Art and Science in Vermeer Paintings

This environment of scientific advancement was well known throughout Holland and a subject of national pride. Vermeer honored its importance by portraying a scientist at work in The Astronomer and The Geographer. In both of these paintings, he used Antonie van Leeuwenhoek as a model.

Johannes Vermeer and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Vermeer and Van Leeuwenhoek were born within a week of each other. Their names are on the same page of the registry of baptisms in Delft’s Nieuwe Kerk (New Church). They grew up in the shadow of that church, two short blocks away from each other. Van Leeuwenhoek was the first person to build a microscope powerful enough to allow him to see and describe living single-celled organisms. He called them animalcules, Latin for “little animals.”

When Vermeer died, Van Leeuwenhoek was the administrator of his estate—a thankless task, as Vermeer died in considerable debt. Vermeer’s wife and mother-in-law were both positioning themselves for protection from creditors, which would not have made his task any easier. The two men are both buried in the Oude Kerk (Old Church), 450 meters from the church in which they were baptized.

The 1686 portrait of Van Leeuwenhoek by Jan Verkolje was done more than 20 years after the two Vermeer paintings. The resemblance is strong enough to suggest that a younger version of Van Leeuwenhoek was the sitter in both of Vermeer’s paintings.

The Verkolje portrait shows Van Leeuwenhoek at a writing table, on which sits the documentation of his appointment to the Royal Society in London. Van Leeuwenhoek eventually would publish some 350 papers with the Royal Society. It makes sense that such a prolific writer would position himself at a table with paper and a quill when he sat for his portrait.

The painting predictably includes a lens, but surprisingly no microscope. It also features a celestial globe quite similar to the one in The Astronomer. He is holding a caliper in his hands, as is the scientist in The Geographer. In both paintings he is wearing a Japanese robe. Showing scholars in such kimonos suggested a worldly sophistication and a sense of grandeur.

There is no documentation to tell us anything about the relationship Van Leeuwenhoek and Vermeer may have had, but I imagine it was a close one. I suspect that Vermeer’s ability to portray light in his paintings and Van Leeuwenhoek’s reliance on light to use his microscopes would have led to interesting conversations in the tavern at day’s end. I can imagine the two talking about their work, both so dependent on light for their success, but in such different ways.

The Paintings

The Astronomer and The Geographer were meant to be hung together as pendants. They are nearly the same size and utilize many of the same props: a large storage cabinet, slightly bowed windows, and globes. They are both dated—which isn’t typical of Vermeer paintings—and show that they were completed in successive years.

Recent analysis suggests that the canvases came from the same bolt of cloth, again hinting that they were conceived together. They are not mentioned in any of the collections of Vermeer’s benefactors, suggesting that they may have been commissioned works—perhaps commissioned by Van Leeuwenhoek himself. They were sold together in 1729 as “Two Astrologers,” and were likely together before that, although their early provenance is unknown. They changed hands several more times as a pair, and only went on their separate journeys at an auction in 1797.

The Astronomer

In looking at The Astronomer, we should discard any notions about the man’s profession based on the currently-used title of the painting. The title of course did not come from Vermeer. Over the years, the character in the painting has been identified as a mathematical artist, an astrologer, a scholar, a philosopher, or just “a person.” There is no telescope among the various instruments he has at his disposal, even though telescopes had been developed in Holland by that time. It would be incorrect to assume he is an astronomer in the Carl Sagan or Neil DeGrasse Tyson sense of the word. The scientist portrayed here might be more aligned with astrology than astronomy.

Regardless of his precise line of work, the subject of this painting is clearly a learned man, as was Van Leeuwenhoek. Some ten books sit atop the cabinet, although we can’t discern their titles. The front of the cabinet is decorated with a diagram that includes circles and direction indicators, although what exactly the figures means is a mystery.

