Vermeer's Most Popular Paintings

Click here to view a list of Vermeer's paintings classified according to popularity (1)

Click here to see a bar graph (2).

erhaps no other artist except Vermeer can boast such an outstanding ratio of masterworks to total artistic output. At least eight, almost a quarter of the artist’s known output, can be considered masterworks of universal import. And as never before art historians, art critics, novelists, poets, film directors and ordinary lay people are inebriated by his canvases. In a recent public poll in the Netherlands, Vermeer advanced for the first time past the great Rembrandt van Rijn as the nation's most cherished painter. One critic (Peter Schjeldahl in the New Yorker) wrote that admiration has grown such that Vermeer is now "displacing Raphael as Europe's cynosure of artistic perfection."

Vermeer's Women, Cambridge, Great Britian

The Cambridge Museum of Art on the
occasion of the Vermeer's Women exhibition (2011).

However, Vermeer did not enjoy such unbridled esteem in his own time or in the years following his premature death. The artist’s resurrection and apotheosis began much later in the 1860s when French French art critic and left-wing politician Théophile Thoré-Bürger published a series of articles eulogizing the painter's forgotten works. From then on Vermeer’s star has steadily risen.

During the 1920s, Vermeer's canvases came into the sights of moneyed American art collectors who scoured the European continent in search of any painting that resembled a Vermeer and could be dislodged from its collection. This explains why almost half of Vermeer’s oeuvre, and a number of forgeries, are in American collections. The post-WWII discovery of a failed Dutch artist had forged various Vermeer paintings which had been enthusiastically accepted by leading Dutch scholars severely sobered the global art market. The scandal and international trial that ensued had two beneficial consequences: the Vermeer's fame was boosted to new heights and his oeuvre severely pared down more or less to its present-day dimension.

By the 1950s, Vermeer's name had been consolidated among the art-going public but following the legendary Washington/The Hague Vermeer exhibit¹ of 21 authentic paintings in 1994-1995—considered one of the most important art exhibitions of all time—the artist's fame breached the periphery of the art world and became a familiar household name.

While Vermeer’s appeal is universal, it should be noted that the taste of the general public does not always align itself with that of art specialists, who, in any case, tend to tactfully avoid making personal value judgments, especially negative ones. In public scholars, instead, prefer to discuss each work in terms of “meaning” or the relation that one painting may bear to others by the same artist or comparable Dutch paintings of the time. An example of the disparity between popular sentiment and scholarly interest can be easily understood by comparing the amount of literature dedicated to deciphering the presumed symbolic meaning hidden behind the icy façade of the London Lady Standing at the Virginals against the handful of visitors who delay their gallery stroll no more than a few seconds to view the painting and quickly whisk away to view more amenable images.

Vermeer's mystique: is it overrated?

Ivan Gaskell, one of the few scholars who has public ally addressed the matter of Vermeer's fame, utilized a comparison between Rembrandt and Vermeer to explain the latter’s mystique and inarrestable rise to the upper echelons of world culture (see column right).

But not all art historians or even painters view the Vermeer ’s overwhelming popularity in the same manner. In an interview famous English painter Francis Bacon clearly stated, "Everybody likes Vermeer, except me. He doesn't mean anything, he has no significance." Princeton specialist in Early Modern European History Theodore K. Rabb compares Vermeer to Rubens in an informative article that directly challenges Vermeer’s claim to fame. Rabb questions why we prefer to quietly “ponder, explore and relish the limited but subtle beauties of Vermeer” in respects to the universal values of Peter Paul Rubens, the grandiose baroque painter who defined his own age and left a lasting impact on the course of art history. Vermeer’s painting had negligent impact on the painters of his own time and none on those who followed.

Here are some of Raab’s attentive reflections.²

“That such deification [of Vermeer] has taken place prompts an obvious speculation: why should this be? Taste is, of course, ineffable, but two considerations may be worth pondering. The first is the steady devaluation of history in both British and USA culture. As a serious pursuit it is in steady decline, shrinking as a classroom subject and as a basis for public discourse. In that context an artist's historical importance is easily devalued. That Raphael, like Rubens, owed huge debts to his forerunners, and in turn shaped the future, gives him little credit when aesthetic judgment comes to the fore. A second consideration is that recent generations have lost the capacity to appreciate the Biblical, classical and historical references that infuse Rubens' paintings. As cultural horizons contract, the private and domestic supplant the public and the grand. It may not be irrelevant that a Vermeer is likely to be visible only to a few people at one time, whereas a Rubens can tower over a crowd. We may be living, in other words, in an age that prefers small pleasures to large. We cannot settle into dreamy contemplation of Rubens. He overwhelms. He demands soaring, energetic attention.”

Why are Vermeer's paintings so popular but so different from contemporary art?

If we are to trust the iconographers who have unearthed the messages that Vermeer’s paintings were presumably intended for his contemporaries, such messages have not aged particularly well over the distance of 350 years. Moderation, temperance and balance are no longer prime social values in a century which instead openly cultivates transgression, disinhibition and an individualist search for freedom and pleasure along side traditional values. And no one needs to be reminded that 20th-century artists, often willfully abstruse, have made every effort to dismantle foundational artistic values of the past.

Obviously, the busy half-century of iconographic research loses none of its value for the scholarly world, and by now even most laymen would agree that it is important to know what the were artist’s intentions and how his contemporaries viewed his paintings even if such values no longer match this own. "The more we know, the better," is an anthem that is very hard to disagree with.

Notwithstanding the fact that the didactic contents of Vermeer’s paintings appear largely unusable for the great majority of those who profess love of his paintings, his tiny works command undiminishing respect on the part of both laymen and specialists. It may be that the artist's popularity relies substantially not so much on eventual meanings or the moral messages woven into the fabric of the painting but on the subjects themselves as they immediately appear to the eye and by the exquisite manner in which these subjects are depicted. Curiously, many of the artistic values of Vermeer's painting— in effect, the manner in which they are composed and depicted— seem to be at completely odds with those of the most successful art of our own age.

Could the global increase in the popularity of Vermeer’s work indicates a spontaneous trend towards unmediated visual experience and artist/viewer communication? Is the concept of art as an educational instrument is losing traction? Here is how Vermeer’s work stacks up against the works of today’s competitors.

Vermeer's art vs. contemporary forms of art.

Vermeer’s works are small, even by seventeenth-century Dutch standards. Today’s cutting-edge artist is generally inclined to work in large, if not monumental, scale. Vermeer’s representations are "scaled down" versions of reality such as the minuscule Lacemaker, while today’s artist tends to "scale up"— see Jeff Koons’ £12.9m Hanging Hearts.
Vermeer produced a paltry number of paintings (36, perhaps 37 have survived but he probably made no more than 60) and likely did not utilize available techniques to produce multiples. Our most successful contemporary artists tend to be quite prolific, not to say repetitive. Perhaps the most famous and collected painter of the twentieth century, Andy Warhol, left literally a countless number of works in a variety of techniques.
Vermeer's paintings were created for private viewing. They were destined to be hung in discreet bourgeois family dwellings where only a select few members of society could see them (public collections did not exist in the seventeenth century). Today's artists demand prominent, public or private platforms to exhibit their work including art fairs and public museums frequented by thousands of viewers.
Vermeer’s art is undemonstrative and evasive. Cutting-edge art tends to be invasive, brash and deliberately disturbing.
As far as we can understand, Vermeer proffered no substantial critique of any known artistic or social norm. Today’s artist is almost universally critical of one or more aspects of his society, and his work is frequently conceived a vehicle to direct social change.
Vermeer’s art represents daily life, or at least, a very close approximation of it. There is nothing overtly provocative, spectacular, miraculous, shocking, humorous, supernatural or extraordinary in his subject matter. While he carefully staged his mise-en-scène interiors and contrived his compositions with painstaking attention, he never painted anything that could not have truly existed. His works evoke states of meditative calm. Frequently, the value of a contemporary work of art is judged from its ability to provoke public debate and shock the individual.
Vermeer accepted, and in one case rhetorically glorified, the canons of art of his age (see the Art of Painting). The cutting-edge artist is apt to challenge prevailing concepts of the art.
Vermeer’s art does not lend itself to the spoken word; it is essentially silent. He left no written documents regarding his art. Most of today’s artists press their point by appending explanatory documents (eg. exhibition catalogues) to their works or widely publicized interviews.
Vermeer was deeply committed to his craft. A significant portion of cutting-edge art is no longer materially executed by the artist and classical easel painting is generally perceived as inferior to conceptual forms of art.
The appeal of Vermeer’s art is simultaneously populist and lofty while today’s art favors low-brow dialect (kitsch and vernacular) but comes across as elitist. Vermeer’s art is inclusive where much of today’s art is exclusive.

