Summary
- One of Vermeer’s earliest paintings, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is a good example of the religious paintings Vermeer created when he was an apprentice painter.
- Vermeer’s next painting was a bordello scene called The Procuress, thematically completely different from Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.
- If The Procuress is the most raucous of Vermeer’s paintings, A Maid Asleep, is perhaps his most quiet. A single character is present, and she is not even conscious.
- Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window was the first of Vermeer’s six paintings that featured letters and was the first of many paintings in which Vermeer carefully assembled a group of objects in his studio to tell a particular story.
- Perhaps the most loved of Vermeer’s genre paintings is The Milkmaid, a depiction of a woman in the simple everyday task of making bread pudding in a kitchen.
- View of Delft is perhaps the most famous cityscape in Western art. In this painting, Vermeer shows us his love for his hometown.
- The Music Lesson is one of 14 Vermeer paintings including a musical instrument. It features a mirror on the wall that gives us clues about what the painting is really about.
- The Art of Painting is not about painting: It is about the art of painting. Vermeer tells us about the spiritual, metaphysical, and supernatural experience of painting a scene, telling a story, and creating magic from it.
- Girl with a Pearl Earring is perhaps the most recognizable and most revered of Vermeer’s paintings. If Mona Lisa’s smile is the most famous in Western Art, the Girl with a Pearl Earring would be a strong candidate for second place.
- The Lacemaker is the smallest of Vermeer’s paintings on canvas. Renoir considered this painting to be the most beautiful in the world.
1. Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
Johannes Vermeer, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, c. 1654–1655, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK.
When Vermeer executed this painting, he would have been an apprentice learning his trade under the tutelage of a master painter. We do not know who his teacher was, but it would be expected at this early stage of his training for him to focus on paintings with religious and mythological themes.
The story in this painting is of Jesus being welcomed into the home of the sisters Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38–42). Martha is busy preparing a meal and doing the work involved with hosting a guest. She becomes annoyed with the apparent laziness of her sister, who sits enraptured at the feet of Jesus. Martha complains to Jesus, asking him to tell Mary to do her share of the work. Jesus rebukes her, saying “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the better part, which shall not be taken from her.” The story continues to inspire art into the 21st century, including the John Adams oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary, and the complaints of Sally in Amor Towles’ novel The Lincoln Highway.
At the earliest stage of his career, Vermeer was focused on religious themes. However, the trajectory of this young painter was about to make a rather dramatic pivot.
2. The Procuress
Johannes Vermeer, The Procuress, 1656, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany.
In October of 1654, there was an enormous explosion of a secret gunpowder magazine in Delft: the Thunderclap. It destroyed a quarter of the city and killed hundreds. It was a game-changer for anyone living in Delft.
The first painting that Vermeer did after the Delft Thunderclap was not a subtle change in direction. It was a profound and dramatic departure from the artist’s earlier work. The Procuress is neither a religious painting like the previous ones nor a genre scene we associate with Vermeer’s later work. This painting rests at a clear transition in Vermeer’s career. Here, a madame is overseeing a transaction between a drunken sex worker and her customer, with another grinning drunk looking on. This is a raucous and boozy scene.
With four characters, this is a crowded painting by Vermeer standards. The prostitute seems to be the purest of the group, with her white bonnet, yellow bodice, and flushed face getting the greater part of the light in the painting. The customer, acting the peacock with his red coat and his ostentatious hat, is dropping a coin into the courtesan’s hand. His left hand, getting a head-start on the activities to follow, is fondling the woman’s breast. She is unconcerned with that advance, focused instead on the coin about to drop into her hand. Her left hand is grasping an oversized goblet of white wine next to a Delft-blue porcelain wine jug about to topple from the arm of the chair.
The shifty-eyed procuress is the darkest and most hidden of the characters. Austere in her black attire, her smile tells us she is pleased with the transaction she has arranged. The grinning fellow to the left is not a part of the business at hand but is nevertheless part of the party atmosphere, holding the neck of a cittern in one hand and a glass of beer in the other. He raises his glass in a toast to us, catching us red-handed as voyeurs on the scene. He invites us to stay and enjoy the bawdy scene with him.
That toastmaster is perhaps Vermeer himself, sporting the same long hair and wearing the same beret and the black jerkin with the distinctive slashed sleeves that reoccur in The Art of Painting (see below). If it is, then this is the only image we have of what Vermeer may have looked like.
3. A Maid Asleep
Johannes Vermeer, A Maid Asleep, c. 1656–1657, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY, USA.
If The Procuress is the most raucous of Vermeer’s paintings, this next one, A Maid Asleep, is perhaps his most quiet. A single character is present, and she is not even conscious.
The table supports a bowl of fruit and various hard-to-identify objects in a state of disarray. The assemblage includes a white ceramic wine jug, that will be a part of many Vermeer paintings to follow, and two wine glasses. The smaller, nearly empty glass is in front of the woman. The larger one, a Roemer glass typically used by men, lies overturned on the table next to a chair that has been vacated and turned away from the table.
The elements of the story—the glass overturned, the chair pointing away from the table, and the empty doorway—make it clear that her drinking companion has left and suggests that it was not a happy departure. The woman is at the very least disappointed, but more likely in a state of drunken despair. She will no doubt face the “What the hell happened?” question in the morning.
4. Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window
Johannes Vermeer, Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, c. 1657–1659, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany.
Six of Vermeer’s paintings have to do with women and letters—receiving them, reading them, or writing them. Literacy in Holland in Vermeer’s day was the highest in Europe, and literacy among women was perhaps triple what it was in the rest of Europe. It would have been a matter of national pride, and not surprising at all, that so many of Vermeer’s paintings involved letters, and that all of them involved women.
Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window was the first of the six paintings that featured letters and was the first of many paintings in which Vermeer carefully assembled a group of objects in his studio to tell a particular story. We will see the same room and variations of the same window in many of his paintings. Frequently Vermeer would set up the room with a woman alone or with a companion, engaged in an everyday task: dressing for the day, working in the kitchen, playing a musical instrument, or writing a letter. In this painting, a solitary woman stands at her window reading a letter in the morning light.
Want to learn more about this painting and what might be in the letter? See our article.
5. The Milkmaid
Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, c. 1660, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Vermeer is perhaps best known for his so-called “genre paintings.” These are paintings that depict interior scenes of simple activities of everyday life. Perhaps the most loved of all of Vermeer’s genre paintings and one of the earliest ones is The Milkmaid.
The woman in the painting is making bread pudding. She has the ingredients in front of her—stale bread from the day before, some cheese that is past the point of being served alone, and a jug of beer for added flavor. She begins her task by pouring milk from a pitcher into a bowl.
She is a sturdy woman, used to hard work. Her shirtsleeves are pushed up in the warmth of the kitchen, allowing us to see the tan lines on her forearms from working outdoors with her sleeves down.
Any exhibit of Dutch art would be replete with still lifes—arrangements of fruits, glassware, and other objects on tables. Vermeer is not credited with a single one. However, if one were to consider the arrangement on the tabletop in this painting of the breadbasket, the bread, the cheese, the beer jug, and the bowl, we would have a masterful still life that rivals any of the Dutch Golden Age.
6. View of Delft
Johannes Vermeer, View of Delft, c. 1660–1661, Mauritshuis, The Hague, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
View of Delft is a favorite for many. It was a favorite from the beginning. In the 1696 auction of the 21 Vermeer paintings in the collection of Jacob Dissius, it fetched the sum of 200 guilders, more than any other paintings in the collection. Vincent van Gogh, who lived in The Hague on two occasions, visited the Mauritshuis and wrote to his brother Theo about the paintings he had seen, singling out this one. When Marcel Proust needed an image of artistic perfection in his novel In Search of Lost Time, he used this painting. A character in Proust’s book, an elderly writer named Bergotte, visited this painting and remarked on a “little patch of yellow.” Bergotte then took ill and died. The yellow patch may be the roof just beyond the spire of the Rotterdam Gate, although there is no way to be sure.
In this painting, Vermeer shows us something of the love he has for his hometown. He can appreciate these things of beauty in his world and asks us to do so as well.
To learn more about this painting and to have some fun, take this quiz.
7. The Music Lesson
Johannes Vermeer, Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman (The Music Lesson), c. 1662–1664, Royal Collection, Buckingham Palace, London, UK.
Music was an important part of Dutch life, and 14 Vermeer paintings include a musical instrument—more than a third of his output. The inventory includes a recorder, a trumpet, a guitar, two citterns, three lutes, three virginals, a harpsichord, and four violas de gamba, and that is not counting the instruments that appear in paintings on the walls of the scenes. Clearly, music was a big part of Vermeer’s world.
In this painting, it is the mirror above the virginal that provides the most interesting details of the painting. The reflection of the woman in the mirror is not accurate. We can see from the back of her head that she is concentrating on the keyboard of her instrument. But in the reflected image she has her head turned to the right, towards the gentlemen. Is this an oversight? Of course not. The mirror is showing us a different side to reality: Her mind may be focused on her playing, but her heart is focused on the gentleman. Vermeer is reminding us that in love, the head and the heart are not always aligned.
The mirror also shows us a detail that is not seen in the direct view: Beyond the reflection of the carpet on the table we see the artist’s easel. By including the easel, Vermeer is reminding us that this is a contrived scene. It is not actually a woman playing an instrument with a gentleman at her side, but it is two models in an artist’s studio posing to tell such a story. It is generous of Vermeer to let us in on the secret—much like a magician letting the audience know how the trick was performed.
8. The Art of Painting
Johannes Vermeer, The Art of Painting, c. 1666–1668, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.
This painting is not about painting. It is about the art of painting. Vermeer is telling us about the spiritual, metaphysical, and supernatural experience of painting a scene, telling a story, and creating magic from it.
The model’s head is topped with a laurel crown, and she holds a trumpet and a book in her hands, all props that identify her as Clio, the Greek Muse of History. The artist’s sketchbook is open on the table next to him. His maulstick rests between his lap and the top of the canvas to steady his hand and protect the wet paint on the canvas from an errant sleeve or brush.
But the studio as depicted is a fantasy. An artist’s studio as tidy as this one does not exist. There is not a drop of paint to be seen on the floor or the easel. The necessary pigments and solvents are nowhere to be seen. We don’t see a palette or a second brush. And we have never seen an artist dressed so formally when at work. We would expect him to be in a smock or apron, certainly not clothes that are as fresh and formal as these. This painting is not done to document the methods of the artist. Rather, The Art of Painting pays homage to the nature of art itself.
9. Girl with a Pearl Earring
Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, c. 1665, Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands.
Girl with a Pearl Earring is perhaps the most recognizable and most revered of Vermeer’s paintings. Although it is fun to speculate on just who this young woman is, this is not meant to be a portrait representing a particular person; rather, it is an example of a sort of painting known as a tronie.
Tronies are paintings done from live models, but not intended to be recognized as portraits of specific people. They represent interesting characters wearing interesting costumes in interesting situations. The sitters for the tronies would have been anonymous, as the paintings were done for the mass market. They were a big part of the livelihood of many artists of the Dutch Golden Age.
Adriaen Brouwer, The Bitter Potion, 1636–1638, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany.
Joos van Craesbeeck, The Smoker, c. 1635–1636, Louvre, Paris, France.
Rembrandt, “Tronie” of a Man with a Feathered Beret c. 1635–1640, Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands.
Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Red Hat, c. 1669, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA.
The Bitter Potion
This fellow is clearly not happy with what he is drinking!
The Smoker
He seems a bit surprised by what is in his pipe!
A Fancy Hat
This man clearly thinks he looks dapper in this peculiar hat. I’m not so sure.
A Girl with a Red Hat
This beautiful woman is a tronie: The 17th century equivalent of a Hallmark card…
If the Mona Lisa’s smile is the most famous in Western Art, Girl with a Pearl Earring would be a strong candidate for second place. But they are certainly different smiles.
10. The Lacemaker
Johannes Vermeer, The Lacemaker, c. 1669–1670, Louvre, Paris, France.
The Lacemaker is the smallest of Vermeer’s paintings on canvas, a scant 24.5 x 21 cm (9 5/8 x 8 1/4 in.) But The Lacemaker is also surely one of his most beloved. It is one of the most popular paintings at the Louvre. Renoir considered this painting, which entered the Louvre in 1870, to be the most beautiful painting in the world.
Perhaps the most engaging part of the picture, from a technical point of view, is the collection of red and white threads resting on the blue sewing cushion at her side. The gossamer threads in her hands are pulled taut. But those in her inventory on the cushion seem to have been painted a bit out of focus, as they would appear out of the corner of our eye if we were looking at her rather than those threads. The viewer is as focused on her work as she is.
The woman is bent over her three-legged lacemaker’s table as she manipulates the bobbins and pins used in her craft. Her concentration is complete: She has not even noticed that we have entered her space. That focus speaks to the honor of hard work, much admired by the Dutch in Vermeer’s day. Her right arm is resting on a book but she is not using it for instruction. Instead, she is relying on it to provide a firm foundation for her work. It is perhaps a prayer book or a Bible, providing her with a sense of balance to help her accomplish her task. Vermeer might have included that prayer book to show us that her work is more than just a noble task but spiritual in nature.
All of Vermeer’s genre scenes have in common a sense of dignity, honor, and virtue in simple tasks. Whether preparing for one’s day or engaged in a task in the kitchen or sewing room, Vermeer is showing us that there is inherent value in the labor of the everyday.
