Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) was a Dutch painter of the Golden Age who spent almost his whole life in Delft. He was baptised in October 1632 and joined the city's Guild of Saint Luke in 1653, later serving as its head. Vermeer specialised in quiet domestic interiors, in which a woman reads, writes, plays music or is simply caught in a moment of light from a window. He worked slowly, and only about thirty-four paintings are universally accepted as his. Among them are The Procuress (1656), the only work he dated himself, The Music Lesson, Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665), The Astronomer (1668) and The Allegory of Faith. He supplemented his income as an art dealer and was not wealthy; his family was left in debt when he died in Delft in December 1675, aged 43. His reputation faded after his death and was restored in the nineteenth century, partly through the critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger.