Technical Description

View of Delft

The support is a fine, plain-weave linen with a thread count of 14 x 13 per cm² and selvedges on both left and right sides. Strainer bar marks have resulted from a vertical cross bar and corner braces. The canvas has been lined. The buff-brown ground, bound with oil and some protein, contains chalk, lead white, ocher, a little umber, and a little black.

The composition was built up in light and dark passages. The sky, foreground, and light parts of the water are laid in with lead white while the town and its reflection were left in reserve. Some parts of the townscape are underpainted with black. A rough surface texture was created in many places, particularity in the stone facades, and in the roofs, by underpainting with lead white containing exceptionally coarse pigment particles mixed with sand. The fine yellow ocher paint of the step gable at left contains transparent rounded particles of sand.

* Johannes Vermeer (exh. cat., National Gallery of Art and Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis - Washington and the Hague, 1995, edited by Arthur Wheelock)

signature:

inscribed on cupboard (right and black & white above): Meer, and above map (left): I. Ver Meer MDCLXVIII (neither inscription is original)

View of Delft, Johannes Vermeer