Johannes Vermeer died in Delft in December 1675, at the age of 43.
His widow, Catharina, later wrote that he went from healthy to dead in a day and a half. She blamed the money worries that had crushed him after a war with France emptied the Dutch art market.
He was buried on December 15 in the city's Old Church, in a grave that Catharina's mother, Maria Thins, had bought there in 1661. He left his wife with eleven children.
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Everything known about his last hours comes from his widow's own words, written in a petition she filed in 1677 to ask the court for help with his debts. No autopsy or diagnosis survives, and she names no symptom. I read her account as the statement of a witness with a stake.
What the widow's petition says about the war
In the petition, Catharina explains where the money went…
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