A Timeline of Vermeer's Life - 1653-1660
Marriage and Early Career

April 5, Johannes Vermeer registers his intentions to marry Catharina Bolnes, the youngest daughter of Maria Thins (c.1593-1680) and Reynier Bolnes. The night before, the well known Delft painter Leonaert Bramer, friend of Vermeer's family, and Captain Melling state that Maria Thins had refused to give her consent in writing but states that "she would suffer the (marriage) banns be published and would tolerate it." Catharina is one year younger than Johannes. The young couple most likely went to live with Vermeer's family in the large inn bought by Vermeer's father called "Mechelen." Since Maria Thin's own marriage to Reynier Bones (when he was a prosperous brick maker) had been very troubled, she may have considered very closely the marriage of her daughter.

April 20, Johannes Vermeer and Catharina Bolnes get married in Schipluiden, a small village south of Delft about an hours walk away. The village was something of a Catholic enclave and the Jesuits were closely connected.

Maria Thins' house on the Oude Langendijk was a couple of doors away from a Jesuit "hidden church" and she had already been involved with the order in her native Gouda. She had been divorced from Reynier Bolnes and possessed a considerable wealth.

April 22, Vermeer and the elder painter Gerard Terborch sign a document in Delft. This document, uncovered by John Michael Montias, is the only known document that links Vermeer with any other painter.

December 29, Vermeer is registered as a member of the Saint Luke's Guild. He had been required like all other artist's to undergo a six year apprenticeship. He is unable to pay in full the entrance fee of six guilders.

Diana and Her Companions
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1653-1656

Jan. 10, witnessed an act in which he signed as "Johannis Vermeer master painter" together with a certain captain named Lambertus Morleth. Two years earlier Vermeer's name had appeared with two captains as well as with his own uncle, Lieutenant Balthens. It is presumed that Vermeer had military acquaintances.

At the end of April Vermeer again signs as a witness for a debt acknowledgement by a carpenter to a food merchant.

Vermeer did not witness the baptism of Gertruy's (his sister) child in May. This was most likely due to Vermeer's conversion to Catholicism upon his marriage. Even though he was condemned to a second-class citizenship in the Protestant-dominated Delft, there are signs of public esteem and was almost certainly not actively persecuted for his religious beliefs.

Delft, with a population of 25,000 to 30,000 had attained the peak of its artistic vitality.

A lost work work (cited in a distinguished art collection) entitled "Jupiter, Venus and Mercury" was ascribed to Vermeer. The young and ambitious artist may have painted this mythological scene and his first extant work, "Diana and her Companions," in order to appeal to the classical tastes in vogue at the rich aristocratic court in nearby The Hague.

By 1654-1655 Delft had attained the peak of it artistic vitality. It was soon to disintegrate as many painters of the town left in search of more attractive prospects in larger, richer cities, such as Amsterdam. By the mid 1670s Vermeer was one of the few artists who had remained. Had it not been for strong personal reasons, Vermeer too may have moved to Amsterdam as Potter, De Witte, Van Aelst, and De Hooch had done

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1654-1656

Dec. 14, "Sr. Johannes Reijnijersz. Vermeer master painter," and his wife "Juffr. Catharina Bolnes" appear before before notary Rota to guarantee a debt of 250 guilders that the artist's father had contracted. Both Vermeer and his wife sign the document. The appearance of "Sr." on the document is a sure sign of the artist's rise in social status.

Vermeer's first known paintings, "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary", "Diana and Her Companions", and two lost works ("The Visit to the Tomb" and "Jupiter, Venus and Mercury") all belonged to what was considered by art theorists of the time to be the most elevated type of subject matter, "histories". This testifies the young artist's artistic ambitions. Other Dutch painters, such as Pieter de Hooch, Nicolas Maes and Gerard Terborch had already pioneered sophisticated upper-middle class interior genre scenes that would later be revisited by Vermeer himself.

In Dec. Vermeer pays the remaining sum (1.5 guilders) of the master's fee in the Saint Luke's Guild that he was unable to pay in 1653.

The Procuress
Johannes Vermeer
1656

Vermeer signs one of his first known paintings, "The Procuress." The young artist seems to still be dependent on well established pictorial models and has not yet adverted the influence of the newer interior genre scenes of his contemporaries. Until 1668 Vermeer did not date any other painting. This type of Caravaggesque scene was to be found in the collections of local connoisseurs. He may even have been directly inspired by "The Procuress" by Van Baburen in his mother-in-law's possession. Van Baburen's work was to show up on the back wall of two of Vermeer's later interiors, "The Concert" and "Lady Seated at a Virginal." The young man holding a cittern and a glass of wine in Vermeer's "Procuress" is considered to be a self-portrait.

By 1656 Maria Thin, Vermeer's mother-in-law had already advanced 300 guilders, a considerable sum, the Catharina and Johannes.