Below are listed 36 (37?) extant Vermeer paintings according to their popularity. This list is based on the number of views that each individual painting receives on a yearly basis at the Essential Vermeer website. The almost totality of these visits originate from the index of the catalogue where at a glance the navigator may survey the titles and thumbnail images of Vermeer’s complete oeuvre displayed in chronological order. There are some surprises. For example, the once iconic Lacemaker, reproduced on countless periodicals and advertisements, currently occupies only the twenty-second with less than one-third of the visits received by the Girl with a Pearl Earring or the Milkmaid.

The Washington venue of the exhibition tallied more than 330,000 visitors notwithstanding a government shutdown and the gelid winter.
RAAB, Theodore K. "Why is Vermeer so revered?" The Art Newspaper 208 (01 December 2009, pp. 39-40

expert opinion : IVAN GASKELL

Vermeer's Mystique

That mystique is such that it now seems uncontentious that Vermeer has overtaken Rembrandt as the supreme Dutch artist of the seventeenth century - the cynosure of that culture in informed public opinion. Why should this be the case?

If Rembrandt, imagined as an intense emotionalist, appealed to the Romantic conception of an artist that prevailed popularly until recently and still has a certain currency, Vermeer is the opposite. He was apparently self-effacing, and undemonstrative, a sensitive and methodical person, who today might have been a computer software designer. If we use the metaphor of sound so beloved of even scholarly commentators, while paintings by Rembrandt encompass the entire dynamic range, from raucous shouting to quiet whimpers, those of Vermeer 'exude silence', a frequently-used critical trope. Many viewers understand Rembrandt to be always forcefully present in his works, whether in self-image or painterly touch. Vermeer seems to many to be either utterly aloof, or so enwombed in his works as to be indecipherable in any realistic sense. Allied to this are, on the one hand, Rembrandt's forthrightness about his own image and, on the other, Vermeer's reticence.

If we know what anyone looked like from his self-portraits, we know what Rembrandt looked like. We see him contrive depictions of himself in innumerable moods and roles. Vermeer, however, remains unseen, as far as we know. Commentators have tried to identify him -with the painter seen from behind in The Art of Painting, and with the man on the left meeting our gaze in the Procuress—but doubt or disbelief are the prudent responses to both these suggestions. A self-portrait may have existed—at least a painting that was described in the seventeenth century in those terms—but if indeed this was the case, it is lost. We have no idea of Vermeer's physical appearance. His gaze never certainly nor unambiguously meets ours from canvas or panel. Rembrandt's is the mystique of the role player, the actor: a public mystique. Vermeer's is the mystique of a deity, extremely economical with his self-image: a mystique of simultaneous personal withdrawal and impersonal permeation. In an age in which the preservation of privacy on the part of figures in the public gaze is largely unattainable, Vermeer's apparent situation represents an ideal fantasy for those who would have renown, but not its concomitant inconveniences.

A further issue that separates Vermeer from Rembrandt to the relative advantage of the former's reputation concerns authorship. Ironically, the most sustained and concerted attempt to establish Rembrandt's painted oeuvre yet under-taken has had the effect— for now, at least—of contributing to the diminution of his reputation. The Rembrandt Research Project and its critics have evoked more doubts and fears than reassurance. As we have seen, Vermeer's corpus, in contrast, is as secure as any.

Furthermore, that corpus comprises paintings alone, and in public estimation paintings—not drawings or prints—are important art. Unlike that of Rembrandt, Vermeer's oeuvre is undiluted by works on paper that seem merely to distract attention from what really matters to most viewers. The economy of the corpus—a maximum at present of 36 known works—recommends itself to those who would encompass a total career achievement. Furthermore in Vermeer's work, unlike that of Rembrandt, there is little classical mythology or overt religion. Domesticity is preponderant, and this has a complex ideological appeal. Women see themselves taken seriously; men see their surrogate wives and daughters treated respectfully in safe roles. Even Vermeer's treatment of lasciviousness is decorous to the point of prudishness, as can be seen in his handling of the Procuress in comparison with those of his Utrecht predecessors. Lastly, to appeal to intellectuals, we have work that lays itself open to convenient theorizing ..., and we have the ultimate dead author (in Roland Barthes's terms) who transcends his creations and evades our grasp.

