In the winter of 1675, in the Dutch city of Delft, the painter Johannes Vermeer died, stressed and penniless. Only 43, he left behind a wife, 11 children, and two failing side businesses—as an art dealer and an innkeeper. In the decades before Vermeer’s death, the people of Delft had suffered plague, war, economic collapse, and the accidental ignition of some 40 tons of gunpowder stored in a former convent. The blast leveled a quarter of the city and killed hundreds, including Vermeer’s colleague Carel Fabritius, who painted The Goldfinch.
These unfortunate events may help explain why Vermeer’s output as an artist was so small. The number of paintings generally considered to be by his hand is 37, though at this time last year it was just 34. (Recent technical analysis undertaken by the Rijksmuseum, which is able to look beneath a work’s surface for underpainting, has confirmed that another three works are autograph.) Despite this modest oeuvre—and the fact that most of the pictures are set in one of two small rooms in his house, and depict the same pieces of furniture and the same female sitters—Vermeer is considered a genius of the Dutch Golden Age. His visions of leisure and courtship are loved for their immediacy and brilliance. His astonishing use of light, perspective, and detail has even caused speculation that he used a camera obscura to trace them.
