Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) and Johannes Vermeer

…my work, which I've done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men. And therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (Letter of June 12, 1716)

Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek was born in Delft on October 24, 1632, died there on August 26, 1723. His parents, Philippus Thonisz. van Leeuwenhoek and Margaretha Jacobsdr. Bel van den Bergh, were affluent citizens. His grandparents and great-grandparents were brewers in Delft. Leeuwenhoek was baptized on November 4, 1632, in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, first attended school in Warmond, where his mother moved as a widow, and then in Benthuizen, where an uncle was to prepare him for an administrative office. However, he did not learn foreign languages or Latin, which he later lacked. In 1648, he became a bookkeeper and cashier for a cloth merchant in Amsterdam. Perhaps it was there that his interest in studying nature awakened; possibly he visited the collection of natural history objects owned by Swammerdam's father, which was famous. In 1653 or 1654, he returned to Delft and lived there for the rest of his life.

Throughout his work, Leeuwenhoek dedicated himself with great zeal to the study of nature. He was a self-taught individual who excelled particularly as a microscopist. We owe him a significant improvement in the microscope. He manufactured these instruments himself in large numbers: through his own practice, he acquired extraordinary skill in metalworking, glass blowing, grinding, and polishing lenses. He learned glass blowing at the lamp from a glass blower who demonstrated his craft at a fair. He carefully selected the types of glass for his lenses, which were very clear, making the best microscopes of his time. He owned 527 of them, mounted in copper, some in silver, and a few in gold; their magnification ranged from 40 to 270 times. He was very cautious with his instruments, did not lend them out, and initially did not even show the best ones. The way he ground his lenses was kept a secret, and he was generally not inclined to teach his art to others. He was the first to attach a concave mirror to the microscope to enhance the light falling on the object. His keen observational skill is evident from the great accuracy of some of his measurements, and his steady hand and enduring patience from the neatness of his microscopic preparations.

Van Leeuwenhoek and Vermeer

The connection between Van Leeuwenhoek, citizen of Delft and father of microbiology, and Vermeer has tantalized art historians for at least a generation. Both men were baptized within a few days of each other in October 1632. They lived a few minutes' walk from one another and both were fascinated by state-of-the-art optical devices and optics, perhaps even their philosophical ramifications. However, although writers from various disciplines have speculated on the ties between the great Delft scientist and the great Delft artist, only one documented contact between them has been registered, albeit, when the artist was already dead but the scientist still alive (Van Leeuwenhoek would survive Vermeer by 48 years).

fig. 1 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Jan Verkolje (I)
Oil on canvas, 56 x 47.5 cm.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Both men worked with lenses. And both men were ambitious. An experienced businessman, Van Leeuwenhoek realized that if his simple method for creating the critically important lens were revealed, the scientific community of his time would likely disregard or even forget his role in microscopy. He therefore allowed others to believe that he was laboriously spending most of his nights and free time grinding increasingly tiny lenses to use in microscopes. After seven years, and a dozen letters published in their peer-reviewed journal, Philosophical Transactions, the Royal Society of London elected him a Fellow in 1680.

On the other hand, when Vermeer painted his masterwork, The Art of Painting, with its compositional complexity, exceptional dimensions and grand theme whereby the artist could claim eternal fame through his art, he left no doubt as to his lofty ambitions. And although there is no objective proof in regards, circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that the courting Vermeer had made serious inroads among upper crust of elite art collectors and men of culture in and around Delft.

For Van Leeuwenhoek, observation of the microscopic world through his tiny, hand-made devices (he made more than 200 of them in his lifetime) carried with it an implicit confirmation of God's creation. After having seen teeming "animacules" in water drawn from his gutter he wrote:

Once more we see here the unconceivable Providence, perfection, and order bestowed by the Lord Creator of the Universe upon such little creatures which escape our bare eye, in order that their kind shouldn't die out.

Commemorative plate of
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Anonymous
c. 1725
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

For Vermeer, observation of overlooked moments of daily life through his camera obscura revealed aspects of nature, and perhaps of vision itself, that inspired paintings that were broader in scope and intellectual depth than the works of any other genre painter of the time. Upon viewing a few pieces of stale bread and worn kitchen crockery lit by the sun through the lens of his camera obscura, he depicted, perhaps, one of the most arresting passages in European easel painting, the still life of the Milkmaid. For both the artist and scientist then, only a tiny fraction of the world and a state-of-the-art optical device were needed to uncover worlds much larger. The camera obscura opens up a new view of things for the painter; like the microscope and telescope it is an instrument of enquiring sight.^{Carsten Wirth, "The Camera Obscura as a Model of a New Concept of Mimesis in Seventeenth-Century Painting. Inside the Camera Obscura–Optics and Art under the Spell of the Projected Image," Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2007, 177, .}

Naturally, Van Leeuwenhoek would have know everything Vermeer needed in order to build a camera obscura, he was an expert lens maker and he was interested in optical phenomena. But from a practical point of view, the artist could have acquired the same technical knowledge or even a ready built camera based on other sources.^{Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., "Perspective, Optics and Delft Artists Around 1650" (New York and London: Garland, 1977), 284.} In fact, the only component of the camera obscura that cannot be easily fabricated with thin wood planks, oiled paper, a small saw and a few nails, is a convex lens necessary to produce a brighter image than the original pin-point hole through which light entered the camera (indispensable for use in painting). Lens grinding was a taxing and exacting procedure in glass, based on the centuries-old technique of grinding lenses for eye-glasses (spectacles).^{Douglas Anderson, "Tiny Lenses," Lens on Leeuwenhoek, accessed November 14, 2023.}

Did Vermeer Hide his Camera Obscura?

We do not know if Vermeer made public his use of the camera obscura, but neither a complete apparatus nor lenses of any sort were found in his studio after his death. Thus, the camera obscura began to be associated with the artist only in the late 1800s with the advent of modern photography.

Portrait of Constantijn of Huygens (detail)
Jan Lievens
1628/29
Oil on panel, 99 x 84 cm.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

On one hand, the camera obscura had been openly publicized and enthusiastically recommended to painters by Constantijn Huygens, the Dutch connoisseur par excellence. On the other, the enigmatic painter Johannes Torrentius attempted to hide from Huygens the fact that he had used the device in his own canvases (of which only one has survived).

As Huygens recounts in his memoirs, when he showed up at the artist's studio and demonstrated how a camera obscura that he had acquired in London functions, the painter, "on seeing the projections, pretended not to know how the apparatus worked. He had asked innocently if the dancing figures on the screen were live figures outdoors. This question surprised Huygens, the instrument had, after all, been shown to many painters and everybody knew about it. Huygens suspected 'this cunning fox,' when painting, of using such an instrument to achieve his special effects."

Torrentius, then must have already known the device and had achieved, according to Huygens, "especially by this means [the camera obscura]… that certain quality in his paintings which the general run of people ascribe to divine inspiration."

Thus, the camera was lauded by Huygens but concealed by the only Dutch seventeenth-century artist other than Vermeer who is known to have actually used it as an aid to painting.

Could it be that Vermeer, like Torrentius, chose to hide his involvement with the camera in order not to diminish his artistic accomplishments in the eyes of his contemporaries? If he desired so, he must have had a difficult time.

Huygens lived an hour's walk from Vermeer's Delft and was likely very aware of Vermeer's presence and was the principal promoter of the device amongst Dutch artists. Moreover, anyone familiar with the camera has no trouble tracing various stylistic peculiarities of Vermeer's paintings to the camera's image produced by imperfect lens and focal limits.

Did Van Leeuwenhoek Pose for Vermeer?

Various art historians have mused that Van Leeuwenhoek might have posed for both The Astronomer and The Geographer by Vermeer. Considering the manner in which the scientist had himself portrayed by Jan Verkolje (fig. 1), one of the most fashionable painters of the time, it is difficult to imagine that he would not have been in synchrony with the refined dignity with which Vermeer's two scientists are depicted and the nobility of the scientist's quest.

Left to right: The Geographer ( detail), Johannes Vermeer; The Astronomer (detail), Johannes Vermeer and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (detail) Jan Verkolje

Similar in cut and fabric to the Japonsche roks worn by Vermeer's geographer and astronomer—one pale blue with fancy orange cuffs and the other marine green—Van Leeuwenhoek had donned on a plush yellow rok of his own for his formal portrait. Roks, a highly desired garment imported from Japan, were essentially a kimono tailored into a kind of house robe. They were especially worn by scholars in their studios who wished to distinguish themselves from mere dabblers. They appear in a great many Dutch paintings of doctors, geographers and astronomers. By the mid-seventeenth century, roks were made from imported Indian and Chinese silk and became a more common imitation ware but in Vermeer's and Van Leeuwenhoek's day, to wear a rok is to wear a garment which had not yet been commodified. However, that Van Leeuwenhoek would have been willing to model for not one, but three elaborate paintings done by cutting-edge artists of the day may or may not have been in character with the Delft scientist.

The art historian Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. speculated that the Vermeer and Van Leeuwenhoek must have interacted; they had too much in common and Delft was too small not to notice each other's exceptional activities. Vermeer's father and Van Leeuwenhoek could have easily made each other's acquaintance through their dealings in the silk-weaving business (Vermeer's father was a caffa weaver and Van Leeuwenhoek traded in silk goods for a living). Moreover, according to Wheelock, "they probably shared interests in globes and maps which was somewhat of an obsession among men of knowledge of the time," although maps and globes were standard fixtures in many Dutch paintings and homes of Dutch burghers.

On the other hand, John Michael Montias's views the artist-scientist relationship, and consequentially the likelihood that Van Leeuwenhoek had commissioned the two pictures, with circumspection.^{John Michael Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 225–226.} He finds no particular resemblance between "the elegant, distinguished looking scholars" and the "coarse features" exhibited in known portraits of Leeuwenhoek. Certainly, the two men in Vermeer's probable pendants do not look much like Van Leeuwenhoek as he was portrayed by Verkolje. But those who hold fast to the idea that Vermeer did paint the scientist are comforted by the fact that Verkolje painted a fifty-year-old-man and not one of thirty-seven.

Moreover, Montias doubts that Van Leeuwenhoek could have been "appointed to the curatorship of the artist's estate because he was a friend of the family." since there is not evidence of any connections between the scientist and Vermeer and his family, which "would have been expected to show up if they had regular dealings with each other." There is also no evidence that Van Leeuwenhoek assumed a favorable disposition towards the interests of Catharina, Vermeer's widow, during his curatorship of the Vermeer estate.

Van Leeuwenhoek and the Estate of Vermeer

Among the few documents that reveal Vermeer's life is this note from the delft public records which states that the aldermen of the city designate Antonie Leeuwenhoek as the receiver in the bankruptcy case of Catharina Bolnes, Vermeer widow. It is dated September 30, 1676, one year after the artist's death. Ironically, both men's names appear on another page in the Delft ledger: the one recording their births in 1632.

On September 30, 1676, a year after the artist's death, the town council of Delft designated Van Leeuwenhoek to administer the assets of Catharina Bolnes, "widow of the late Johannes Vermeer during his lifetime master painter." This was not the first time Van Leeuwenhoek had been appointed as an estate executor. But since the job was likely to procure more worries than benefits, one writer concluded that Leeuwenhoek's acceptance of the more or less insolvent Vermeer estate suggests some acquaintance between the two men.^{Anthony Bailey, Vermeer: A View of Delft (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2001), 165.}

Catharina Bolnes' effort to preserve The Art of Painting as part of her inheritance and to prevent its auction, almost certainly failed. Van Leeuwenhoek noticed this omission in the inventory and summarily reclaimed the painting having discovered it in Vermeer's mother-in-law's household. Van Leeuwenhoek rightfully determined that the transferal of the work to the late painter's mother-in-law, Maria Thins, had been illegal. The Art of Painting and other works, most likely as a part of the artist's stock and trade, were auctioned off on May 15, 1677.

The memorial and grave of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is in the tower wall of the Oude Kerk in Delft, on the side of the northern aisle. The memorial was commissioned by his daughter Maria. The poem chiseled in the wall at the entrance was written by Huibert Corneliszoon Poot, a good friend of Van Leeuwenhoek:

"Hier Rust Antonie van Leeuwenhoek out synde 90 jaar, 10 maanden en 2 dagen. Heeft elk, o wandelaer alom ontzagh voor hoogen ouderdom en wonderbare gaven. Soo set eerbiedigh hier uw stap. Hier legt de gryse wetenschap in Leeuwenhoek begraven."

[Here restsAntonie van Leeuwenhoek having reached the age of 90 years, 10 months and two days. O stroller, be respectful of great old age and wonder.]

Montias also noted that in 1678, Van Leeuwenhoek, having gotten wind that Vermeer's wife Catharina Bolnes had inherited a house in Gouda (where Catharina's mother was born) in which her father had lived and died, and three morgen of land in Wilnis, empowered the Thins family notary in Gouda to sell the properties on behalf of Vermeer's bankrupt estate, presumably for the benefit of the creditors.

The art historian Gary Schwartz argues that the "romanticization of the ties between Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and Johannes Vermeer does injustice to the historical record… The curator of an estate has permissible options that can benefit the heirs to a bankrupt estate. Van Leeuwenhoek did not employ them.

Furthermore, "he came up consistently for the rights of the creditors rather than Vermeer's widow Catharina Bolnes and her mother, Maria Thins. Montias holds him accountable for "the allegation … that Maria Thins and her daughter had conspired to conceal some of Catharina's assets," which would have landed them in jail had they not been able to prove it was a lie. In one action in which he was entirely free to show sympathy for the heirs, he behaved oppositely, by charging Maria Thins sixty guilders for his services as curator. Are we to believe that as she paid up she thought of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek as a good friend and collaborator of her deceased son-in-law?"

Van Leeuwenhoek's Homes in Delft

Van Leeuwenhoek's birth house in Delft, Netherlands in 1926 before it was demolished

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the son of Philips Thoniszoon, a basket-maker, and Margriet Jacobsdochter van den Berch, who came from a family of brewers. He took his surname—Leeuwenhoek—from the corner house on the gracht^{A "gracht" is a Dutch term that refers to a canal within a city. The word is particularly associated with the canal system in the Netherlands and is an integral part of the urban landscape in many Dutch cities, including Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Delft. Historically, these canals served various purposes, including transportation of goods, drainage, and defense.}   called Oosteinde ("east end") near the Leeuwenpoort "Lion’s Gate" in Delft which was owned by his father. It is close to the modern-day Oostpoort. The family belonged to the prosperous middle class of artisans, brewers, and lesser public officials, which was typical of the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic.

At birth, Van Leeuwenhoek was called Thonis Philipszoon. His letters, however, were signed "Antonie van Leeuwenhoek."  It is believed that the boy invented the surname for himself.

His father died at an early age, in 1638. Leeuwenhoek was sent to the grammar school of Warmond, a village near Leiden. For some time afterward, he lived with a relative in Benthuizen, then, in 1648, moved to Amsterdam, where he was apprenticed to a cloth merchant. Returning to Delft, Leeuwenhoek began a career as a shopkeeper. In July 1654, Van Leeuwenhoek married Barbara de Mey, with whom he fathered one surviving daughter, Maria (four other children died in infancy). The scientist would live and study for the rest of his life at Hypolytusbuurt in a house, called "The Golden Head" (Het Gouden Hoofd), which he had bought in 1655 (the second house in from the corner of the Nieuwstraat, directly across the gracht from the Vismarkt).^{.Douglas Anderson, "Where Leeuwenhoek's Biographers Say he Lived," Lens on Leeuwenhoek, accessed November 14, 2023.}

In 1660, Leeuwenhoek obtained a position as chamberlain to the sheriffs of Delft. His income was thus secure, and it was thereafter that he began to devote much of his time to his hobby of grinding lenses and using them to study tiny objects. To make his livelihood, he opened a draper's shop, selling linen, yarn, and ribbon to seamstresses and tailors. This is where he would make all his discoveries and where he would eventually die.

Publications, Websites & Resources

• Anderson, Douglas. Lens on Leeuwenhoek. http://lensonleeuwenhoek.net/overview.htm.
• Dobell, C., ed. 1960. Antony Van Leeuwenhoek and His 'Little Animals'. New York: Dover Publications.
• Ford, B. J. 1991. The Leeuwenhoek Legacy. Bristol: Biopress; London: Farrand Press.
• Huerta, Robert D. 2003. Giants of Delft: Johannes Vermeer and the Natural Philosophers: The Parallel Search for Knowledge During the Age of Discovery.
• Schwartz, Gary. 2016. "Today in Delft 340 Years Ago," September 30.
• Van Leeuwenhoek, Antonie. 2010. The Select Works of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Containing His Microscopical Discoveries in Many of the Works of Nature.
• Loncke, Hans. 2007. "Making a Van Leeuwenhoek Microscope Lens." In Microscopu-UK, April. http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artapr07/hl-scope.html.
• Loncke, Hans. 2007. "Making an Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Microscope Replica." In Microscopu-UK, July. http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjul07/hl-loncke2.html.
• "How to Build a Camera Obscura." Education. J. Paul Getty Museum. http://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom_resources/tips_tools/downloads/aa_camera_obscura.pdf.