Vermeer's Clients

In 1699 Herman Swoll's  descendants sold his fine collection, which "had been assembled with great difficulty and effort over the passing of time," out of the house of mourning on the Herengracht. The allegory merited special mention and was noted as well in the announcement in the Amsterdamsche Courant: "an artful piece by Vermeer of Delft."¹ The painting was sold with other Italian paintings in Amsterdam as "a seated woman with several(symbolic and allegorical) meanings, representing the New Testament by Vermeer of Delft, vigorously and glowingly painted 400-0."  It is almost unanimously believed to be Allegory of Faith now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The very high price (400 guilders) the painting brought shows that Vermeer, when he painted in the flat classical mode that wa sin the vogue at the time, could produce a painting that was nearly as valuable as any sold by the most fashionable painters of the period.²

Swoll was the Amsterdam postmaster of the Hamburg mail service. He was a Protestant and was buried in Noorderkerk on December 23,1689. His art collection contained many Italian paintings as well as "modern"Dutch artists. These, however, were not all original paintings. It is known that he employed Nicholas Verkoljen (born in Delft in 1673, died in Amsterdam in1746)to make copies after the originals, for which he was paid twelve guilders acopy.³ Van Swoll was one of the few who managed to acquire a Vermeer before the Dissius sale in1696 although is not known when he started buying art."⁴