Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter, born in Delft in 1632 and dead there at forty-three in 1675. Between 34 and 37 paintings are accepted as his.
Most show a room lit from a window on the left, where a woman reads a letter, pours milk or looks up from her work. He is famous for that light, and for how little else we know about him.
No letter, no diary and no certain portrait survives, and for about two centuries after his death his name was almost lost.
Most people arrive with the Girl with a Pearl Earring in mind and expect a life story to match. There is not much of one. The archives hold a baptism, a marriage, a guild membership, a long list of debts and a petition written by his widow.
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Vermeer was baptized in Delft on October 31, 1632. His father, Reijnier Janszoon, was a silk worker who also dealt in paintings and ran inns, first The Flying Fox and later a larger one on the market square called Mechelen.
The boy grew up among pictures that were bought and sold over a counter, and he would later become a dealer himself. Yet no record names his teacher.
The few people who met him wrote down very little. In 1663, twelve years before his death, a French traveler passing through Delft made a point of looking him up, and the single line he left about the visit is not what anyone would expect.
A Catholic marriage and the guild
Ten years earlier, in 1653, he married Catharina Bolnes. Her family was Catholic and wealthier than his, in a country whose official church was Protestant, and Vermeer became a Catholic himself before the wedding. Her mother was not pleased.
What You'll Discover
What he painted over.
Who the girl really is.
Who paid for the bread.
Who found him again.
Whose Vermeer Göring really bought.