The perceived homogeneity of Vermeer's oeuvre also contributes to the mystique with which he and his works are imbued. Although that perceived homogeneity dissipates when one begins to attend with care to the paintings, there is an important sense in which the total achievement seems, nonetheless, greater than the sum of its constituent parts. Arthur Wheelock expressed it thus: ' Although the individual paintings are well known, their cumulative impact is all the greater because the stylistic and thematic relationships among them reinforce and enhance each work. As we view each painting by Vermeer, our memory is at work, relating it to qualities perceived in other paintings by the artist. One result, is the acquisition of a sense of the harmony of Vermeer's life's work, which is quite unlike that of any other artist. This, too, engenders mystique. This is a complex matter concerning the effective boundaries of objects, how we know objects and what viewers bring to objects....

from:
Ivan Gaskell, Vermeer's Wager (Essays in Art and Culture), London, 2000, pp. 39-42

Vermeer's paintings listed according to popularity

This list was compiled utilizing the number of visits to Vermeer's paintings over a period of one full year on this Essential Vermeer website. Click on the thumbnail to access a high resolution image of the painting and navigate forwards and backwards with your computer's keyboard arrow keys. Click on the painting's title to access and interactive study of that painting.

61,587 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

The popularity of the iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring necessitates no comment. An endless stream of posters, postcards, home-made photographic look-alikes, copies, slick advertisements, book covers, novels and films attest to its ever-widening fame. On the other hand, at the 1696 auction of 21 Vermeer paintings this simple "tronie" (characteristic head study) fetched only 36 guilders (a bit above the average price for work of a good painting by a Dutch painter) while his own Milkmaid of comparable dimensions reached the considerable sum of 175 guilders, or almost 5 times the price of the former.

THE GIRL WITH
A PEARL EARRING

c. 1665- 1667
oil on canvas
18 1/4 x 15 1/4 in. (46.5 x 40 cm.)
Koninklijk Kabinet van
Schilderijen Mauritshuis, The Hague
museum contact

34,583 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

This simple, dignified image of a kitchen maid pouring milk has come to represent both Dutch culture at large and the universal symbol of domestic virtue. The Milkmaid remains one of the few works by Vermeer that held its own once the artist had died, his oeuvre dispersed throughout Europe and his name largely forgotten. The painting, like the Girl with a Pearl Earring has been the subject of countless "elaborations" in the twentieth century, some tasteful but many not.

THE MILKMAID

c. 1658-1661
oil on canvas
17 7/8 x 16 in. (45.45 x 40.6 cm.)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
museum contact

25,192 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

This rather large canvas is one of Vermeer’s most beloved works. The atmosphere of suspended time that it emanates is so intense that it is impossible for the viewer to withdraw from the picture’s story and cavernous space. It is also of great interest to the scholarly community because it is the first example of Vermeer’s left-hand-corner-of-the-room motif and because the final layers of paint hide the many drastic revisions that the budding young artist made during the working process. These changes are of tantamount importance when attempting to understand the iconographic agenda of the painting and the artist’s technical evolution. Its compositional failings are rarely noticed. Walter Liedtke wrote that no other work by the artist is so "beautifully imperfect."

A GIRL READING A LETTER
BY AN OPEN WINDOW

c. 1657-1659
oil on canvas
32 1/4 x 25 3/8 in. (83 x 64.5 cm.)
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
(Old Masters Picture Gallery), Dresden
museum contact

20,187 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

This large scale painting entrances laymen and savvy art scholars alike. Few painters could have pulled off such an unlikely studio setup (the painting hardly represents real working conditions of a seventeenth-century Dutch painter) or tamed such an accumulation of objects so rich and so varied. The perfect perspectival construction draws one in to the space in which light seem to fall as in natural. One may easily understand the impression that an art lover of the seventeenth century would have had when entering into the artist’s studio.

