David de Haan Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. Babs van Eijk Ingrid van der Vlis
Museum Prinsenhof Delft Waanders Uitgevers, Zwolle
Today, if you look up in the Historic Room in Museum Prinsenhof Delft you will see an impressive, painted ceiling with angels playing music. This scene, painted between 1667 and 1669 by Delft master Leonaert Bramer, would have been seen by painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) with his own eyes. At that time painters, potters and other craftspeople active in the city and members of St. Luke’s Guild would have been keen to look at and evaluate one another’s work. The Prinsenhof is right in the historical heart of Delft – the place where Vermeer lived and worked. Traces from Johannes Vermeer’s time, such as the city hall on the Market Square and the Oude en Nieuwe Kerk can still be seen in Delft today, outside the walls of the Prinsenhof. If you squint and peer across Oude Delft towards the Oude Kerk, it’s easy to imagine the painter strolling along the canalside.
Vermeer is one of the very best Dutch painters of the seventeenth century. He lived and worked all his life in Delft, but today his intimate, quiet paintings are familiar to people all around the world. Vermeer is such a phenomenon that we are even able to dedicate an exhibition to him here without including a single one of his paintings – a considerable part of Vermeer’s oeuvre is currently on display at the Vermeer exhibition in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Vermeer’s Delft in Museum Prinsenhof Delft focuses on Vermeer’s life, his network and his relationship to the city of Delft. We go in search of the influence the city and its inhabitants had on the man and his work. By zooming in on the fertile artistic, socio-economic, scientific and religious climate of seventeenth-century Delft, we try to present a more clearly defined picture of the artist. The people who inhabited the painter’s immediate circles colour our portrait of the great master with their personal stories. Visitors to our exhibition will meet his mother-in-law Maria Thins, fellow painter Leonaert Bramer, family notary Willem de Langue, collectors and art-lovers Maria de Knuijt and her husband Pieter van Ruijven and master baker Hendrick van Buyten, as well as microbiologist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and surveyor Jacob Spoors. This allows us to get up close and personal with the painter and show the man behind the work. Vermeer was not only a painter – he was a husband, a son-in-law, an entrepreneur, a father, a member of the guild
and the city militia; in short, a man at the very centre of Delft society. Never before has this cultural-historical perspective been the starting point for an exhibition on the world-famous Delft master.
In Vermeer’s Delft, we are showing more than a hundred objects from the Netherlands and abroad, including key works by Delft painters, crafts, maps, prints, drawings, books, ego-documents and archival source materials. We bring the city and the painter to life and show how Vermeer was able to become one of the most-loved artists of the seventeenth century. This exhibition gives Museum Prinsenhof Delft an opportunity to place its exceptional collection – including paintings, Delftware, furniture and textiles – in a specific Vermeer context. Alongside the famous Delft blue ceramics and William of Orange, works by seventeenth-century Delft masters are an area of special focus for our museum.
Vermeer worked during an exciting, innovative period when painting, and genre painting in particular, flourished in this city. After 1650, Delft in fact became one of the major centres for fine art in the Dutch Republic. Naturally, our exhibition presents top works by the most important Delft masters from the period 1650-1675: Pieter de Hooch, Jan Steen, Gerard Houckgeest, Cornelis de Man, Anthonie Palamedesz and Maria van Oosterwijck. On the basis of their paintings, we can sketch out the artistic climate surrounding Vermeer, which helped form him as an artist.
Some of these works have never before been seen in an exhibition in Delft, such as the painting Adolf and Catharina Croeser, Known as ‘The Burgomaster of Delft and his Daughter’ by Jan Steen from the Rijksmuseum – an absolute masterpiece. A second key work in the exhibition is The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen, on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. This painting may have been in the collection of Maria Thins, Vermeer’s wealthy, Catholic mother-in-law, with whom he lived with his wife and children. He would have seen this painting in the house on a daily basis. Vermeer painted this work in the background of some of his own paintings, including A Young Lady seated at a Virginal (The National Gallery, London).
During preparations for the exhibition, Museum Prinsenhof Delft was able – thanks to assistance from Vereniging Rembrandt – to acquire a new key item:
a painted flat frame with putti and a still life by Cornelis de Man. This painted mirror frame – a rarity in seventeenth-century art – is a marvellous key piece that demonstrates the high quality of Delft painting at the time of Johannes Vermeer.
