to be
working on an extended essay concerning Vermeer's
art. In addition, Vermeer's View of Delft
features in a pivotal sequence of a later
volume, The Captive, in the same work.
A Vermeer painting plays a key part of the
dénouement in Agatha Christie's After the
Funeral. Susan Vreeland's novel Girl in Hyacinthe
Blue follows eight individuals with a relationship
to a painting of Vermeer. The young adult
novel Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett centers
around the fictitious theft of Vermeer's A
Lady Writing. J.P. Smith's novel, The Discovery
of Light, deals largely with Vermeer. The
character of Barney, in Thomas Harris's novel
Hannibal, has a goal to see every Vermeer
painting in the world before he dies.
Tracy Chevalier's novel 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. The film was
nominated for Oscars in cinematography, art
direction, and costume design.
Peter Greenaway's film A Zed & Two Noughts
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.
The Dutch composer Louis Andriessen based
his opera Writing to Vermeer on the domestic
life of Vermeer.
The song "No One Was Like Vermeer" from the
2008 album Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild
by Boston singer-songwriter Jonathan Richman
pays tribute to Vermeer's painstaking technique.
Richman also references Vermeer in his song
"Vincent Van Gogh" and both songs are frequently
part of Richman's live performances.
"Jan Vermeer" is a rockabilly song written
by Bob Walkenhorst for his solo album The
Beginner. David Olney's song "Mister Vermeer"
on his 2010 album Dutchman's Curve imagines
Vermeer's unrequited love for the subject
of Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Historian Timothy Brook's Vermeer's Hat: The
Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global
World examines six of Vermeer's paintings
for evidence of world trade and globalization
during the Dutch Golden Age.
The 2013 documentary film Tim's Vermeer follows
inventor Tim Jenison's examination on his
theory that Vermeer used optical devices to
assist in generating his realistic images.
Notes
References
Sources
Liedtke, Walter A.. Dutch Paintings in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum
of Art. ISBN 0-300-12028-1. 
Montias, John Michael. Vermeer and His Milieu:
A Web of Social History. Princeton University
Press. ISBN 978-0-691-00289-7. 
Huerta, Robert D.. Giants of Delft: Johannes
Vermeer and the Natural Philosophers: the
Parallel Search for Knowledge During the Age
of Discovery. Bucknell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8387-5538-9. 
Further reading
Liedtke, Walter. The Milkmaid by Johannes
Vermeer. New York: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art. ISBN 9781588393449. 
Liedtke, Walter A.. Vermeer and the Delft
School. Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 9780870999734. 
Kreuger, Frederik H.. 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. Retrieved 21
September 2009. 
Schneider, Nobert. Vermeer. Cologne: Benedikt
Taschen Verlag. ISBN 3-8228-6377-7. 
Sheldon, Libby; Nicola Costaros. "Johannes
Vermeer’s ‘Young woman seated at a virginal".
The Burlington Magazine. 
Steadman, Philip. Vermmeer's Camera, the truth
behind the masterpieces. Oxford University
Press.  isbn= 0-19-280302-6
Wadum, J.. "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.. Jan Vermeer. New
York: Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-1737-8. 
External links
Johannes Vermeer, biography at Artble
Essential Vermeer, website dedicated to Johannes
Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer in the Encyclopædia Britannica
Vermeer Center Delft, center with tours about
Vermeer
