A Timeline of Vermeer's Life - 1661-1667
Maturity

The View of Delft
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1660-1661

In the "View of Delft," Vermeer's largest canvas (early 1660s), the artist continues to explore visual effects produced the camera obscura, a precursor of modern camera. These effects can be first noted in the "Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window" and became obvious in "Officer and Laughing Girl" and "The Milkmaid." The "View of Delft" is sometimes considered to be the first true urban landscape in western art history.

Other than the extant "View of Delft" and "The Little Street" archival records raccount that Vermeer painted another cityscape demonstrating the artist's more than sporadic interest in the field.

In Dec. Maria Thins, Vermeer's mother-in-law, purchases a grave in the the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft. Originally from Gouda, at this time she probably had come to understand that her son-in-law had become an inseparable part of the family she headed.

Willem Bolnes, brother of Vermeer's wife Catharina, showed up on several occasions at Vermeer's house and made trouble. Several witnesses, including Tanneke Everpoel, Vermeer's servant which some scholars believe to have posed for "The Milkmaid", claimed that Willem created violent commotion, causing people outside to come to the front door and listen. He swore at his mother Maria Thins, with whom Vermeer and his family resided, and called her an "old popish swine," a "she-devil," and other words "that could not be decently mentioned." He pulled a knife on his mother and tried to stab her. He also once threatened Catharina with a stick although she was pregnant "to the last degree." The stick, added a neighbor Willem de Coorde, had an iron spike on one end. Tannake prevented Willem from hitting her with it. None of this violence seems to have worked its way into the world of Vermeer's art.

Willem Bolnes, like his father, seemed to be prone to moments of uncontrollable violence. He soon after had another serious incident which left Maria Thins with a 74 guilder fee to pay two surgeons and wine necessary to help him recover.

In the estate inventory of an innkeeper named Cornelis de Helt who died in 1661, the first item listed is as "a painting with a black frame by Jan van der Meer."

Vermeer's income in the 1660s was probably higher than in the 1670s. In the1660s, sales of paintings and especially his mother-in-law's (Maria Thins) substantial financial contributions together probably ranged from 850 to 1,500 guilders a year. A mason earned about 500 guilders.

Vermeer is elected for the first time headsman of the St. Luke's guild in Delft at the age of 30 for a two year term.. However, by this time many artists resident in Delft had left for the more prosperous Amsterdam and so his election may have had less significance than once believed. He was the youngest artist to become headmaster since the guild was organized in 1611.

Many of the luxury items seen in Vermeer's interiors such as the virginal seen in "The Music Lesson" were economically out of reach of the artist. They may have been lent to him by affluent men of culture or clients such as Diego Duarte, a rich Antwerp banker, in whose important art collection was cited "a young lady playing a clavecin, with accessories, by Vermeer." The virginal seen in Vermeer's "The Music Lesson" was built by Johannes Ruckers (1578-1642). These rare instruments were sold at about 300 guiders, about half the cost of Gerrit Dou, a Frans van Mieris. An averge Dutch house might cost 1,000 guilders. In Delft, hese instruments were owned by the official town musician Scholl. (See the music section on Kees Kaldenbach's excellent Vermeer website <http://www.johannesvermeer.info/verm/house/h-a-mp3-scholl2-ENG.htm>).

In the early and mid-1660s Vermeer paints a series of extraordinary pictures of single women in the corner of a room absorbed in their activity. Even their most striking passages of observation are always subordinated to the impression made by the whole composition.

A French diplomat and art connoisseur Balthasar de Monconys visits Vermeer in Delft, in his diary he notes that he was unable to see any paintings there and had to visit the house of a baker where he saw a painting with a single figure.

De Monconys (1611-1665) was a French connoisseur and diplomat who visited Delft during the summer of 1663. He came initially as a tourist, evidently unaware of Vermeer's presence. A few weeks later, "he went to pay his respects in The Hague to Constantijn Huygens, an important art connoisseur and theorist of Dutch culture. De Monconys admired his art collection and described it in detail. However, one can only imagine "how amazed Huygens must have been to hear that the Frenchman had been in Delft, without visiting Vermeer." It seems a reasonable assumption that Huygens urged de Monconys to meet with the Delft painter, given the Frenchman’s predilection for fine art. Not long afterward, Monconys did indeed visit with Vermeer at his house, and wrote the following account in his diary journal, which was published in 1665, the year of his death: "In Delft I saw the painter Verme(e)r who did not have any of his works: but we did see one at a baker's, for which six hundred livres had been paid, although it contained but a single figure, for which six pistoles would have been too high a price." Simply put, de Monconys thought the painting he saw was worth less than a tenth of the price mentioned.

c. 1663 a son named Johannes, named after himself, is born to Vermeer.

In a death inventory of the English sculptor Jean Larson who lived in the Hague is listed "a head by Vermeer." Some critics believe it may have bee the "Girl with a Pearl Earring."

In the early to mid-1660s Vermeer refined all the qualities of his mature style. In his orderly designs, Vermeer gave new life to familiar patterns of contemporary genre painting by closely studying the subtleties of appearance.

The Concert
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1664-1667

Girl with a Pearl Earring
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1665- 1667

"The Concert" presents a very similar deep spatial recession similar to the earlier "Music Lesson." Vermeer's interest in the accurate portrayal of three dimensional perspective to create such an effect was shared by other interior genre painters of the time, however, only Vermeer seems to have fully and consciously understood the expressive function of perspective. The two paintings' underlying theme of music between male and female company is also analogous although few critics believe they were conceived as a pendant.

In the paintings of the 1660s the painted surfaces are smoother and less tactile, the lighting schemes tend to be less bold. These pictures convey and impalpable air of reticence and introspection, unique among genre painters with the possible exception of Gerrit Terborch.

Vermeer's name is mentioned in a poem by Arnold Bon. The most significant and direct is reference to Vermeer's art to be found in Dirck van Bleyswijck's Beschryvinge der Stadt Delft (Description of the City of Delft) published in 1667. The poem written by Arnold Bon, Bleyswyck's publisher, was composed in the honor of Carl Fabritius who had died in the famous ammunitions explosion. Vermeer's name is lauded in the poem's last stanza.

Thus did this Phoenix, to our loss, expire,
In the midst and at the height of his powers,
But happily there arose out of the fire
Vermeer, who masterfully trod in his path.

Maria Thins empowers Vermeer to collect various debts owed to her and to reinvest the money according to his will and discretion. Vermeer's mother-on-law evidently maintained her moral and financial support of Vermeer and his family.

Another of Vermeer's children is buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft.