Rijksmuseum Vermeer
VermeerWith 36 works attributed to him, Johannes Vermeer is amongst the most appreciated artists of the Dutch Golden Age. Born in 1632 - son of a silk worker who even was an art dealer - Vermeer might have been pupil of Leonaert Bramer or Carel Fabritius. His life was spent between economical highs and downs, which finaly led to an economical collapse after the Rampjaar, when the demand for luxury items dropped and Vermeer found himself without customers for his paintings. When he died, he left his wife - along with eleven children - in debt.
The artist specialized in domestic interior scenes of ordinary bourgeois life, sometimes charged with references and allegories, such as in the piece the "Love letter", where two pictures in the background indicate the final artist's intention to instruct about the perils of love, or as in "the allegories of faith", which reflects Catholic belief in the Eucharist. The poetic quality of his images is rendered by his treatment and use of light, by the production of transparent colours, with a technique known as pointillé, by the likely use of a camera obscura and by the lavish use (as underpaint too!) of certain overly expensive pigments, such as lapis lazuli, natural ultramarine, and ochre.
One of his paints - which has gained worldwide attention thanks to Tracy Chevalier's book too - Girl with a Pearl Earring, is known as the Mona Lisa of the North.
