Johannes Vermeer

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Jan Vermeer van Delft
Girl with a Pearl Earring, known as the "Mona Lisa of the North"
Born	baptized October 31, 1632 Delft, Netherlands
Died	December 15, 1675 Delft, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Field	Painting
Movement	Baroque
Works	Girl with a Pearl Earring, A Lady Writing a Letter and The Geographer

Johannes Vermeer or Jan Vermeer (baptized October 31, 1632, died December 15, 1675) was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of ordinary life. His entire life was spent in the town of Delft. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial painter in his lifetime. He seems to have never been particularly wealthy, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings, leaving his wife and eleven children in debt at his death.

Virtually forgotten for nearly two hundred years, in 1866 the art critic Thoré Bürger published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him (only 35 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, and is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

Contents 1 Life 1.1 Youth 1.2 Marriage and family 1.3 Career 2 Technique 3 Themes 4 Influence of other painters 5 Works 6 Gallery 7 Disputed works 8 Forgeries 9 Vermeer in other works 10 References and notes 11 Sources 12 External links

[edit] Life

Relatively little is known about Vermeer's life. He seems to have been exclusively devoted to his art. 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".^[1] Ver­meer became the subject of a biography by John Michael Montias: Vermeer and his milieu: a web of social history (Princeton, 1989), where the social history covers up for the elusiveness of the central character.

[edit] Youth

Johannes Vermeer was born in 1632, in the city of Delft in the Netherlands. The precise date of his birth is unknown but it is known that he was baptised on October 31, 1632, in the Reformed Church. Reynier Jansz, his father, was a lower middle-class silk or caffa worker.^[2] In 1615 he married Digna Baltens, a woman from Antwerp. In 1620 Gertruy was born. In 1625 his father was involved in a fight with a soldier, who died from his wounds five months later. Around 1631 Reynier Jansz. hired an inn, called the Flying Fox; Vermeer also started in that year to deal in art. In 1641, when the lease ran out, his father bought a large inn at the market square in Delft, named after the Belgian town, "Mechelen". Gertruy, who helped her parents, serving drinks and making beds, married a sought after framemaker in 1647. When Reynier Jansz. died in 1652, Johannes Vermeer replaced his father as a merchant of paintings.

[edit] Marriage and family

Despite the fact that he came from a Protestant family, he married in April 1653 a Catholic girl, named Catherina Bolnes in Schipluiden. It was an unlikely marriage: his future mother-in-law, Maria Thins was significantly wealthier. For Vermeer it was a good match and he converted to Catholicism shortly before their marriage.^[3] One of his paintings, The Allegory of Catholic Faith, (made between 1670 and 1672) reflects the belief in the Eucharist. It treats the concept of his adopted religion and it was probably made expressly for a Catholic patron or for a schuilkerk, or hidden church.^[4] Soon after their marriage, the couple left the Mechelen and moved in with Catherina's mother at Oude Langendijk, near the gate. Vermeer would live there with his wife and children for the rest of his life, producing paintings in the front room on the top floor. Vermeer and his wife had fourteen children in total: three sons and seven daughters, the others were buried without having a name.^[5]

[edit] Career

Vermeer was apprenticed as a painter, but it is not certain where he studied, nor with whom. It is generally believed that he studied in Delft and it is suggested that his teacher was either Carel Fabritius or likelier Leonaert Bramer.^[6] It is possible he taught himself or he had information from one of his father connections.^[7]

On December 29, 1653, Vermeer became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke, a trade association for painters. The guild's records, which indicate that he could not initially pay the admission fee, hint that Vermeer had financial difficulties. In later years he might have got a patron in the local art collector Pieter van Ruijven.^[8] 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, and a respectable middle-class citizen. When the diplomat Balthasar de Monconys visited him in 1663 to see some of his work, he was sent to the baker, who owned three paintings in exchange for free bread.

In 1672 (the "Rampjaar"), a severe economic downturn struck the Netherlands, when the French invaded the Dutch Republic. Not only the French but also the English fleet and two German bishops were attacking the country in what was later known as the Franco-Dutch War. Many people panicked and it took some years before the circumstances would improve. This led to a collapse of the art-market, and consequently damaged Vermeer's business both as a painter and an art dealer.

With a large family to support, Vermeer was forced to borrow money. In December 1675 Vermeer fell into a frenzy and died within two days. He left Catherina with very little money and several debts. In a written document she attributed her husband's death to the stress of financial pressures. Catharina Bolnes asked the city council to take over the estate, including paintings, in order to pay off the debts.

