Portrayals of Love

Johannes Vermeer, the seventeenth-century Dutch artist of the “fine painter” school, led a private life. He rarely left his hometown, Delft; exceedingly little is known about him apart from the fact that he married a Catholic woman, may have converted to her faith, and had eleven surviving children. He apparently produced only two paintings a year for two decades. After his death, Vermeer passed into near-oblivion for almost two centuries. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, however, Vermeer's star began to rise again, and it has not stopped rising since. In recent years, Vermeer’s popularity has only grown, thanks to the work of contemporary art historians and the sensibility of modern audiences.