Johannes Vermeer

A Virtual Tour of Johannes Vermeer

Girl with a Pearl Earring
The Concert
Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman
Woman with a Pearl Necklace
The Milkmaid
The Little Street
The Allegory of Faith
The Music Lesson
The Lacemaker
The Geographer
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window
A Young Woman standing at a Virginal
A Lady Writing a Letter
The Procuress
Officer and Laughing Girl
Mistress and Maid

Vermeer produced only two to three paintings a year, and only 35 known works exist today. The slow rate at which he produced paintings restricted Vermeer from becoming wealthy during his lifetime, and he died in debt.

Vermeer is thought to have used a camera obscura, which may have influenced the way he often painted highlights.

Johannes Vermeer was a moderately successful painter in his lifetime. However, he was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death.

Vermeer’s paintings have been challenging to date with accuracy. Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes, and most of his pictures are set in the rooms of his house in Delft.

There are similar furniture and decorations in various arrangements in his domestic scenes, and his art often portrays the same people.

Vermeer died at a relatively young age, 43, in 1675. He suffered most likely from a stroke or heart attack.

He was not wealthy, as he left his family in debt after his death. He produced relatively few paintings compared to his contemporaries.

Art historians mainly overlooked Vermeer’s works for several centuries after his death. However, his reputation has skyrocketed in the last few hundred years, and he is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

Highlights of Johannes Vermeer

Girl with a Pearl Earring

“Girl with a Pearl Earring” by Johannes Vermeer portrays a girl wearing an exotic dress, an Eastern turban, and an improbably large pearl earring.

The work is signed “IVMeer” and is one of Vermeer’s most famous paintings, but very little is known about the background story to this picture, plus the identity of the girl is also a mystery. Museum: Mauritshuis

The Concert

“The Concert” by Johannes Vermeer depicts a man and two women playing music and singing. The young woman is sitting at a harpsichord, and the man is playing the lute, and a woman standing while singing.

The harpsichord’s upturned lid is decorated with a landscape. A viola da gamba can be seen lying on the floor.

This masterpiece belongs to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston but was stolen in 1990 and remains missing. It is reputed to be the most valuable unrecovered stolen painting ever, with a value estimated at over $200 million. Museum: Stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman

“Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman” or ‘The Music Lesson’ by Johannes Vermeer depicts a painting of a young female pupil during a music lesson with a gentleman.

Their relationship is no precise or clear from this painting. The composition uses perspective to draw the eye towards the back of the room where the figures are in front of the virginal.

The virginal is a keyboard instrument of the harpsichord family and was popular in Europe during the late Renaissance and early Baroque period. Museum: Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace

Woman with a Pearl Necklace

“Woman with a Pearl Necklace” by Johannes Vermeer portrays a young Dutch woman, dressing with yellow ribbons, pearl earrings, and a pearl necklace.

Vermeer depicted many women in similar circumstances in interior domestic scenes. The same woman also appears in The Love Letter and A Lady Writing a Letter. Museum: Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

The Milkmaid

“The Milkmaid” by Johannes Vermeer depicts a domestic kitchen maid, an indoor servant, and not a milkmaid who milks the cow.

She is carefully pouring milk into an earthenware container, now commonly known as a “Dutch oven.” She is a young woman wearing a linen cap, a blue apron, and work sleeves pushed up from the forearms.

Various art commentators have pointed to the possibility of symbols in the painting that suggest amorous references, while others argue to the contrary and that the maid is treated in an empathetic and dignified way. Museum: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The Little Street

View of Houses in Delft, known as ‘The Little Street’ by Johannes Vermeer, depicts a quiet street, with four people conduction routine tasks in everyday life in a Dutch town.

It is one of only three Vermeer paintings of Delft’s views, and it captures a perspective that Vermeer knew well.

The house on the right in this painting belonged to Vermeer’s aunt, and Vermeer’s mother and sister also lived on the same canal, diagonally opposite. Museum: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Vermeer: Master of Light

The Allegory of Faith

“The Allegory of Faith” by Johannes Vermeer was painted about 1670 and depicts a woman in an elegant white and blue satin dress with gold trimmings.

She is surrounded by iconography related to faith. She sits on a platform a step higher than the marble floor, her right foot on a terrestrial globe and her right hand on her heart as she looks up, adoringly, at a glass sphere hung from the ceiling by a blue ribbon.