The Dutch microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who sometimes worked for the city council, was appointed trustee. The house, with eight rooms on the first floor, was filled with paintings, (Vermeer did own three paintings by Fabritius), drawings, clothes, chairs and beds. In his atelier there were among rummage not worthy being itimized, two chairs, two painter's easels, three palets, ten canvases, a desk, an oak pull table and a small wooden cupboard with drawers.^[9] Nineteen of Vermeer's paintings were bequeathed to his wife and her mother; Catherina sold some of these paintings to pay creditors.

In Delft, Vermeer had been a respected artist, but he was almost unknown outside his home town, and the fact that a local patron, van Ruijven, purchased much of his output reduced the possibility of his fame spreading. Vermeer never had any pupils and his relatively short life, the demands of separate careers, and his extraordinary precision as a painter all help to explain his limited output. Vermeer worked slowly, probably producing three paintings a year.

[edit] Technique

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 securely 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; however, the extent of Vermeer's dependence upon the camera obscura is disputed by historians.

There is no other seventeenth century artist who from very early on in his career employed, in the most lavish way, the exorbitantly expensive pigment lapis lazuli, natural ultramarine. Not only used in elements that are intended to be shown as appearance: the earth colours umber and ochre should be understood as warm light from the strongly-lit interior, reflecting its multiple colours back on to the wall.

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.^[10] 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 (Braunschweig). The shadows of the red satin dress are underpainted in natural ultramarine, and due 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 most 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.

[edit] Themes

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. His works are largely genre pieces and portraits, with the exception of two cityscapes.

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. Religious and scientific connotations can be found in his works.

[edit] Influence of other painters

• Carel Fabritius (1622–1654) who spent his final years in Delft. Vermeer's ideas about perspective, and his tendency to paint everyday themes were possibly influenced by Fabritius.
• Italian painter Caravaggio (1573–1610), indirectly through Dutch followers.
• Leonaert Bramer, another painter from Delft, and witness to his marriage.
• Vermeer's mother-in-law, Maria Thins, owned Dirck van Baburen's 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 in one of the artist's early works.

[edit] Works

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).

After 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.

Today, 35 paintings are clearly attributed to Vermeer, although in 1866, Thoré Burger attributed a list of 66 pictures to him. The known paintings are:

1. Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1654-1655) - Oil on canvas, 160 x 142 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
2. Diana and Her Companions (1655-1656) - Oil on canvas, 98,5 x 105 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague
3. The Procuress (1656) - Oil on canvas, 143 x 130 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
4. Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window (1657) - Oil on canvas, 83 x 64,5 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
5. A Girl Asleep (1657) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
6. The Little Street (1657/58) - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
7. Officer with a Laughing Girl (c. 1657) - Oil on canvas, 50,5 x 46 cm, Frick Collection, New York
8. The Milkmaid (c. 1658) - Oil on canvas, 45,5 x 41 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
9. A Lady Drinking and a Gentleman (1658-1660) - Oil on canvas, 39,4 x 44,5 cm,Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
10. The Girl with the Wineglass (c. 1659) - Oil on canvas, Herzog Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig
11. View of Delft (1659-1660) - Oil on canvas, 98,5 x 117,5 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague
12. Girl Interrupted at her Music (1660-1661) - Oil on canvas, 39,4 x 44,5 cm, Frick Collection, New York
13. Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (1663-1664) - Oil on canvas, 46,6 x 39,1 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
14. The Music Lesson or A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman (1662/5) - Oil on canvas, 73,3 x 64,5 cm, Queen's Gallery, London
15. Woman with a Lute near a Window (c. 1663) - Oil on canvas, 51,4 x 45,7 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
16. Woman with a Pearl Necklace (1662-1664) - Oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
17. Woman with a Water Jug (1660-1662) - Oil on canvas, 45,7 x 40,6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
18. A Woman Holding a Balance (1662-1663) - Oil on canvas, 42,5 x 38 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
19. A Lady Writing a Letter (1665-1666) - Oil on canvas, 45 x 40 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
20. Girl with a Pearl Earring (a.k.a. Girl In A Turban, Head Of Girl In A Turban, The Young Girl With Turban) (c. 1665) - Oil on canvas, 46,5 x 40 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague
21. The Concert (1665-1666) - Oil on canvas, 69 x 63 cm, stolen in March 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston^[11]
22. Portrait of a Young Woman (1666-1667) - Oil on canvas, 44,5 x 40 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
23. The Allegory of Painting or The Art of Painting (1666/67) - Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
24. Mistress and Maid (1667/68) - Frick Collection, New York
25. Girl with a Red Hat (1668) - National Gallery of Art, Washington
26. The Astronomer (1668) - Louvre, Paris
27. The Geographer (1668/69) - Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main
28. The Lacemaker (1669/70) - Louvre, Paris
29. The Love Letter (1669/70) - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
30. Lady writing a Letter with her Maid (1670) - Oil on canvas, 71,1 x 58,4 cm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
31. The Allegory of Faith (1671/74) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
32. The Guitar Player (1672) - Iveagh Bequest Kenwood House, London
33. Lady Standing at a Virginal (1673/75) - National Gallery, London
34. Lady Seated at a Virginal (1673/75) - National Gallery, London

[edit] Gallery

Paintings by Vermeer, ordered chronologically

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1654-1655)	The Procuress (1656)	Young woman sleeping (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) (1656-1657)	Officer and a Laughing Girl (Frick Collection, New York) (1657-1659)
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (1657-1659)	The Little Street (1657/58)	The Milkmaid (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (c. 1658)	The Wine Glass (1658-1661)
The Girl with a Wine Glass (1659-1660)	View of Delft (Mauritshuis, The Hague) (1660-1661)	Girl Interrupted at her Music (1660-1661)	The Music Lesson (1662)
Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (1662-1663)	The Lacemaker (Louvre, Paris) (1664)	Woman with a Pearl Necklace (1664)	Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (after 1664)
Woman Holding a Balance (1665)[12]	The Girl with the Pearl Earring (Mauritshuis, The Hague) (1665)	The Concert (1665-66)	Girl with a Flute (1665-1670)
The Allegory of Painting (1666-1667)	Lady with her Maidservant Holding a Letter (1667)	Portrait of a Young Woman (1665-67)	The Geographer (1669)
The Guitar Player (1669-1672)	The Loveletter (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (1670)	Lady writing a Letter with her Maid (1670)	A Lady Standing at a Virginal (1670-1673)
A Lady Seated at a Virginal (National Gallery, London) (1672)

[edit] Disputed works

• Saint Praxidis (c. 1655) - Oil on canvas, 102 x 83 cm, Private Collection
• Girl with a Flute (1665-1670) - Oil on panel, 20 x 17,8 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
• A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals (1670) - Wynn Las Vegas, Las Vegas
• Portrait of a Woman (1655-1660) -

[edit] Forgeries

Han van Meegeren was a Dutch painter who worked in the classic tradition. Initially seeking to prove that critics had underestimated his abilities as a painter, he decided to paint a fake Vermeer. Later, he forged more Vermeers and works of other painters to make money. Van Meegeren fooled the art establishment, and was only taken seriously after demonstrating his skills in front of police witnesses. His aptitude at forgery shocked the art world and complicated efforts to assess the authenticity of works attributed to Vermeer. After Van Meegeren's exposure in 1945 a wave of self-criticism surged through the world of art-museums and many so-called Old Masters disappeared from their walls. Examples are given in the Van Meegeren biography A New Vermeer, see references below.

[edit] Vermeer in other works

• 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.
• The book Girl in Hyacinth Blue is about a fictional Vermeer painting of the same name, and the 2003 made-for-TV film Brush with Fate is based on the book.
• The liqueur Vermeer Dutch Chocolate Cream Liqueur was inspired by and named after Vermeer and its bottle is embossed with his signature and has a logo incorporating the Girl with a Pearl Earring.
• 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.
• The 2003 children's novel Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett describes the theft of A Lady Writing and has the authenticity of Vermeer's paintings as a central theme. Also, in the sequel to the book, The Wright 3.
• 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.
• "Brush with Fate" was a made-for-TV film debuted on February 2, 2003, on CBS. It followed the life of an imaginary painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer as it passes through the hands of various people.
• The book and film Girl, Interrupted take their title from the painting Girl Interrupted at her Music.
• Jan Vermeer is the title of a song on Bob Walkenhorst's solo album, The Beginner (lyrics here, song #6). Walkenhorst is the guitarist and principal songwriter for The Rainmakers.
• All the Vermeers in New York, a film by Jon Jost

[edit] References and notes

[edit] Sources

[edit] External links

• Vermeercentrum, housed at the site of the former St. Lucas Guild in Delft. (This reference states that the Vermeercentrum has been closed, in the mean time it has been reopened again: December 2007).
• Essential Vermeer, in-depth coverage of Vermeer's life and works.
• Virtual Vermeer, Biography, Paintings.
• Website with unusual information, gathered by John Michael Montias, accompanying a BBC-documentary