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, known as the "Mona Lisa of the North"Johannes Vermeer or Jan Vermeer (baptized October 31 1632, died December 15 1675) was a Dutch people painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of ordinary bourgeois 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 due to the fact that 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.

Life Relatively little is known about Vermeer's life. The only sources of information are some registers, a few official documents and comments by other artists.

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 in Delft.

Vermeer's father, Reynier VermeerReynier Vermeer's name actually was Reynier Vos (Fox), but he used the name Van der Meer., was a lower middle-class silk weaver and an art dealer. He married Johannes' mother, Digna, a woman from Antwerp, in 1615. The Vermeer family bought a large inn, the "Mechelen" named after the homonymous Belgian town, near the market square in Delft in 1641. Reynier Vermeer probably served as inn-keeper while also acting as a merchant of paintings.

After his father's death in 1652, Johannes Vermeer inherited the Mechelen as well as his father's art-dealing business.

Marriage and family Despite the fact that he came from a Protestant family, he married a Roman Catholic Church, named Catherina Bolnes, in April 1653. It was an unlikely marriage: in addition to the religious difference (Catholics were a discriminated-against and unpopular religious minority in mainly Calvinist Holland, threatened by Catholic France), Bolnes' family was significantly wealthier than Vermeer's. Vermeer may have converted to Catholicism shortly before their marriage, a conversion suggested by the fact that his children were named after Catholic saints rather than his own parents, and one of his paintings, The Allegory of Faith, reflects Catholic belief in the Eucharist, though whether that is the artist's or that of a commissioning patron is unknown.

Some time after their marriage, the couple left the Mechelen and moved in with Catherina's mother, Maria Thins, a well-off widow, in a house in the "Papist corner" of the town, where the Catholics lived in relative isolation. Vermeer would live in his mother-in-law's house with his wife and children for the rest of his life.

Maria apparently played an important role in their life, for they named their first daughter after her, and it is possible that she used her comfortable income to help support the struggling painter and his growing family. Maria Thins was a devotee of the Jesuit order in the Catholic Church, and this, too, seems to have influenced Johannes and Catherina, for they called their first son Ignatius, after the Ignatius Loyola.

Johannes and Catherina had fourteen children in total, three of whom predeceased Vermeer.

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 that his teacher was either Carel Fabritius (1622 - 1654) or Leonaert Bramer (1596 - 1674). Vermeer biography, National Gallery of Art Retrieved July 13, 2007.

On the 29th of December 1653, Vermeer became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke#Dutch Republic, 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 evidently was well established: one of the town's richest citizens, Pieter van Ruijven, became his patron and bought many of his paintings. If he indeed completed only a small number of paintings, his income probably relied largely on his business as an art dealer. In 1662 he 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.

However, a severe economic downturn struck the Netherlands after 1672 (the "Rampjaar"), when Early Modern France invaded the Dutch Republic in what was later known as the Franco-Dutch War. This led to a collapse in demand for luxury items such as paintings, 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.

When Johannes Vermeer died in 1675, he left Catherina and their children with very little money and several debts. In a written document his wife attributed her husband's death to the stress of financial pressures. Catherina 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 worked for the city council, was appointed trustee for the estate in 1676. Nineteen of Vermeer's paintings were bequeathed to Catherina and Maria; 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's relatively short life, the demands of separate careers, and his extraordinary precision as a painter all help to explain his limited output. It is assumed that some of his paintings were lost after his death.

Technique Vermeer produced transparent colours by applying paint onto 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 blue, like a woman’s skirt, a sky, the headband on the Girl with a Pearl Earring (The Hague), and in the satin dress of his late A Lady Seated at a Virginal (London), Vermeer also used the lapis lazuli widely as underpaint in, for example, the deep yet murky shadow area below the windows in The Music Lesson (London), and The Glass of Wine (Berlin). For the wall beneath the windows - areas in these paintings of intense shadow - Vermeer composed by first applying a dark natural ultramarine, thus indicating an area void of light. Over this first layer he then scumbled varied layers of earth colours in order to give the wall a certain appearance: the earth colours umber and ochre should be understood as warm light from the strongly-lit interior, reflecting its multiple colours back onto the wall.

This working method most probably was inspired by Vermeer’s understanding of Leonardo da Vinci observations that the surface of every object partakes of the colour of the adjacent object.B. Broos, A. Blankert, J. Wadum, A.K. Wheelock Jr. (1995) Johannes Vermeer, Waanders Publishers, Zwolle 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 (Braunsweig). The shadows of the red satin dress are underpainting 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 the above-mentioned "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.

Themes Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. His works are largely Genre works 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.

Influence of other painters

Works Only three paintings are dated: The Procuress (1656, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie), The Astronomer (1668, Paris, Louvre), and The Geographer (1669, Frankfurt, Städelsches). 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 an almost 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:
  • Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1654-1655) - Oil on canvas, 160 x 142 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
  • Diana and Her Companions (1655-1656) - Oil on canvas, 98,5 x 105 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague
  • The Procuress (1656) - Oil on canvas, 143 x 130 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
  • Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window (1657) - Oil on canvas, 83 x 64,5 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
  • A Girl Asleep (Vermeer) (1657) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • The Little Street (Vermeer) (1657/58) - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
  • Officer with a Laughing Girl (c. 1657) - Oil on canvas, 50,5 x 46 cm, Frick Collection, New York City
  • The Milkmaid (Vermeer) (c. 1658) - Oil on canvas, 45,5 x 41 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
  • A Lady Drinking and a Gentleman (1658-1660) - Oil on canvas, 39,4 x 44,5 cm,Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Berlin
  • The Girl with the Wineglass (c. 1659) - Oil on canvas, Herzog Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig
  • View of Delft (Vermeer) (1659-1660) - Oil on canvas, 98,5 x 117,5 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague
  • Girl Interrupted at her Music (1660-1661) - Oil on canvas, 39,4 x 44,5 cm, Frick Collection, New York City
  • Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (1663-1664) - Oil on canvas, 46,6 x 39,1 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
  • 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
  • Woman with a Lute near a Window (c. 1663) - Oil on canvas, 51,4 x 45,7 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • Woman with a Pearl Necklace (1662-1664) - Oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm, Gemäldegalerie (Berlin), Berlin
  • Woman with a Water Jug (Vermeer) (1660-1662) - Oil on canvas, 45,7 x 40,6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • A Woman Holding a Balance (1662-1663) - Oil on canvas, 42,5 x 38 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • A Lady Writing a Letter (1665-1666) - Oil on canvas, 45 x 40 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • 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
  • The Concert (Vermeer) (1665-1666) - Oil on canvas, 69 x 63 cm, stolen in March 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts Stolen, a documentary about the theft of The Concert, from the PBS website
  • Portrait of a Young Woman (1666-1667) - Oil on canvas, 44,5 x 40 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • The Art of Painting or The Art of Painting (1666/67) - Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
  • Mistress and Maid (1667/68) - Frick Collection, New York City
  • Girl with a Red Hat (1668) - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • The Astronomer (painting) (1668) - Louvre, Paris
  • The Geographer (1668/69) - Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main
  • The Lacemaker (1669/70) - Louvre, Paris
  • The Love Letter (Painting) (1669/70) - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
  • Lady writing a Letter with her Maid (1670) - Oil on canvas, 71,1 x 58,4 cm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
  • The Allegory of Faith (1671/74) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • The Guitar Player (1672) - Kenwood House, London
  • Lady Standing at the Virginals (1673/75) - National Gallery, London, London
  • Lady Seated at the Virginals (1673/75) - National Gallery, London, London


    • Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 004.jpg|Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1654-1655)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 002.jpg|The Procuress (1656)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 022.jpg|Young woman sleeping (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) (1656-1657)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 023.jpg], New York) (1657-1659)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 003.jpg], Amsterdam) (c. 1658)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 018.jpg], The Hague) (1660-1661)Image:Vermeer Girl Interrupted at Her Music.jpg], Amsterdam) (after 1664)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 015.jpg] websiteImage:Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) - The Girl With The Pearl Earring (1665).jpg|The Girl with the Pearl Earring (Mauritshaus, The Hague) (1665)Image:Vermeer The concert.JPG], Amsterdam) (1670)Image:DublinVermeer.jpg] (1670)

    Disputed works

    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 art forgery shocked the art world and complicated efforts to assess the authenticity of works attributed to Vermeer.

    Vermeer in other works

    References and notes Specific references:General references:

    External links

    , known as the "Mona Lisa of the North"Johannes Vermeer or Jan Vermeer (baptized October 31 1632, died December 15 1675) was a Dutch people painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of ordinary bourgeois 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 due to the fact that 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.

    Life Relatively little is known about Vermeer's life. The only sources of information are some registers, a few official documents and comments by other artists.

    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 in Delft.

    Vermeer's father, Reynier VermeerReynier Vermeer's name actually was Reynier Vos (Fox), but he used the name Van der Meer., was a lower middle-class silk weaver and an art dealer. He married Johannes' mother, Digna, a woman from Antwerp, in 1615. The Vermeer family bought a large inn, the "Mechelen" named after the homonymous Belgian town, near the market square in Delft in 1641. Reynier Vermeer probably served as inn-keeper while also acting as a merchant of paintings.