Archival sources from City Archives Delft give testimony to the ups-and-downs of Vermeer’s family, friends and colleagues. These also reveal the close ties Vermeer maintained with his fellow painters, as well as with a number of important figures in Delft society. For this exhibition, we re-examined the most significant sources and have even found new ones, as you can read in the articles by David de Haan and Babs van Eijk. At least equally important to the formation of Vermeer was the scientific climate in Delft at the time, where curious amateurs and professionals were making new discoveries in their attempts to fathom God’s creation, as Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. demonstrates in his essay. Just how colourful and diverse day-to-day life in Vermeer’s seventeenth-century Delft was – and what of this we can still see today – is shown by Ingrid van der Vlis in her interviews with archivist Bas van der Wulp, archaeologist Steven Jongma and architectural historian Wim Weve. With them, we are able to follow in the footsteps of Vermeer.
An ambitious exhibition such as this can only be put together thanks to generous lenders, both in and outside of the Netherlands. Museum Prinsenhof Delft is extremely grateful to all museums and private lenders – you will find their names in this publication. Above all, I would like to thank City Archives Delft and our most important partner, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It was when we learned that the Rijksmuseum would be presenting a unique exhibition in 2023 with as many paintings by Vermeer as possible that we decided to focus on Vermeer’s network and the city of Delft, in the hope of facilitating greater insight into the man behind the myth. The Rijksmuseum supported us in the realisation of this project both through the academic group of experts and through major loans.
We would also like to thank the City of Delft, the Province of South Holland, De Laatste Eer, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Stichting Zabawas, the J.E. Jurriaanse Stichting, Stichting voor Hulp aan Delftse Jongeren, the Kerkelijke Stichting Stalpaert van der Wiele and the Van der Mandele Stichting for their
contributions. This publication, in which we look at Delft through Vermeer’s eyes, was also generously supported by the Turing Foundation.
In addition, our thanks go to the group of academic experts who provided supervision, the authors and the researchers. You will also find their names in this publication. A special word of thanks must go to exhibition curator David de Haan and all of our colleagues at Museum Prinsenhof Delft, who worked with so much ambition and pleasure on putting together this exhibition. The exhibition Vermeer’s Delft is accompanied by a range of programming throughout the city, to which many (cultural) partners in Delft have contributed.
Johannes Vermeer is one of the few Delft painters from the seventeenth century who – as far as we know –always lived in Delft. Many painters left for other places. By placing the focus on his city, his network and contemporaries, we hope that we are able to bring Vermeer closer, so you can enjoy his paintings even more. It is still easily possible to walk around Delft and see places that remind us of Vermeer’s city. I warmly invite you to do so, so you can experience all this for yourself.
Janelle Moerman Director, Museum Prinsenhof Delft
The importance of Delft for Vermeer cannot be overestimated: it was here that he took his first steps, here that he spent his entire career as a painter, and he breathed his final breath here too.
Johannes Vermeer is without doubt the most wellknown inhabitant of seventeenth-century Delft. His paintings have spread far and wide, and are appreciated by art lovers and museum visitors around the world. Although there are no longer any Vermeer paintings to admire in Delft, we still have the city itself. The look of Delft has changed over the centuries, but the structure of what is now the city centre has remained largely the same.1 The importance of Delft for Vermeer cannot be overestimated: it was here that he took his first steps, here that he spent his entire career as a painter, and he breathed his final breath here too. Vermeer’s Delft – by which I mean the streets, the buildings and the inhabitants who were important to Vermeer – form the subject of this essay.
The approx. 37 Vermeer paintings that survive still appeal to the imagination 350 years after they were painted. His paintings exert a particular attraction that sets them apart from the work of his contemporaries. Why exactly this should be is open to discussion, as we know very little about Vermeer’s artistic opinions and working method. However, his position as an artist was not unaffected by the times in which he lived. What biographical information we do have about Vermeer’s life – the places and people that played a role in his life in Delft – does throw some light on the artist, and therefore also on his work.
