Vermeer

Here are some works that were presented by The Rijksmuseum for the master Johannes Vermeer exhibition from February 10 to June 4, 2023. With loans from all over the world, this was the largest Vermeer exhibition ever.

• A Lady Writing, 1664–67, National Gallery of Art, Washington

• A Young Woman seated at a Virginal, c. 1670–72, The National Gallery, London

• A Young Woman standing at a Virginal, 1670–72, The National Gallery, London

• Allegory of the Catholic Faith, 1670–74, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

• Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, 1654–55, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh

• Diana and her Nymphs, 1655–56, Mauritshuis, The Hague

• Girl Interrupted at Her Music, c. 1659–61, The Frick Collection, New York

• Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, 1657-58, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

• Girl with a Flute, 1664–67, National Gallery of Art, Washington

• Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1664–67, Mauritshuis, The Hague

• Girl with the Red Hat, 1664–67, National Gallery of Art, Washington

• Mistress and Maid, c. 1665–67, The Frick Collection, New York

• Officer and Laughing Girl, 1657-58, The Frick Collection, New York

• Saint Praxedis, 1655, Kufu Company Inc., The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

• The Geographer, 1669, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

• The Glass of Wine, c. 1659-61, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie

• The Lacemaker, 1666–68, Musée du Louvre, Paris

• The Love Letter, 1669-70, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

• The Milkmaid, 1658-59, Rijksmuseum

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch artist who created paintings that are among the most beloved and revered images in the history of art. He was baptized on October 31, 1632, in Delft, Netherlands and was buried on December 16, 1675, in Delft1. Although only about 36 of his paintings survive, these rare works are among the greatest treasures in the world’s finest museums.

Vermeer was born into a family of merchants in Delft. His father was a weaver who was also registered as an art dealer in the Delft Saint Luke’s Guild in 1631. Vermeer continued this activity as an art dealer alongside his career as an artist3. After his father’s death, Vermeer joined the Saint Luke’s Guild as a master painter in December 1653.

Vermeer began his career in the early 1650s by painting large-scale biblical and mythological scenes, but most of his later paintings—the ones for which he is most famous—depict scenes of daily life in interior settings. These works are remarkable for their purity of light and form, qualities that convey a serene, timeless sense of dignity.

Vermeer converted to Catholicism for the purpose of marrying a young girl of comfortable means. He became the father of a very large family, with 15 children born from this union.

Vermeer was primarily a genre painter, who enjoyed representing interiors and intimate scenes. The artist paid close attention to the representation of light and perspective effects. In addition to his immense knowledge of painting, he also used a camera obscura, a device that allowed him to accurately capture the depth and details of a landscape or interior, like a photograph.

Vermeer’s works often have an impenetrable character. Whether it is his Lacemaker (1669-1671) or his Milkmaid (1658-1660), none interact with the viewer. They are internalized figures, focused on their manual task. Elements in the foreground often obstruct the spectator’s temptation to enter this intimacy. The simplest gestures of daily life are revealed with melancholic poetry.

Jan Vermeer, one of the greatest Dutch masters, is responsible for some of the most iconic imagery in the history of art, such as The Girl with a Pearl Earring (ca.1665), The Milkmaid (ca. 1660) and The Art of Painting (1665-1668). His artworks are a rarity, with only around 36 known paintings attributed to him.

After two or three early history paintings, he concentrated almost entirely on genre works, typically interiors with one or two figures. His popularity is due less to his subject matter than to the poetic manner in which he portrays his subjects.

Vermeer is mainly known for his genre scenes. These present, in a style that combines mystery and familiarity, formal perfection and poetic depth, interiors and scenes of domestic life, to represent a world more perfect than the one he could have witnessed.

The Girl with a Pearl Earring is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, dated c. 1665. It is not a portrait, but a ‘tronie’ – a painting of an imaginary figure. Tronies depict a certain type or character; in this case, a girl in exotic dress, wearing an oriental turban and an improbably large pearl in her ear.

The painting represents a young woman in a dark shallow space, an intimate setting that draws the viewer’s attention exclusively on her. She wears a blue and gold turban, the titular pearl earring, and a gold jacket with a visible white collar beneath. The work has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902 and has been the subject of various literary and cinematic treatments.

The Milkmaid, sometimes called The Kitchen Maid, is an oil-on-canvas painting of a “milkmaid”, in fact, a domestic kitchen maid, by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which regards it as "unquestionably one of the museum’s finest attractions".

The painting shows a milkmaid, a woman who milks cows and makes dairy products like butter and cheese, in a plain room carefully pouring milk into a squat earthenware container on a table. Also on the table are various types of bread. She is a young, sturdily built woman wearing a crisp linen cap, a blue apron and work sleeves pushed up from thick forearms.

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter who created many famous works during his lifetime. Some of his most well-known paintings include:

• The Girl with a Pearl Earring (ca.1665)

• The Milkmaid (ca. 1660)

• The Art of Painting (1665-1668)

• View of Delft (1660–1661)

• The Lacemaker (1669-1670)

• Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (1657)

• The Astronomer (1668)

• The Geographer (1668-1669)

• Lady Standing at a Virginal (1673–1675)

The Lacemaker is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, completed around 1669–1670 and held in the Louvre, Paris. The work shows a young woman dressed in a yellow shawl, holding up a pair of bobbins in her left hand as she carefully places a pin in the pillow on which she is making her bobbin lace.

At 24.5 cm × 21 cm (9.6 in × 8.3 in), the work is the smallest of Vermeer’s paintings and is seen by one author as one of his most abstract and unusual. The girl is set against a blank wall, probably because the artist sought to eliminate any external distractions from the central image.

This representation was uploaded to the rijksmuseum website with the agreement of the museum.

The Milkmaid, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1660 is part of the museum's collection.

The Milkmaid is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, created around 1657-16581. It is also known as The Kitchen Maid, and depicts a domestic kitchen maid pouring milk into a container on a table1. The painting is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which regards it as "unquestionably one of the museum’s finest attractions".

Vermeer was known for his masterful use of light to enhance the mood and character of his images. In The Milkmaid, he used light to create a strikingly illusionistic effect, conveying not just details but a sense of the weight of the woman and the table. The painting is also notable for its use of color, with yellow and blue being the dominant colors. Vermeer used expensive natural ultramarine to give his blues an exceptional vividness, in tune with his similarly luminous handling of lead-tin yellow.

The Milkmaid has been described as emanating a sense of wholesomeness and moral purpose, stemming from the steadfastness of her gaze as she carefully measures the milk into an earthenware bowl. These qualities are also derived from the sheer physical power of her being, which Vermeer emphasized through the unusually bold modeling of her figure. The painting has been compared to the Mona Lisa in terms of its ability to evoke a sense of mystery and intrigue in modern viewers.