The Maid Asleep
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1656-1657

About this year Vermeer paints his first true genre piece, "The Maid Asleep." It is only one or two steps removed from the "Procuress." His palette is still fairly somber. A rich oriental carpet delimits the foreground of the flat pictorial space of both paintings. However, the strict horizontal and vertical organization of the later painting's two dimensional space, which would become a hallmark of the artist's oeuvre, appears for the first time. Vermeer also tended to minimize narrative in respects to his contemporaries.

Maria Thins, in the first draft of her testament, leaves to Vermeer's daughters jewels (wrings bracelets and gilded chains) and the sum of three hundred guilders to Vermeer and Catharina.

In the same testament Maria Thins wills to Vermeer's first child, Maria, two hundred guilders. The child's name is an almost certain sign of good will that existed between Vermeer and his mother-in-law.

In Nov. 30 Vermeer and his wife were lent the sum of two hundred guilders from Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven, a wealthy Delft citizen and art collector who may have purchased in the following years more than twenty of Vermeer's works. This money may have been a kind of advance payment on the purchase of future works. Van Ruijven is now rightly considered Vermeer's patron. He was almost seven years older than Vermeer and seems to have had had a personal relation with Vermeer that went outside the usual client/artist relationship.

Feb. the framemaker Anthony van der Wiel, who had married Vermeer's sister Gertruy, registered at the guild as an art dealer.

Girl Reading a Letter
by an Open Window
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1657-1659

The Little Street
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1657-1661

About this year, Vermeer's paints one his first known interiors, "A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window." Although this kind of subject had been first experimented by Pieter de Hooch and other predecessors, Vermeer had purged the scene of its strongly anecdotal and quintessential Dutch character, concentrating on formal compositional values and objective rendering of light. From the beginning of his career, Vermeer demonstrated himself not so much as an inventor of pictorial ideas but one who would reevaluate others' pictorial conventions in the light of his unique personal experience. He was unique among Dutch artists in his ability to incorporate the fundamental, moral seriousness of history painting into his representations of domestic life.

In this period, the Saint Luke's guild was probably the center of Vermeer's public life.

Vermeer may have began distancing himself from his family or origin. This fact is seen in his failure to name any of his children after his mother or father as was common practice of the time. His first two daughters, born before 1658, Were named Maria and Elizabeth after his mother-in-law and her sister.

In Vermeer's "Procuress" a Chinese bowl appears in the still-life. Between 1602 and 1657 the Dutch had imported millions of pieces of porcelain. Native Delft artisans began feverishly producing everything from elaborate imitations of Chinese porcelain to the humble floor tiles seen in some of Vermeer's interiors.

Officer and
Laughing Girl
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1655-1660

The Milkmaid
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1655-1661

Around 1659 or 166, Vermeer's brother-in-law Willem Bolnes left his irascible father's house in Gouda to live on one of the family's properties in Schoonhoven. He incurred in debts and borrowed money from his mother, Maria Thins, since his father had become too impoverished to help. Willem apparently had no kind of work. He was later to become a problem for Vermeer and his wife.

In the late 1650s Vermeer, paints two exceptionally luminous interiors, inspired by genre models of the time. In both "Officer and Laughing Girl" and "The Milkmaid" Vermeer uses his famous "pointillist" technique ( thick points of light colored paint in the most intensely light areas of the composition called pointillés. This technical artifice conveys a sense of brilliancy rarely seen in any other of his works. Vermeer never again painted a humble sitter, such as the common milkmaid.

Vermeer turned to a new and more complex type of composition in the late 1650s or early 1660s in which he explore the amorous relation between educated men and women. The "box-like" three-dimensional effect of these pictures was fruit of the artist's interest in an expressive use of perspective. The study and practice of perspective was held in high esteem throughout Europe.

Vermeer is appointed one of the headman of the Saint Luke's Guild to a term of two years. This fact has been interpreted as a testimony of the high esteem in which the artist was at the time held. However, by the time Vermeer was elected headmaster, many of the painters resident in Delft had left for the more prosperous Amsterdam and so his election may have had less significance than usually thought.

Vermeer and his wife bury a child in the Old Church. The same document states that at the same time, Vermeer and his wife were living in the house of Maria Thins on the Oude Langendijk in Delft. At the time, the household included Vermeer, his wife, his mother-in-law, and three children , not counting an infant who had died and at least one female servant. The house had a basement, a lower hall with a vestibule, a great hall, a small room adjoining the hall, an interior kitchen, a little back kitchen, a cooking kitchen, a washing kitchen, a corridor, and an upper floor with two rooms, one of which was taken up by Vermeer's studio. Please see Kees Kaldenbach's escellent site for a thorough investigation of tthe Thins/Vermeer house <http://www.xs4all.nl/~kalden/>.

Vermeer's family situation was unusual. Very few married men in the Netherlands lived with a parent or parent-in-law for an extended period of time. Vermeer's marriage too, must be considered exceptional in as much as he married outside his own family's religion and social class. He moved from the lower, artisinal class of his Reformed parents who lived on the Delft Square to the higher social stratum of the Catholic in-laws who instead lived in the somewhat segregated "Papist Corner," the Catholic quarter of the city.

The burial of his child is the earliest known record of the artist's residence in Maria Thin's house.