    After his father's death in 1652, Johannes Vermeer inherited the Mechelen as well as his father's art-dealing business.

    Marriage and family Despite the fact that he came from a Protestant family, he married a Roman Catholic Church, named Catherina Bolnes, in April 1653. It was an unlikely marriage: in addition to the religious difference (Catholics were a discriminated-against and unpopular religious minority in mainly Calvinist Holland, threatened by Catholic France), Bolnes' family was significantly wealthier than Vermeer's. Vermeer may have converted to Catholicism shortly before their marriage, a conversion suggested by the fact that his children were named after Catholic saints rather than his own parents, and one of his paintings, The Allegory of Faith, reflects Catholic belief in the Eucharist, though whether that is the artist's or that of a commissioning patron is unknown.

    Some time after their marriage, the couple left the Mechelen and moved in with Catherina's mother, Maria Thins, a well-off widow, in a house in the "Papist corner" of the town, where the Catholics lived in relative isolation. Vermeer would live in his mother-in-law's house with his wife and children for the rest of his life.

    Maria apparently played an important role in their life, for they named their first daughter after her, and it is possible that she used her comfortable income to help support the struggling painter and his growing family. Maria Thins was a devotee of the Jesuit order in the Catholic Church, and this, too, seems to have influenced Johannes and Catherina, for they called their first son Ignatius, after the Ignatius Loyola.

    Johannes and Catherina had fourteen children in total, three of whom predeceased Vermeer.

    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 that his teacher was either Carel Fabritius (1622 - 1654) or Leonaert Bramer (1596 - 1674). Vermeer biography, National Gallery of Art Retrieved July 13, 2007.

    On the 29th of December 1653, Vermeer became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke#Dutch Republic, 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 evidently was well established: one of the town's richest citizens, Pieter van Ruijven, became his patron and bought many of his paintings. If he indeed completed only a small number of paintings, his income probably relied largely on his business as an art dealer. In 1662 he 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.

    However, a severe economic downturn struck the Netherlands after 1672 (the "Rampjaar"), when Early Modern France invaded the Dutch Republic in what was later known as the Franco-Dutch War. This led to a collapse in demand for luxury items such as paintings, 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.

    When Johannes Vermeer died in 1675, he left Catherina and their children with very little money and several debts. In a written document his wife attributed her husband's death to the stress of financial pressures. Catherina 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 worked for the city council, was appointed trustee for the estate in 1676. Nineteen of Vermeer's paintings were bequeathed to Catherina and Maria; 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's relatively short life, the demands of separate careers, and his extraordinary precision as a painter all help to explain his limited output. It is assumed that some of his paintings were lost after his death.

    Technique Vermeer produced transparent colours by applying paint onto 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 blue, like a woman’s skirt, a sky, the headband on the Girl with a Pearl Earring (The Hague), and in the satin dress of his late A Lady Seated at a Virginal (London), Vermeer also used the lapis lazuli widely as underpaint in, for example, the deep yet murky shadow area below the windows in The Music Lesson (London), and The Glass of Wine (Berlin). For the wall beneath the windows - areas in these paintings of intense shadow - Vermeer composed by first applying a dark natural ultramarine, thus indicating an area void of light. Over this first layer he then scumbled varied layers of earth colours in order to give the wall a certain appearance: the earth colours umber and ochre should be understood as warm light from the strongly-lit interior, reflecting its multiple colours back onto the wall.

    This working method most probably was inspired by Vermeer’s understanding of Leonardo da Vinci observations that the surface of every object partakes of the colour of the adjacent object.B. Broos, A. Blankert, J. Wadum, A.K. Wheelock Jr. (1995) Johannes Vermeer, Waanders Publishers, Zwolle 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 (Braunsweig). The shadows of the red satin dress are underpainting 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 the above-mentioned "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.

    Themes Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. His works are largely Genre works 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.

