TEveryone is crazy about Vermeerthe exhibition on the Flemish painter hosted until 4 June al Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Tickets are sold out (on the museum website you can still scroll through all his works), but to really get to know the Dutch artist, author of iconic paintings such as “The Girl with a Pearl Earring” or “The Milkmaid”, a curious and interesting alternative is to visit the places that inspired him in Delft, his hometown.
If the Venice of the North pays homage to national glory, In fact, Delft is no different. Until June 4, 2023, in parallel, it will pay tribute to him at the Prinsenhof Museum with Het Delft van Vermeer (Discover Vermeer’s Delft). Delft is located just 55 kilometers away from Amsterdam.
The artist lived his entire life there, apart from a few rare trips to nearby cities. Streets, squares, churches, canals are the same of his time, handed down with almost unchanged characteristics. The tour, to find out where he was born and raised, can be done comfortably on foot.
In Delft along the places of Vermeer
His daily life took place within a short radius of a few hundred meters north and south of the Market Square. It starts from the New Church (Nieuwe Kerk), where Vermeer was baptized on October 31, 1632. Heading south, you reach the district of the Papists, a Catholic enclave which was headed by a community of Jesuits.
It was tolerated by the Protestant context of which the painter belonged, who lived there after marrying Catharina Bolnes, a Catholic girl from a wealthy family.
The couple, decidedly prolific because they gave birth to 14 children, lived in the house of their mother-in-law, Maria Thins, who generously supported her grandchildren, eleven of whom reached adulthood.
The house was located at Oude Langedijk 25, as indicated by documentary research. The facade is no longer the original one, but one can imagine the daily comings and goings of the large family, right in the street where one still walks today.
Vermeer’s study
The artist’s studio was presumably located in the attic for more light. The young women he portrayed in the typical interiors of Dutch houses, a reflection of the period full of commercial exchanges, were sketched there, illuminated by that typical lateral light.
The inspiration was models in the flesh, perhaps the daughters, or figures of fantasy. An idea of what the rooms in the Vermeer house must have been like is suggested by the inventory of the goods present room by room, preserved in the State Archives.
It was drawn up after her death in 1675 when, due to debts, Catharina was forced to sell everything.
At Voldersgracht 25, along a small canal north of the market, was the Inn of the Flying Fox, the painter’s birthplace, run by his parents Digna and Reynier.
The Boutique Hotel Brasserie Johannes with infopoint on Vermeer
His father was also an art dealer, a trade he later inherited from the artist.
It will open shortly Boutique Hotel Brasserie Johannes, with restaurant on the ground floor and info point on the artist. You will be able to look out of the windows and embrace the same perspective as the painter.
A few meters further on, at number 21, is the Vermeer Centrum Delft, with reproductions of Vermeer’s workstemporary exhibitions and themed shops (guided tours can be booked).
Nothing, except the facade, reveals the original function of the building, which housed the Guild or Confraternity of San Luca, association of craftsmen and artists of which Vermeer (and his father before him) was a member.
The Oude Kerk
A more evocative stage? The Oude Kerk, the old church, where the artist, now remembered only by a plaque in the floor, was buried with great pomp.
You can reach it with a walk of just over ten minutes the area of Hooikade, from which the artist painted, between 1660 and 1661, the famous “View of Delft”, defined by Marcel Proust as “the most beautiful painting in the world”.
From this position, with the port seen from the south, it is like entering the opera: the sky, the light and the reflection on the water are unchanged, although the “skyline” has partly changed. For example, the imposing Rotterdam Gate portrayed by the painter no longer exists.
To get an idea, however, just go to the Oostpoort, the eastern entrance, which with its two towers is the only one still existing, in one of the most enchanting areas of the city.
The urban map of Vermeer’s life
After a long and careful search, the street that appears in the painting “La Stradina” was also locatedin which the house of one of his aunts is portrayed, built between 1658 and 1559. Thanks to the historian Frans Grijzenhout, who in 2015 managed to locate it in Vlamingstraat, a neighborhood of carpenters and butchers, now an elegant residential area.
Two other destinations take us back in time. The address Beestenmarkt 26, where the father was born (now occupied from Hotel De Koophandel, with a pub on the ground floor). A very busy little tree-lined square, with several pleasant rooms, then reserved for the livestock market.
To this address, in the “House of the three hammers”, had moved in 1597, with her children, Vermeer’s grandmother, widow and remarried. Paardenmarkt however, preserves the memory of a dramatic event.
In the area, which follows the original topography, stood the powder magazine which exploded in 1654, with great devastation of this part of the city and many victims, including Carel Fabritius, an established painter, former pupil of Rembrandt, whom Vermeer knew well.
Vermeer’s Delft at the Prinsenhof Museum
After this tour in the footsteps of Johannes, you are ready to visit Vermeer’s Delft exhibition at the Prinsenhof Museum, dedicated to the environment and the painter’s relationship with his world. Works, documents and objects tell of his participation in public life, as well as outlining the network of family and friendships.
A mass of information that helps to enter the fervent climate of commerce and scientific discoveries of the seventeenth century and to better understand the artist, rediscovered only at the end of the nineteenth century.
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