Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer ( vər-MEER, vər-MAIR, Dutch: [joːˈɦɑnəs fərˈmeːr]; see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. He produced relatively few paintings, primarily earning his living as an art dealer. He was not wealthy; at his death, his wife was left in debt.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for making masterful use of light in his work. "Almost all his paintings", Hans Koningsberger wrote, "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."

The modest celebrity he enjoyed during his life 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, published 1718) and, as a result, was 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 66 works to him, although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown enormously.

Pronunciation of name

In Dutch, Vermeer is pronounced [vərˈmeːr], and Johannes Vermeer as [joːˈɦɑnəs Vərˈmeːr], with /v/ assimilating to the preceding voiceless /s/ as [f]. The usual English pronunciation is vər-MEER, with vur-MEER, with a long first vowel, occurring in the UK. vər-MAIR is also documented. Another pronunciation, vair-MEER, is attested from the UK.

Life

Relatively little was known about Vermeer's life until recently. 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 a few registers, official documents, and comments by other artists; for this reason, Thoré-Bürger named him "The Sphinx of Delft". John Michael Montias added 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 (1982).

Youth and heritage

Johannes Vermeer was baptized within the Reformed Church on 31 October 1632. His mother, Digna Baltens (c. 1596–1670), was from Antwerp. Digna's father, Balthasar Geerts, or Gerrits (born in Antwerp in or around 1573), led an enterprising life in metalworking, and was arrested for counterfeiting. Vermeer's father, named Reijnier Janszoon, was a middle-class worker of silk or caffa (a mixture of silk and cotton or wool). He was the son of Jan Reyersz and Cornelia (Neeltge) Goris. As an apprentice in Amsterdam, Reijnier lived on fashionable Sint Antoniesbreestraat, a street with many resident painters at the time. In 1615, Reijnier married Digna. The couple moved to Delft and had a daughter named Gertruy 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, which he called "The Flying Fox". In 1635, he lived on Voldersgracht 25 or 26. 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 Reijnier died in October 1652, Vermeer took over the operation of the family's art business.

Marriage and family

In April 1653, Johannes Reijniersz Vermeer married a Catholic woman, Catharina Bolnes (Bolenes). The blessing took place in the quiet nearby village of Schipluiden. Vermeer's new mother-in-law, Maria Thins, was initially opposed to the marriage as she was significantly wealthier than he, and it was probably she who insisted that Vermeer convert to Catholicism before the marriage on 5 April. The fact that Vermeer's father was in considerable debt also did not help in discussions on the marriage. Leonaert Bramer, who was Catholic himself, put in a good word for Vermeer and it was this that led Maria to drop her oppositions. According to art historian Walter Liedtke, Vermeer's conversion seems to have been made with conviction. His painting The Allegory of Faith, made between 1670 and 1672, placed less emphasis on the artists' usual naturalistic concerns and more on symbolic religious applications, including the sacrament of the Eucharist. Walter Liedtke, in Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, suggests that 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. There 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". The names of 10 of Vermeer's children are known from wills written by relatives: Maertge, Elisabeth, Cornelia, Aleydis, Beatrix, Johannes, Gertruyd, Franciscus, Catharina, and Ignatius. Most of these names are those of saints; the youngest (Ignatius) was likely named after Ignatius of Loyola.

Career

It is unclear where and with whom Vermeer apprenticed as a painter. There is some speculation that Carel Fabritius may have been his teacher, based upon a controversial interpretation of a text written in 1668 by printer Arnold Bon. Art historians have found no hard evidence to support this. Local authority Leonaert Bramer acted as a friend, but his style of painting is rather different from Vermeer's. Liedtke suggests that Vermeer taught himself using information from one of his father's connections. Some scholars think that Vermeer was trained under Catholic painter Abraham Bloemaert. Vermeer's style is similar to that of some of the Utrecht Caravaggists, whose works are depicted as paintings-within-paintings in the backgrounds of several of his compositions.

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, a terrible explosion, known as the Delft Thunderclap, occurred at a gunpowder store and destroyed a large section of the city. Pieter van Ruijven and his wife, Maria de Knuijt, were Vermeer's patrons for the better part of the artist's career. In 2023, Maria de Knuijt was identified by the curators of the 2023 exhibition of Vermeer's works at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam as the main patron because of her long-standing and supportive relationship with the artist. It seems that Vermeer turned for inspiration to the art of the fijnschilders from Leiden. Vermeer was responding to the market of Gerard Dou's paintings, who sold his paintings for exorbitant prices. Dou may have influenced Pieter de Hooch and Gabriel Metsu too. Vermeer also charged higher than average prices for his work, most of which were purchased by an unknown collector.

The influence of Johannes Vermeer on Metsu is unmistakable: the light from the left, the marble floor. (Adriaan Waiboer, however, suggests that Metsu requires more emotional involvement of the viewer.) Vermeer probably competed also with Nicolaes Maes, who produced genre works in a similar style. 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 on order. Balthasar de Monconys visited him in 1663 to see some of his work, but Vermeer had no paintings to show. The diplomat and the two French clergymen who accompanied him were sent to Hendrick van Buyten, a baker who had a couple of Vermeer's paintings as collateral.