In the seventeenth century, Delft was a prosperous city with some 21,000 inhabitants [fig. 2]. In 1615, Reynier Jansz (c. 1591-1652) completed an apprenticeship as a ‘caffa’ worker (an expensive kind of velvet) in Amsterdam, where he also married Digna Baltens (c. 1595-1670), who was born in Antwerp. The couple soon set up home in Reynier’s hometown, Delft. They moved in with Reynier’s parents on the Beestenmarkt. In 1620, their daughter Geertruyt (1620-1670) was born. In 1623, an inventory was drawn up of Reynier Jansz’s and Digna Balten’s possessions [fig. 4]. The total value was 693 guilders – quite a sum for that time. Among the goods was a small collection of paintings valued collectively at 53 guilders. One of these paintings was a portrait of ‘the prince with the princess’; another a portrait of ‘His Excellency and Prince Hendrik’.2 The first is probably William of Orange (1533-1584) and his last wife Louise de Coligny (1555-1620), who were Prince and Princess of Orange.3 The second painting would be William’s sons Prince Maurice (1567-1625) and Prince Frederick Henry (1584-1647) [fig. 3]. These paintings indicate some allegiance to the House of Orange.
In the late 1620s, Reynier rented and operated an inn on Voldersgracht, called De Vliegende Vos (‘The Flying Fox’); he also started using ‘Vos’ as a surname. In 1629, Reynier Vos makes his first appearance in the records as a witness to the passing of a deed at the offices of notary Willem de Langue (1599-1656), located on the Market Square next to the Nieuwe Kerk. He would make many more such appearances before De Langue, who as well as a notary was also an art-lover and collector [fig. 5 and 8]. It is no coincidence that the notary had many painters among his clients, including Leonaert Bramer (1596-1674) and Balthasar van der Ast (1593/1594-1657).
On 13 October 1631, Reynier Vos registered as an art dealer with St. Luke’s Guild in Delft. Not only art dealers but also painters, potters and printers were members of this guild. Guild membership was essential for exercising their profession. Reynier Vos dealt in art from his inn De Vliegende Vos, which would undoubtedly also have acted as a social meeting place for painters in his network.
4/ Inventory of the estate of Reynier Jansz and Digna Baltens from 8 September 1623, paper, City Archives Delft
5 / In 1655 Willem de Langue had his entire art collection auctioned off: works by forty local painters and a Rembrandt. Auction note, 1655, paper, Supreme Council of Nobility , The Hague
6 / Landscape painter Pieter van Groenewegen and still life painter Baltahasar van der Ast sold their paintings through Vermeer’s father’s art dealership.
Pieter Anthonisz van Groenewegen, An Extensive Italianate Hilly Landscape, after 1623, panel, Museum Prinsenhof Delft
It was probably in De Vliegende Vos that, in 1632, Reynier and Digna welcomed a son into the world. ‘Joannis’ was baptised in the Nieuwe Kerk on 31 October. Four days later, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) was baptised in the same church [see p. 106, fig. 2]. 4
Thanks to his father’s activities, it is possible that little Johannes came into contact with art and artists at an early age. On 7 September 1640, the painter Jan Baptista van Fornenburgh (1585/15951649) visited Delft to collect outstanding pay for his deceased son from the offices of the Dutch East India Company in Delft. The day before, Reynier had made a witness statement concerning the death of Van Fornenburgh’s son. He signed this statement as Reynier Jansz Vermeer, and the witnesses were the painters Balthasar van der Ast and Pieter van Groenewegen (c. 1600-after 1657). This is the earliest known document in which Reynier used the surname Vermeer. Van Fornenburgh signed the receipt for the money, witnessed by Reynier Vermeer and the painter Pieter Steenwijck (1615-after 1656).5
Born in Middelburg, still-life painter Van der Ast had lived in Delft since 1632 [fig. 7]. Van Groenewegen and Steenwijck were both born in Delft. In 1626, after spending some time in Italy, Van Groenewegen returned to his hometown of Delft, where he concentrated on painting Italianate landscapes [fig. 6]. Steenwijck’s specialisation was the vanitas still life. He trained in the studio of his uncle David Bailly in Leiden, and in 1644 relocated to that city. All of these painters would have been acquainted with Reynier Jansz Vermeer.