    Influence of other painters

    Works Only three paintings are dated: The Procuress (1656, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie), The Astronomer (1668, Paris, Louvre), and The Geographer (1669, Frankfurt, Städelsches). 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 an almost 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:
  • Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1654-1655) - Oil on canvas, 160 x 142 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
  • Diana and Her Companions (1655-1656) - Oil on canvas, 98,5 x 105 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague
  • The Procuress (1656) - Oil on canvas, 143 x 130 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
  • Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window (1657) - Oil on canvas, 83 x 64,5 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
  • A Girl Asleep (Vermeer) (1657) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • The Little Street (Vermeer) (1657/58) - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
  • Officer with a Laughing Girl (c. 1657) - Oil on canvas, 50,5 x 46 cm, Frick Collection, New York City
  • The Milkmaid (Vermeer) (c. 1658) - Oil on canvas, 45,5 x 41 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
  • A Lady Drinking and a Gentleman (1658-1660) - Oil on canvas, 39,4 x 44,5 cm,Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Berlin
  • The Girl with the Wineglass (c. 1659) - Oil on canvas, Herzog Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig
  • View of Delft (Vermeer) (1659-1660) - Oil on canvas, 98,5 x 117,5 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague
  • Girl Interrupted at her Music (1660-1661) - Oil on canvas, 39,4 x 44,5 cm, Frick Collection, New York City
  • Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (1663-1664) - Oil on canvas, 46,6 x 39,1 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
  • 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
  • Woman with a Lute near a Window (c. 1663) - Oil on canvas, 51,4 x 45,7 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • Woman with a Pearl Necklace (1662-1664) - Oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm, Gemäldegalerie (Berlin), Berlin
  • Woman with a Water Jug (Vermeer) (1660-1662) - Oil on canvas, 45,7 x 40,6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • A Woman Holding a Balance (1662-1663) - Oil on canvas, 42,5 x 38 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • A Lady Writing a Letter (1665-1666) - Oil on canvas, 45 x 40 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • 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
  • The Concert (Vermeer) (1665-1666) - Oil on canvas, 69 x 63 cm, stolen in March 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts Stolen, a documentary about the theft of The Concert, from the PBS website
  • Portrait of a Young Woman (1666-1667) - Oil on canvas, 44,5 x 40 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • The Art of Painting or The Art of Painting (1666/67) - Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
  • Mistress and Maid (1667/68) - Frick Collection, New York City
  • Girl with a Red Hat (1668) - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • The Astronomer (painting) (1668) - Louvre, Paris
  • The Geographer (1668/69) - Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main
  • The Lacemaker (1669/70) - Louvre, Paris
  • The Love Letter (Painting) (1669/70) - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
  • Lady writing a Letter with her Maid (1670) - Oil on canvas, 71,1 x 58,4 cm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
  • The Allegory of Faith (1671/74) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • The Guitar Player (1672) - Kenwood House, London
  • Lady Standing at the Virginals (1673/75) - National Gallery, London, London
  • Lady Seated at the Virginals (1673/75) - National Gallery, London, London


    • Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 004.jpg|Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1654-1655)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 002.jpg|The Procuress (1656)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 022.jpg|Young woman sleeping (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) (1656-1657)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 023.jpg], New York) (1657-1659)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 003.jpg], Amsterdam) (c. 1658)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 018.jpg], The Hague) (1660-1661)Image:Vermeer Girl Interrupted at Her Music.jpg], Amsterdam) (after 1664)Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 015.jpg] websiteImage:Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) - The Girl With The Pearl Earring (1665).jpg|The Girl with the Pearl Earring (Mauritshaus, The Hague) (1665)Image:Vermeer The concert.JPG], Amsterdam) (1670)Image:DublinVermeer.jpg] (1670)

    Disputed works

    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 art forgery shocked the art world and complicated efforts to assess the authenticity of works attributed to Vermeer.

    Vermeer in other works

    References and notes Specific references:General references:

    External links



    VERMEER, Johannes
    Johannes Vermeer, 'A Young Woman standing at a Virginal', about 1670. London, The National Gallery.

    Johannes Vermeer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Johannes or Jan Vermeer (baptized in Delft with the name Joannis on October 31, 1632, and buried in the same city under the name Jan on December 15, 1675) was a Dutch Baroque ...

    Jump to the Greatest Site on Johannes Vermeer and Delft
    Welcome! You are just one step away from the great Johannes Vermeer & Delft Web site. Over 1500 Internet items on the life and work of Johannes Vermeer and his Delft contemporaries ...

    Johannes Vermeer - Wikimedia Commons
    This page was last modified on 24 September 2008, at 09:01. Text is available under GNU Free Documentation License. Wikimedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia ...

    Johannes Vermeer - "The procuress"
    The procuress" oil on canvas, 1430mm × 1300mm Gemäldegalerie, Dresden < < <

    Johannes Vermeer
    Paintings of Vermeer page is now hosted at http://www.ballandclaw.com/vermeer. Please update your links.

    Essential Vermeer
    A complete overview of the life, work and artitic milieu of the 17th century Dutch Paining Master Johannes Vermeer

    Johannes Vermeer

    About Johannes Vermeer
    Background information about the Dutch painter Vermeer, whose paintings play a central role in the novel Girl With a Pearl Earring.

    WebMuseum: Vermeer, Jan
    Jan or Johannes Vermeer van Delft, b. October 1632, d. December 1675, a Dutch genre painter who lived and worked in Delft, created some of the most exquisite paintings in ...

     

    Johannes Vermeer



     
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