Many of the items on the table have been identified in Martin Bailey’s 1995 book, Vermeer: A View of Delft.¹  The celestial globe on the table was produced in Amsterdam and dates to 1600. The visible constellations include Ursa Major, Draco, and Lyra. To the left of the globe, partially obscured by the carpet on the table, is an astrolabe built by Willem Janszoon Blaeu, the Dutch cartographer who made the map on the wall in The Geographer and other maps in Vermeer paintings. Astrolabes were used by astronomers and astrologers alike to identify the positions of the sun and stars. Adriaen Metius’ 1621 book, On the Investigation or Observation of the Stars, lies open on the table. The left page of the open book shows an astrolabe, as though the scientist in the painting is consulting the book for instruction on how to use it. The text on the right page indicates that, “One can learn to measure in the sky through certain geometrical instruments the situation the stars have in accordance with their longitude and latitude.”

In the 1660s, when both masterpieces were painted, Galileo had only been dead for 25 years. Newton’s arguments about gravitational pull, which explained the orbits of the planets, had not yet been published. The notion of a heliocentric solar system with the Earth and other planets in orbit around the sun was novel and not yet widely accepted; the Church’s acceptance of that idea was still a century away. Hence, with the possible exception of Galileo and perhaps a few others, when these paintings were done it was widely presumed that all natural phenomena had moral or spiritual significance. It was believed that The Creator placed everything in our world for a reason; everything had a lesson attached to it.

It should not be too surprising, therefore, that the painting-within-the-painting, The Finding of Moses, which can be visible on the right, has links to both 17th-century modern science and to biblical teachings. Including Moses in the scene suggests that the knowledge being addressed by the man in the painting is in fact ancient knowledge. In the Bible, Moses is said to be “learned in all the wisdom of Egypt,” which would probably have included astronomy. He was also said to be the world’s “oldest geographer,” having needed such skills to lead the Hebrews out of their exile.

But why would the painting about Moses the Geographer be in The Astronomer painting rather than The Geographer? The answer is revealed if the two are viewed as pendants and hung with The Astronomer on the left. In that way, the part of The Finding of Moses painting that is outside of the frame is linked to The Geographer.

The Geographer

While the title of The Astronomer suggests to a contemporary viewer something of the scientific endeavor that is above and beyond what is actually depicted in the painting, that is not the case in The Geographer. The Dutch were mapmakers in this era, and this man is all about maps.

The globe on the cabinet is rotated such that the Indian Ocean is facing us—a reminder of the prominence of the Dutch East Indian Trading Company in that part of the world. The wall hanging is a map of the coastlines of Europe. The floor, usually decorated with tiles in Vermeer paintings, in this instance is quite plain, except for the two rolled-up maps lying on the floor behind the man. The rolled-up tube on his desk and the chart before him have unfortunately been overzealously cleaned, removing details that would help us identify them precisely. But clearly, the sheet before him is a map, necessitating his calipers to make a calculation.

Van Leeuwenhoek was, among many things, a surveyor. In the Jan Verkolje portrait of Van Leeuwenhoek, he is holding a caliper identical to the one he is holding in Vermeer’s painting. As Van Leeuwenhoek presumably had a say in what was going to be portrayed in these paintings, it is noteworthy that he chose a caliper over one of his microscopes. Clearly, he considered his role as a geographer and his connection to maps to be important.

It is not surprising that in the paintings depicting science in the Dutch Golden Age, cartography would be one of the chosen subjects. Advances in calculus, timekeeping, and astronomy were certainly important, but cartography would have been more representative of national pride than any other scientific endeavor. The Dutch controlled the seas, both in terms of naval might and commerce. Maps are on the walls of nine Vermeer paintings—one-fourth of his output. So, in paying homage to science in his time, a painting overflowing with maps—on the table, on the floor, and on the wall—makes perfectly good sense.

Need For Art and Science

In both of these paintings, the subjects are portrayed as learned men, regardless of their specific endeavors. They wear the robes of a scholar. Both men are surrounded by stacks of books, and instruments that would only have meaning to educated people. Both paintings capture something of the joy of discovery.

As a scientist, I feel an affinity with Vermeer’s respect for academic knowledge in these paintings. When I was a student, I had the sense that the scientific part of my brain and the artistic part were unrelated, or at least very distant cousins. I thought that if I was going to develop the scientific part of my brain, I would do so at the expense of the artistic part. That is of course nonsense. An accurate perception of the world around us is difficult to achieve in general and is made even more so with a limited perspective. We need both Leonardo and Darwin in our sphere of reference if we are going to understand anything. By creating these two paintings, Vermeer shows us that he was well aware of the importance of science in his artistic world.