Johannes Vermeer

The artist Johannes Vermeer was not very well known in his lifetime. Not much is known about his training nor do we know much about the artists he interacted with throughout his professional career. As a result, we see Vermeer’s unique as one completely his own. Throughout his oeuvre, he has developed many patterns in his compositions and subject matter. The tools and motifs he used can be found and analyzed in many of this works by contemporary scholars. However, scholars seem less willing to delve into a work that can’t be seen in person. One of his paintings has been missing from recent discourse, but it has also been missing from the world for the past 20 years. The Concert by Johannes Vermeer features three musicians working hard on their piece. Their unwavering focus is in stark contrast with the paintings hanging on the walls of this interior space created by the artist. Stolen from its frame in 1990, the work has…

The Milkmaid, by Johannes Vermeer, depicts this sense of realism through its simplicity and defined palette. You can see that Vermeer mainly focuses on using tones of red, blue and yellow. Allowing them to play off each other in terms of light and shadow, giving the viewers a unknown sense of the milkmaid. Purity can also be captured through the light washes and textures of the white walls in the back, allowing Vermeer’s palette to dance off of it. This mystery that lies over the milkmaid’s face…

Johannes Vermeer, the creator of View of Delft, born October 31st, 1632, in Delft, Netherlands. As one of the most highly regarded Butch artists of all time, Vermeer’s View of Delft, created in 1661, is a well known paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. Depicting Vermeer's hometown, this oil painting shows the sky, city, and water divided. There are a few other Vermeer paintings of Delft, including The Little Street, which tells his viewers that where he is from is valuable to him. Techniques like…

Catharina is written as a jealous, shrill, and idiotic woman who Vermeer tolerated. Their relationship is almost nonexistent in the book. She despises Griet and is unjustly cruel to her. She has multiple breakdowns, “[she] snapped at everyone else, even her husband,” and seemingly despises Vermeer’s painting habits, “she plunged the diamond blade of the knife towards the painting”. Chevalier even writes her as questioning, “‘Why,’ she asked, ‘have you never painted me?’”. This is completely…

In 1657, Johannes Vermeer painted “The Milkmaid”. It is an oil on canvas painting and it on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Vermeer was a Dutch painter who liked to get his ideas from middle class life. He used a lot of monochrome shades of grey, browns, greys, and then he would apply primary colors, reds, blues, and yellows on top, to form a transparent looking painting. He used expensive pigments to illustrate the lighting in the painting, which then helped reflect the many colors he…

are to watch the movie, “A Girl with a Pearl Earrings”, by the director Peter Weber, that was filmed in 2003. The movie is based on Johannes Vermeer, the famous artist’s life and what is the story behind his painting of the girl with the pearl earrings. The movie is quit modest with the way it presented that period of time with the way they dressed to the way they spoke. It also focused of how art was important, precious and a luxury to attain. It addresses the tough life of people that suffer…

Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, by Timothy Brook, sets out to explain how the world was transformed during the seventeenth century through a growing world market and expanding globalization between civilizations and cultures that either had not have contact or limited contact in the past. The book is organized into eight sections, each corresponding to a different piece of art created by Johannes Vermeer and other artists. Each of these sections covers a…

Vermeer’s Hat by Timothy Brook, looks at globalization in the 1600s through the works of Johannes Vermeer. These works include, View of Delft, Officer and Laughing Girl, Young Woman Reading a Letter, The Geographer, Woman Holding a Balance, and The Card Players. The book also looks at works that are not Vermeer’s, including, a plate from the Lambert Van Meerten Museum of Delft, and Emperor Guan, The Chinese God of War. Brooks uses these works of art to examine globalization, through the close…

Before she moved across town to serve the Vermeer family, Griet, the main character, had a close bond with her family. Her mother, sister Agnes and Griet would laugh during their daily chores and she would explore the city of Delft, their dutch hometown, with her two beloved siblings, Agnes and Frans. She was able to talk and confide in her father, who helped her gain perspective and wisdom. Everything changed as Griet’s family found misfortune when her father, a tiler in Delft, lost his…

trickster is a perpetual reminder of flaws, and eventually incites a change in the main characters, unconsciously teaching them a valuable lesson that affects their personality for the rest of the story. Artists are tricksters because their works can influence their viewers allowing them to face their flaws, and come to terms with reality. In Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vermeer acted as a trickster in his style of painting and seeing things as they were. “I thought he would begin to paint what…