In 1641, the Vermeer family moved to a larger house, Huis Mechelen on the Market Square. Herberg Mechelen was a prestigious building, right in the heart of the city, with the Nieuwe Kerk on its north side and the city hall on the south. Here Vermeer’s father continued his business as an innkeeper, with the house being known as Herberg Mechelen (‘Mechelen Inn’) [fig. 1]. Reynier purchased the property for 2,700 guilders, with a down payment of 200 guilders. The remainder was financed from two mortgages. One of these, for 400 guilders, was provided by Arent Jorisz
7 / Balthasar van der Ast, Fruit Still Life with Shells, 1640-1649, copper, Museum Prinsenhof Delft
8 / Notary Willem de Langue referred to himself and his wife Maria Pijnacker as ‘const-dorstich’: having a ‘thirst for art’. Many artists made use of his services, including the Vermeer
family and Willem van der Vliet. Van der Vliet painted these portraits of the couple. Portrait of Willem de Langue, 1626, panel, Museum Prinsenhof Delft
Pijnacker (unknown-1679), brother of the notary De Langue’s wife Maria Jorisdr Pijnacker (1599-1678). Arent and Maria had grown up in Vlamingstraat, the children of a butcher and livestock trader. Vlamingstraat was the street where butchers lived. Reynier Vermeer’s stepsister, Ariaentgen Claes van der Minne (1599/1600-1670), also lived on Vlamingstraat since marrying the butcher Jan Thonisz Back (1593-1633) in 1618.6
Johannes Vermeer’s life would take place largely on and around the Market Square. We don’t know anything for sure about Vermeer’s training as a painter and his teacher or teachers. It’s possible that he first received lessons in drawing at a drawing school diagonally opposite the back of his parents’ house on Voldersgracht. This was operated by the Catholic painter Cornelis Damen Rietwijck (c. 1590-1660). To become a master painter in his own right, Vermeer would in any event have had to pass through a six-year apprenticeship. This must have been a considerable expense for his parents alongside the mortgage repayments for Herberg Mechelen. As an apprentice painter, Vermeer would not have brought home any income.
It is possible that leading artist and friend of the family Leonaert Bramer played a role in Vermeer’s artistic training [fig. 12]. Bramer specialised in historic paintings with lots of figures and striking use of light. It is also possible that Vermeer may have spent some time as an apprentice in Amsterdam or Utrecht. The respected Catholic painter Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651) worked in Utrecht. Bloemaert was one of the founders of a drawing academy in Utrecht and had trained many painters, including Bramer – also a Catholic.7 Vermeer may also have studied briefly with Carel Fabritius (1622-1654), before he entered St. Luke’s Guild in Delft in December 1653. The talented Fabritius had spent some time in Rembrandt’s (1606-1669) studio before setting himself up in Delft in 1650. Fabritius didn’t join the guild until October 1652, before which he would not have been able to take on apprentices.
It is striking that Vermeer paid the full rate of six guilders for his membership of the guild.
As the son of a member he should have paid only three guilders – at least, if he had been apprenticed for at least two years to a local master. The fact that this was not the case must have resulted either from his having studied outside of Delft, or because Vermeer developed his skills outside of the usual path through a combination of informal tutoring from painters he knew and autodidactic study of the paintings in which his father dealt.8
But Vermeer wasn’t dependent on his father’s stock-in-trade for his artistic education. Various art collectors and dealers were active in Delft in those days. Around 1652, Leonaert Bramer drew more than a hundred copies of paintings located in Delft at that time [fig. 14, 15, 17 and 18]. These drawings are numbered, and on the back of drawing number 107 – probably the last in the series – is a list of eleven names, each preceded by the words ‘At the abode of’ [fig. 16]. The drawing has been partly cropped and is discoloured, meaning some of names cannot be read in their entirety. But among the names are those of the notary Willem de Langue, Reynier Vermeer and Leonaert Bramer. The exact object of this exercise is not known, nor is which painting belonged to whom. 9 In any event, this gives us an insight into what, in terms of paintings, could be seen in Delft at the time. Alongside works by local masters such as Anthonie Palamedesz (1602-1673), Christiaen van Couwenbergh (1604-1667) and Pieter van Groenewegen, Bramer also drew dozens of paintings by artists from other Dutch cities, including works by Gerard van Honthorst (15921656), Cornelis van Poelenburch (c. 1594/15951667) and Jan Lievens (1607-1674). There are also copies of works by masters from the Southern Netherlands such as Peter Paul Rubens (15771640), Pieter van Mol (1599-1650) and Adriaen Brouwer (1605-1638). The copy Bramer drew of a work by Rubens is wrongly ascribed to his contemporary Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) [fig. 17]. The scene – an adoration of the magi – is based on a monumental altarpiece painted by Rubens for a monastery in Brussels. The work Bramer must have seen in Delft was probably a smaller copy from Rubens’ studio.10
10 / Vermeer was 14 years of age when stadtholder Frederik Hendrik died. The prince’s burial took place with great pomp and ceremony in the Nieuwe Kerk. The Vermeers would
have had a good view of the spectacle from Herberg Mechelen. Funeral Procession of Frederik Hendrik in Delft, May 1647, paper, City Archives Delft
11 / Augustinus Terwesten, Great Hall (Groote Sael) at the Prinsenhof in Delft, c. 1743, paper, City Archives Delft
12 / Antony van der Does, Portrait of Leonaert Bramer, c. 1649, paper, City Archives Delft
13 / Leonaert Bramer was one of the few specialists in murals and ceiling painting in Delft. His biggest, most prestigious commission was for the decoration of the Great Hall in the Prinsenhof, nowadays known as the Historic Room. This hall was a semi-public space and Vermeer possibly came to look at Bramer’s ceiling. Later, Augustinus Terwesten did a drawing [11]. The ceiling painting has survived and can still be seen.
