44 Facts About Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life.

Johannes Vermeer is acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Johannes Vermeer produced relatively few paintings, primarily earning his living as an art dealer.

Johannes Vermeer was not wealthy at his death, leaving his wife in debt.

Johannes Vermeer is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

Johannes Vermeer was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries.

Similar to other major Dutch Golden Age artists such as Frans Hals and Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer never went abroad.

Johannes Vermeer seems to have been devoted exclusively to his art, living out his life in the city of Delft.

Johannes Vermeer's father, named Reijnier Janszoon, was a middle-class worker of silk or caffa.

The fact that Johannes Vermeer's father was in considerable debt did not help in discussions on the marriage.

Johannes Vermeer's 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.

Johannes Vermeer's wife gave birth to 15 children, four of whom were buried before being baptized, but were registered as "child of Johan Vermeer".

Liedtke suggests that Johannes Vermeer taught himself using information from one of his father's connections.

Some scholars think that Johannes Vermeer was trained under Catholic painter Abraham Bloemaert.

Johannes 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.

The guild's records make clear that Johannes Vermeer did not pay the usual admission fee.

Johannes Vermeer was responding to the market of Gerard Dou's paintings, who sold his paintings for exorbitant prices.

Johannes Vermeer charged higher than average prices for his work, most of which were purchased by an unknown collector.

In 1662, Johannes Vermeer 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.

Johannes 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 Johannes Vermeer had no paintings to show.

In 1674, Johannes Vermeer was listed as a member of the civic guards.

Johannes Vermeer had to raise 11 children and therefore asked the High Court to relieve her of debts owed to Vermeer's creditors.

Nineteen of Johannes Vermeer's paintings were bequeathed to Catharina and her mother.

Johannes Vermeer had been a respected artist in Delft, but he was almost unknown outside his hometown.

Johannes Vermeer never had any pupils, though one scholar has suggested that Johannes Vermeer taught his eldest daughter Maria to paint.

Johannes Vermeer used this in not just elements that are naturally of this colour; he used it early in a work, beneath subsequent earth colours such as umber and ochre, to subtly tint their shade.

An example of Johannes Vermeer using ultramarine as an underpaint is in The Girl with the Wine Glass.

Johannes Vermeer's works are largely genre pieces and portraits, with the exception of two cityscapes and two allegories.

Johannes Vermeer's 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.

Johannes Vermeer is best known for his frequent use of the very expensive ultramarine, and lead-tin-yellow, madder lake, and vermilion.

In 2001, British artist David Hockney published the book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, in which he argued that Johannes Vermeer used optics to achieve precise positioning in their compositions, and specifically some combination of curved mirrors, camera obscura, and camera lucida.

Philip Steadman published the book Johannes Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces in 2001 which specifically claimed that Johannes Vermeer had used a camera obscura to create his paintings.

Steadman noted that many of Johannes Vermeer's paintings had been painted in the same room, and he found six of his paintings that are precisely the right size if they had been painted from inside a camera obscura in the room's back wall.

In 2008, American entrepreneur and inventor Tim Jenison developed the theory that Johannes Vermeer had used a camera obscura along with a "comparator mirror", which is similar in concept to a camera lucida but much simpler and makes it easy to match colour values.

Johannes Vermeer later modified the theory to simply involve a concave mirror and a comparator mirror.

Johannes Vermeer spent the next five years testing his theory by attempting to re-create The Music Lesson himself using these tools, a process captured in the 2013 documentary film Tim's Vermeer.

However, Johannes Vermeer was in close connection with pioneer lens maker Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who was his executor after death.

Only three Johannes Vermeer paintings were dated by the artist: The Procuress ; The Astronomer ; and The Geographer.

Almost all of Johannes Vermeer's paintings are of contemporary subjects in a smaller format, with a cooler palette dominated by blues, yellows, and grays.

Johannes Vermeer painted multiple artworks portraying a pure profile like the painting Woman with a Pearl Necklace, which was uncommon in Dutch art at the time.

Originally, Johannes Vermeer's works were largely overlooked by art historians for two centuries after his death.

Thore-Burger's catalogue drew international attention to Johannes Vermeer and listed more than 70 works by him, including many that he regarded as uncertain.

Johannes Vermeer became a master forger, motivated by a blend of aesthetic and financial reasons, creating and selling many new "Vermeers" before turning himself in for forgery to avoid being charged with capital treason for collaboration with the Nazis, specifically, in selling what had been believed to be original artwork to the Nazis.