Vermeer’s iconography in the painting is mostly taken from an academic book of allegorical illustrations with accompanying morals, translated into Dutch in 1644. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art – M.E.T.

The Music Lesson

“Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman” or ‘The Music Lesson’ by Johannes Vermeer depicts a painting of a young female pupil during a music lesson with a gentleman.

Their relationship is no precise or clear from this painting. The composition uses perspective to draw the eye towards the back of the room where the figures are in front of the virginal.

The virginal is a keyboard instrument of the harpsichord family and was popular in Europe during the late Renaissance and early Baroque period.

The Lacemaker

“The Lacemaker” by Johannes Vermeer shows a young woman dressed in a yellow shawl, holding up a pair of bobbins in her left hand as she carefully places a pin in the pillow on which she is making her bobbin lace.

The girl is set against a blank wall to eliminate any distractions from the image of concentration and focus. The techniques of lacemaking are portrayed in detail and accurately.

Vermeer may have used a camera obscura while composing the work. Many of the optical effects typical of photography can be seen, particularly the blurring of the foreground.

By rendering areas of the canvas as out-of-focus, Vermeer can suggest a depth of field in a manner unusual of Dutch Baroque painting of the era. Museum: Louvre

The Geographer

“The Geographer” by Johannes Vermeer is dressed in a Japanese-style robe, which was popular with scholars.

He is depicted deep in thought with his active and engaging stance, surrounded by maps, charts, a globe and books, and the dividers which he holds in his hand.

The geographer has measured distances on a map, and now he has paused for thought. Museum: Städel Museum

Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window

“Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window” by Johannes Vermeer depicts a young blonde girl standing in the light of an open window, reading a letter.

A red drapery hangs over the top of the window, which has opened inward and which, in its lower right quadrant, reflects the girl’s mirror image.

A tasseled ochre drapery in the foreground right, partially closed, covers part of the room in which she stands.

Fruit in a tilted bowl, on the luxurious carpet that drapes the table, and the light from the window highlights the peach cut in half. Museum: Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

A Young Woman standing at a Virginal

“A Young Woman standing at a Virginal” by Johannes Vermeer depicts a richly dressed woman playing the virginal.

A virginal was a keyboard instrument of the harpsichord family, popular in Europe during the late Renaissance to the 1700s.

The setting for this composition is a home with a tiled floor, paintings on the wall, and some of the locally manufactured Delftware blue and white tiles of a type that appears in other Vermeer works. Museum: National Gallery, London

A Lady Writing a Letter

“A Lady Writing a Letter” by Johannes Vermeer depicts a lady writing a letter while sitting at a table in a room. She appears to have been interrupted as she looks up towards the viewer while holding the quill in her right hand.

The lady is dressed in an elegant lemon-yellow morning jacket and wears pearl earrings. A necklace lies on the table.

Vermeer’s compositional focus is on the woman and her face. The smaller objects on the table stand in contrast with the large forms used in the rest of the composition, which create a geometric framework for the figure.

The table is brought close to the picture plane to emphasizes the directness of her gaze. Johannes Vermeer preserves the integrity of the picture plane to create a vivid illusion of three-dimensional space.

On the back of the wall is a dark painting that covers much of the background and contrast with the lady’s brighter colors.

Johannes Vermeer: A collection of paintings

The Procuress

“The Procuress” by Johannes Vermeer depicts the procurement of mercenary love in a contemporary Dutch setting. It was Vermeer’s first genre painting, focusing on the everyday life of ordinary people.

A soldier in the red jacket is fondling the young woman’s breast and dropping a coin into her outstretched hand.

The woman in black clothing is the procuress, after whom the painting is titled. The procuress or a madam is the one who procures women for money.

The man to the side wearing a black beret and a doublet with slashed sleeves is probably a Vermeer’s self-portrait. In the painting, Vermeer’s character is a musician, in the employ of the madam, he carries a cittern as his musical instrument.

The then 24-year-old Johannes Vermeer created this 1656 painting. This scene, which may be set in a brothel, differs greatly from his biblical and mythological scenes.

Officer and Laughing Girl

“Officer and Laughing Girl” by Johannes Vermeer depicts a girl in a yellow dress seated at a table facing a man with a large hat. She has a soft light falling on her face, coming from the left-hand side of the painting from an open window.