Leonaert Bramer, Ceiling Painting with Angels playing Music, 1667-1669, panel, Museum Prinsenhof Delft
14 / Leonaert Bramer drew a group of Olympian gods based on a ceiling painting he made in Delft. The Gods on Olympus, c. 1652-1653, paper, Museum Prinsenhof Delft
15 / Leonaert Bramer The Gods on Olympus, c. 1652-1653, paper, Museum Prinsenhof Delft
16 / Leonaert Bramer, List with Names, from: Album of 56 Sketches after Paintings by Seventeenthcentury Dutch Masters, c. 1652-1653, paper, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
17
18 / Amsterdam-based painter Karel du Jardin undertook a number of trips to Italy and France. He specialised in non-Dutch landscapes with a Southern look. He created this painting of a person driving a mule
that ended up with a collector in Delft, where Leonaert Bramer drew it. Leonaert Bramer (attributed to), after Karel du Jardin, Landscape with Mule Driver, from: Leonaert Bramer, Album with 56 sketches
based on paintings by 17th-century Dutch masters, c. 1652-1653, paper, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
At the end of 1652, Reynier Vermeer died at the age of 61. He was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk on 12 October 1652. His widow Digna carried on running Herberg Mechelen; she may have called on her son to take over her husband’s art dealing. 1653 was a landmark year for Vermeer, both personally and professionally. On 4 April of that year, Vermeer’s impending marriage to Catharina Bolnes (1631-1687) was registered at Delft’s city hall [see p. 107, fig. 3]. How and when the couple met is not known. Bolnes lived with her mother Maria Thins (c. 1593-1680) on Oude Langendijk, on the other side of the Market Square. Utrecht painter Abraham Bloemaert was related to her by marriage11, so it is possible that Vermeer may have got to know Catharina Bolnes there while studying under Bloemaert. Although living in close proximity, the worlds the couple inhabited were pretty far removed. Bolnes was not only a member of a distinguished, wealthy family, but she was a Catholic. Vermeer was a Protestant, the son of a simple innkeeper and, at the time, still without an occupation. This may be why Maria Thins didn’t consider Vermeer a good match for her daughter. On the evening of the day the banns were posted, at Johannes and Catharina’s request Leonaert Bramer and sea captain Bartholomeus Melling went to see Catharina’s mother; notary Johannes Ranck and Maria’s sister Cornelia Thins were also present. Granting permission for the marriage in writing would be going too far for Maria Thins. She however stated that she would ‘not prevent or hinder’ the marriage.12 The next day, a report of this was drawn up by notary Ranck and signed by Bramer, Melling, Willem de Langue and Gerrit Jansz van Oosten (unknown-1655). Van Oosten was a butcher from Vlamingstraat. On 20 April, Johannes and Catharina were married in a Catholic clandestine church in Schipluiden, a village to the south of Delft with a large Catholic congregation [see p. 92, fig. 3]. We do not know for sure whether Vermeer converted to the Catholic faith in order to marry.
It is possible that, after their wedding, Johannes and Catharina lived for a while at Herberg Mechelen with Johannes’ mother. Vermeer’s sister Geertruyt had married the
21 / The inventory of his estate drawn up after Vermeer’s death states that there was a ‘large painting showing Christ on the Cross’ hanging in the kitchen. This may have been a copy of a monumental painting by Jacob Jordaens. Vermeer knew this work well: he gave it a prominent place in his own painting Allegory of the Catholic Faith. Johannes Vermeer, c. 1670–72, canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
22 / In the 17th century, this statue stood in the clandestine church next to Maria Thins’ house. Maria with child and halo, c. 1500-1519, oak, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht
