Who was Jan Vermeer?
A. Jan – or Johannes – Vermeer was born on 31 October 1632, in the town of Delft in the Netherlands. Remaining in the town all his life, he was buried there on 15 December 1675. He was one of the masters of Dutch art in the 17th century, painting mainly interior genre subjects, but with a style and technique so pure that his work is now considered far superior to any of his contemporaries. Most of the details of his life remain a mystery. It is known that he was born in his parents’ tavern in the marketplace, that he married in April 1653 and had eleven children, that his wife and children were Catholics (in an overwhelmingly Protestant country), that he suffered from financial difficulties throughout his life and died in debt, and that he was chairman of the local artists’ guild in 1662-3 and 1670-71. It is strongly suggested that he trained under Carel Fabritius, a very talented pupil of Rembrandt, and might possibly have had his own pupils, although there is no evidence for this. An