THE ART OF PAINTING

c. 1662- 1668
oil on canvas
47 1/4 x 39 3/8 in. (120 X 100 cm.)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
museum contact

18,142 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

The Girl with a Glass of Wine is a popular favorite even though it reproduces poorly and is housed in a small museum that is completely off the international tourist trail. Many find the girl’s grin unexpectedly awkward although it has been speculated that it may be the result of a later hand. However, the exquisite treatment of flamboyant red satin dress, the pure, natural light that filters through the stained glass window and the almost physical sense of spatial depth the painting were far beyond reach of any other Dutch painter.

THE GIRL WITH A GLASS OF WINE

c.1659-1660
oil on canvas
30 3/4 x 26 1/8 in. (78 x 67 cm.)
Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (Brunswick)
museum contact

18,114 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

The Young Woman Holding a Water Pitcher is perhaps one of the very few paintings by Vermeer whose composition finds no direct predecessor in Dutch painting. The woman’s statuary pose, her bird-like lightness and the room flooded with immaculate morning sunlight make this one of the most immediate works of the artist’s oeuvre. No knowledge of the painting’s symbolic references, vague as they are needed to gain direct personal access one of the artist’s most spiritually enlightening images. Its only shortcoming is that the museum goer may not take it home.

YOUNG WOMAN WITH
A WATER PITCHER

c. 1662-1665
oil on canvas
18 x 16 in. (45.7 x 40.6 cm)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
museum contact

15,796 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

Similar to the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, this work requires no book learning or even familiarity with European painting traditions to appreciate. The completely blank wall, unique in European painting, creates a luminous frame of light for the dainty young girl who sports a fancy fur-trimmed satin morning jacket and the latest hairdo. She is momentarily absorbed in her own image reflected back to from across the room by a mirror hung on the shadowed wall on the opposite side of the picture. No reproduction, however faithful, can convey the impact of this simplest of Vermeer’s interior scenes.

WOMAN WITH A PEARL NECKLACE

c.1662-1665
oil on canvas
21 1/8 x 17 1/4 in. (55 x 45 cm.)
Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
museum contact

15,796 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

The Woman in Blue Reading a Letter is closely related to the former two pictures in both composition and technique. The incredibly refined paint handling, which can only be guessed at by anyone who has not had the fortune to see the real painting, makes it one of Vermeer’s most delicate and profound testimonies of feminine nature, or at least that part of feminine nature that can be conceived by a man. The woman appears to be wrapped by an invisible envelope of space that tenderly embraces her figure and bathes her in cool morning light.

WOMAN IN BLUE READING A LETTER

c. 1662-1665
oil on canvas
18 1/4 x 15 7/8 in. (46.5 x 38 cm.)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
museum contact

15,626 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

Strangely, this small but complex painting—the figures are so tiny that they almost qualify as miniature— exerts a direct appeal that is at odds with the elaborate scene which attempts to keep the viewer at bay, isolating him in the dark foreground environment. In recent years, the painting's popularity may have been reinforced by its frequent travels as the star of temporary exhibitions all over the globe.

THE LOVE LETTER

c. 1667-1670
oil on canvas
17 3/8 x 15 1/8 in. (44 x 38.5.cm)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
museum contact

15,521 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

The View of Delft is one of the few works by Vermeer that had held its own after the death of the painter. French writer Marcel Proust dedicated a long passage to the famous "petit pan de mur jaune" (a little patch of yellow wall) that appears on the left-hand side of the painting in his À la recherche du temps perdu. Near death, Proust's fictional writer Bergotte weighs his own art against Vermeer’s precious passage. "His dizziness increased; he fixed his gaze, like a child upon a yellow butterfly that it wants to catch, on the precious patch of wall. 'That's how I ought to have written,' he said. 'My last books are too dry, I ought to have gone over them with a few layers of colour, made my language precious in itself, like this little patch of yellow wall.' Meanwhile he was not unconscious of the gravity of his condition. In a celestial pair of scales there appeared to him, weighing down one of the pans, his own life, while the other contained the little patch of wall so beautifully painted in yellow. He felt that he had rashly sacrificed the former for the latter."