The man in the painting has his back to the viewer and is mainly in the shadows with his face obscured. He is a cavalier wearing a red coat and an expensive hat, showing his wealth and rank. His hat is wide-brimmed, which was weather-resistant and used for snowy and rainy conditions.

The background includes a large map on the wall. The window and lighting are characteristic of Vermeer’s interior paintings because he used the same room in many of his paintings.

This window is extremely similar to the window in the Girl Reading a Letter and Open Window and the Milkmaid. The glass in the window has variations of color, showing Vermeer’s precision in this painting’s details.

The woman resembles Vermeer’s wife, Catharina Bolnes, who had posed for many of his paintings. With x-ray photographs, art historians can see that Vermeer had initially planned to paint the woman with a large white collar.

This was later changed to show more of her yellow dress. The yellow bodice with braiding has appeared in many of Vermeer’s other portraits. The woman is showing holding a wine glass, usually used for white wine to illustrate her wealth. Museum: Frick Collection

Mistress and Maid

“Mistress and Maid” by Johannes Vermeer depicts two women, in which the maid interrupts to deliver a letter to the seated woman who was writing a letter. The painting exemplifies Vermeer’s preference for yellow and blue, female models, and domestic scenes.

Vermeer made strong use of yellow in the woman’s elegant fur-lined overcoat and blue in the silk tablecloth and the maid’s apron. The painting focuses on the Mistress sitting at a desk writing, and the Maid as she delivers a message.

The light in the painting comes from the left and falls on the mistress’s face. The mistress has a pensive gaze, with her fingertips lifted to her chin in a questioning manner.

Vermeer favored the portrayal of quiet domestic scenes containing women. For Vermeer, this composition focuses on a moment of interaction and interruption that suggests drama and mystery.

The gestures and expressions of the two women in this painting suggest anxiety over the letter and contents. Museum: Frick Collection

Artist: Johannes Vermeer
Born: 1632 – Delft, Dutch Republic
Died: 1675 (aged 43) -Delft, Dutch Republic
Nationality: Dutch
Movement Dutch Golden Age, Baroque

Johannes Vermeer – Light Love and Silence

Questions about Vermeer and his Art

Where was Johannes Vermeer born?
- Born in 1632 in Delft, he lived there most, if not all, of his life.
- Delftware or Delft pottery is a general term now used for Dutch tin-glazed earthenware. Most of it is blue and white pottery, and the city of Delft in the Netherlands was the primary center of production.
What was Vermeer’s faith?
- Vermeer was born and raised Protestant but converted to Catholicism on his marriage into a Catholic family.
What do we know about Vermeer’s parents?
- His father was Reynier Janszoon, an inn-keeper, silk weaver, and art trader, and his mother was Dingenum Balthens.
What type of painter was Vermeer?
- His long term interest in domestic genre scenes, but his earliest known works, such as ‘Saint Praxedis’ (1655), were history paintings.
- The motif of the woman by a window in a domestic setting, or reading a letter, is a recurring element in Vermeer’s art.
- Of his 36 paintings, 32 feature women in them, and 23 of the 36 feature only women.
- Eleven of Vermeer’s 36 paintings have pearls in them. Pearls were a status symbol, and he painted them three-dimensionally, most famously in the famous “Girl With a Pearl Earring.”

What do we know about Vermeer’s wife?
- He married Catharina Bolnes, who came from a well-to-do family. She was from Gouda. She was slightly older than Vermeer and very devoted to preserving his work after he passed.
Did Vermeer have children?
- Vermeer was the father of eleven children, but children do not appear in his paintings, except for the kneeling children with obstructed faces in ‘The Little Street.’
What are the critical dates in Vermeer’s life?
- Baptized – 1632 in the Nieuwe Kerk
- Married – 1653 to Catharina Bolnes in a clandestine church in Schipluiden
- Admitted – 1653 to the Guild of St. Lucasguild as “Master” in
- Buried – 1675 in the Oude Kerk
Which art museums have the most Vermeers?
- Twelve of Vermeer’s approximately thirty-five extant paintings are housed within the U.S., mainly at the Metropolitan and Frick Museums of New York City and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
What technology did Vermeer use to help him in his visual effects?
- Vermeer’s works suggest that he used the camera obscura, an optical device that reflects the subject onto the canvas, to achieve his close imitation of visual reality.
How old was Johannes Vermeer when he died?
- 43