VIEW OF DELFT

c.1660-1661
oil on canvas
38 1/4 x 46 1/4 in. (98.5 x 117.5 cm.)
Koninklijk Kabinet van
Schilderijen Mauritshuis, The Hague
museum contact

15,490 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

A Lady Writing is one of Vermeer’s simplest interiors. The painting, which loses much in reproduction, never fails to arrest the museum goer even if the coloring appears somewhat sour. The chiaroscural scheme is so effective that the viewer hardly questions just how the strong light that strikes the figures does not reflect upon the background wall. This is one of the few pictures which call on Rembrandt, in both the compositional scheme and the dramatic use of light.

A LADY WRITING

c. 1665-1666
oil on canvas
17 3/4 x 15 3/4 in. (45 x 39.9 cm.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
museum contact

14,757 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

The Music Lesson is one of Vermeer's most complex and accomplished works a masterpiece of composition, light and story-telling. The picture must been seen in order to appreciate its almost supernatural stillness. Unfortunately, it is infrequently on public display, but for any Vermeer devotee, it is alone worth a trip when it is exhibited.

THE MUSIC LESSON

c. 1662-1664
oil on canvas
28 7/8 x 25 3/8 in. (73.3 x 64.5 cm.)
The Royal Collection, The Windsor Castle
museum contact

14,439 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

It is impossible to anticipate the startling effect of this small picture through reproductions, even though Frick Collection’s lighting is sorely insufficient. The combination of the crisp morning light which plays upon the figures and furnishings as well as the cheerful attitude of the smartly dressed young girl are so utterly convincing that few pass by this small picture without smiling.

OFFICER AND LAUGHING GIRL

c. 1655-1660
oil on canvas
19 7/8 x 18 1/8 in. (50.5 x 46 cm.)
Frick Collection, New York
museum contact

14,221 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

The big, boisterous Procuress seems to have little to do with the Vermeer most know, but we should always remember he grew up in his father’s inn which must have been a fairly animated place. And if sex peddling, commonly practiced in inns, wasn't one of his father’s trades, the young boy couldn’t have very well avoided its presence somewhere in Delft. Pictures of brothels were immensely popular in the decades preceding this picture which, however, must have appeared a bit dated when the young Vermeer turned to the genre.

THE PROCURESS

1656
oil in canvas
56 1/2 x 51 1/8 in. (143 x 130 cm.)
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery), Dresden
museum contact

14,118 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

THE GEOGRAPHER

c.1668-1669
oil on canvas
20 7/8 x 18 1/4 in. (53 x 46.6 cm.)
Städelsches Kunstinstitut,
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
museum contact

13,743 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

GIRL WITH A RED HAT

c. 1665-1667
oil on panel
support: 9 1/2 x 7 1/8 in. (23.2 x 18.1 cm.)
painted surface: 9 x 7 1/16 in. (22.8 x 18 cm.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
museum contact

13,729 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

This work was highly appreciated in its own time. In 1696 it was sold for 155 guilders at a posthumous auction of 21 Vermeer's paintings an in respects to its dimensions it reached the second highest price after the Milkmaid (175 guilders). Moreover, the painting was described in the sales catalogue as being 'in a box,' presumably a protective devise reserved for the most precious works of art.

WOMAN HOLDING A BALANCE

c. 1622-1665
oil on canvas
stretcher size: 16 3/4 x 15 in. (42.5 x 38 cm.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
museum contact

13,530 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

THE CONCERT

c. 1663-1666
oil on canvas
28 1/2 x x25 2 in. (72.5 x 64.7 cm.)
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
museum contact

13,305 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

This work is one of Vermeer’s finest masterpieces and is generally greeted with great enthusiasm by all those who have the opportunity to see it. The sense of tranquility and absolute peace can be appreciated only in front of the real picture.

THE LITTLE STREET

c. 1657-1661
oil on canvas
21 1/16 x 17 1/8 in. (53.5 c 43.5 cm.)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
museum contact

13,296 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

Few museum visitors cast more than a sidelong glance at this large, somber canvas. It is far more popular among art historians who find the iconographical interpretation of this apparently straightforward interior, the first in artist’s career, particularly vexing. However, this struggled work, technically imperfect, signals a break with the artist's attempts in the field of history painting which pictured religious or classical themes.

A MAID ASLEEP

c. 1657
oil on canvas
34 1/2 x 30 1/8 in. (87.6 x 76.5 cm)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
museum contact

12,364 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF
MARTHA AND MARY

c. 1654-1655
oil on canvas
63 x 53 7/8 in. (160 x 142 cm.)
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
museum contact

12,191 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

Towards the middle of the twentieth century, this work was one of the most popular and most reproduced by Vermeer. It is hard to imagine how such a subtle yet powerful image does not make it a favorite alongside the Girl with a Pearl Earring and the Milkmaid. The painting is nothing, if not a perfect visible exemplar of female intimacy.

THE LACEMAKER

c.1669-1671
oil on canvas
9 5/8 x 8 1/4 in. (24.5 x 21 cm.)
Musée du Louvre, Paris
museum contact

12,151 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

THE ASTRONOMER

1668
oil on canvas
19 3/8 x 17 3/4 in. (50 x 45 cm.)
Musée du Louvre, Paris
museum contact

12,068 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

This authenticity of this painting is upheld by only one Vermeer authority and generally puzzles laymen both for its subject matter and its broad execution. However, the painting has long been withdrawn from public scrutiny.

SAINT PRAXEDIS

1655
oil on canvas
40 x 32 1/2 in. (101.6 x 82.6 cm.)
Barbara Piasecka The Johnson Collection Foundation (wheabouts unknown)

11,984 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

After years of languishing in limbo, this painting was recently accepted as an authentic Vermeer by two foremost Vermeer experts. Although it is not always on public display(it is the only Vermeer in private hands) laymen generally find it more agreeable than most art specialists who tend to believe it was painted in order to alleviate the artist’s severe economic conditions of his final years.

A YOUNG WOMAN
SEATED AT THE VIRGINALS

c.1670
oil on canvas
9 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. (25.2 x 20 cm.)
Private Collection, New York

11,822 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

The classical subject, the somber mood and the rather sketchy quality do not attract many lookers in the Mauritshuis where this so called "history painting" is displayed only a few meters from the iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring.

DIANA AND HER COMPANIONS

c. 1653-1656
oil on canvas
38 1/4 x 41 3/8 in. (98.5 x 105 cm.)
Koninklijk Kabinet van
Schilderijen Mauritshuis, The Hague
museum contact

11,205 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

This small work is one of the least popular interiors by Vermeer and one of the most neglected by art historians as well owing, very probably, to its poor state of conservation. Nonetheless, a few exquisite passages (the windows, the still life and the lion-head finial chairs) have resisted the ravages of time and tell us something about the work’s original air of hushed silence yet relaxed composure.

GIRL INTERRUPTED IN HER MUSIC

c. 1658-1661
oil on canvas
28 7/8 x 25 3/8 in. (73.3 x 44.4 cm.)
Frick Collection, New York
museum contact

10,844 page views per year
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It is not entirely clear while such an opulent yet delicately painted work has not become not a public favorite. The figure of the mistress, calm yet perplexed by the letter her maid is handing to her, is one of the great interpretations of female psyche, perhaps Vermeer's finest.

MISTRESS AND MAID

c. 1666-1667
oil on canvas
35 1/2 x 31 in. (90.2 x 78.7 cm.)
Frick Collection, New York
museum contact

10,463 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

For some motive, the extraordinary hushed atmosphere and the fine accoutrements of the writing mistress do not endear the work to the general public. On the other hand, it is one of the most discussed by art historians who find its iconographic ramifications as subtle as the artist’s use of painting technique and compositional planning.

LADY WRITING A LETTER
WITH HER MAID

c. 1670-1671
oil on canvas
28 x 23 in. (71.1 x 58.4 cm.)
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
museum contact

9,877 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

Some modern viewers are disturbed by the curious treatment of the girl’s face, which appears perhaps excessively generalized. However, the canvas is preserved particularly well and is one of the few paintings of the seventeenth century that has never been relined and is on its original stretcher.

THE GUITAR PLAYER

c. 1670-1672
oil on canvas
20 1/4 x 18 1/4 in. (53 x 46.3 cm.)
Kenwood House English Heritage
as Trustees of the Iveagh Bequest, England

9,539 page views per year
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The religious subject, the rhetorical pose and accumulation of seemingly irreconcilable objects in a bourgeois room makes this work one of Vermeer’s least favorites. However, a few years after the artist’s death, it was sold at a considerable price in respects to the prices reached a few years before, demonstrating that the perception of a work of art is not always a personal experience but deeply influenced by prevailing religious and cultural bias.

ALLEGORY OF FAITH

c. 1670- 1674
oil on canvas
54 x 35 in. (114.3 x 88.9 cm.)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Bequest of Michael Friedsam
museum contact

8,848 page views per year
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While the Woman with a Lute is evidently in poor condition, enough of the paint surface has survived to show that it is an authentic work by Vermeer. The foreground colors have darkened and the carpet which hangs on the table and the bass viol that lies on the floor are almost entirely destroyed by time or clumsy restorations of the past. Nonetheless, the intricately balanced composition and pensive look of the yearning young lutenist lend the work a particular pathos unique in the artist’s oeuvre.

WOMAN WITH A LUTE

c. 1662-1664
oil on canvas
20 1/4 x 18 in. (51.4 x 45.7 cm)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
museum contact

8,418 page views per year
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This work has had the double misfortune of representing a rather homely young girl and being immediately comparable to the iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring. Otherwise, the painting is in acceptable state of conservation and is full of its own moon-like mystery.

STUDY OF A YOUNG WOMAN

c. 1665–1667
oil on canvas
17 1/2 x 15 3/4 in. (44.5 x 40 cm)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman,
in memory of Theodore Rousseau Jr
museum contact

8,188 page views per year
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That art specialists do not respond to pictures in the same way as the museum going public is clarified by comparing the lack of public enthusiasm for this work and the significant amount of literature that has been dedicated to it. It is easy to have the picture all to one’s self even when the National Gallery is crowded.

A LADY SEATED AT A VIRGINAL

c. 1670-1675
oil on canvas
20 3/4 x 17 7/8 in. (51.5 x 45.5 cm.)
National Gallery, London
museum contact

7,864 page views per year
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The Girl with a Flute is in poor state of conservation which may be one of the reasons why laymen do not warm up to this little panel. The face of the young girl is only summarily rendered and perhaps had never been brought to completion. The lack of finesse and the perfectly placed highlights, characteristic of Vermeer’s late style, make the eyes and skin seem opaque. The psychological nuance that belongs to the companion of this work, the Girl with a Red Hat, was long cleaned away by poor restoration if indeed, it ever existed. Nonetheless, viewers can console themselves with the brilliant passage of the fur trim (the left-hand sleeve has been clumsily overpainted) and the bizarre, oriental-looking hat, headgear that is rarely seen in Dutch painting.

GIRL WITH A FLUTE

c. 1665-1670
oil on panel
7 7/8 x 7 in. (20 x 17.8 cm.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
museum contact

7,763 page views per year
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It is truly odd that this work such as this is not among the most popular paintings of Vermeer. It displays many of the artist’s most characteristic motifs and pictorial details that would be the envy of almost any Dutch interior painter of the time. Moreover, the brilliant original color scheme has been uncovered by recent restoration makes this work one of Vermeer’s most attractive.

THE GLASS OF WINE

c. 1658-1660
oil on canvas
25 1/8 x 30 1/4 in. (65 x 77 cm.)
Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
museum contact

7,731 page views per year
(click here to see bar graph below)

A LADY STANDING AT A VIRGINAL

c. 1670-1673
oil on canvas
20 3/8 x 17 1/4 in. (51.7 x 45.2 cm.)
National Gallery, London
museum contact

Bar graph of the relative popularity of Vermeer's paintings

The bar graph below displays the total number of yearly website visits to the Complete Vermeer Catalogue which is comprised of 37 interactive web studies dedicated to each of Vermeer's surviving paintings. A single, vertical bar represents the number of visits received. For example, the first bar to the extreme left shows that painting no. 1 received about 62,000 unique visits. The progressive numbers on the graph's horizontal axis refer to the order of the paintings as classified on the list above on this page . Therefore, painting no. 1, which received 62,000 visits, refers to the Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Vermeer's Most Popular Paintings

Vermeer's mystique: is it overrated?

Why are Vermeer's paintings so popular but so different from contemporary art?

Vermeer's art vs. contemporary forms of art.

Vermeer's paintings listed according to popularity

Bar graph of the relative popularity of Vermeer's paintings

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