{"product_id":"johannes-vermeer-the-life-and-career-of-one-of-the-dutch-golden-age-s-greatest-painters","title":"Johannes Vermeer: The Life and Career of One of the Dutch Golden Age’s Greatest Painters","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e \u003cspan\u003eJohannes Vermeer has fascinated a growing number of 21st century viewers with his most intimate depictions of the nature of human existence. The formal perfection of his compositions and the precision of his painting technique, expressing his fantastic narrative ability and accurate realism, have become a quintessential characteristic of the Dutch Golden Age of painting. Nearly 400 years later, Vermeer is still celebrated for his incomparable sense of timelessness, human dignity and unprecedented talent for creating luminosity and purity of color in his scenes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough his paintings may seem superficially simple at first, people still identify with the handful of themes from everyday life he covered. He was a highly respected artist of his time, but by the end of the 17th century, Vermeer had mostly faded into obscurity, which is why not much is known about the man he was or how he became in artist. His life as a family father, as an artist and as a man living in the 17th century Delft has been reconstructed with the help of notary documents, but plenty of aspects about his life remain unknown.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVermeer was born in Delft, Netherlands in 1632 and died there in 1675. Extracts from notary records indicate that he was baptized on October 31, but until his marriage to Catharina Bolnes in 1653, little is known about his early life. It seems he spent almost his entire life in Delft and was surrounded by art. During his lifetime, he specialized in self-portraits and in the depiction of women featured in interior domestic scenes. Although not much has been passed down about Vermeer's personality, with whom he might have studied, where he traveled, who he possibly taught, who he painted his works for, and who or what he actually intended to represent, surviving archival documents have helped scholars uncover a better understanding of his family background and social milieu. Historians have since been able to recreate a relatively clear picture of the artist's life and the trajectory of his career, helped in part by the fact that he was relatively unproductive – despite the fact he was an artist for over 20 years, only 36 paintings have been accredited to him with certainty, and the highest estimate of his number of works is about 60. He spent almost his entire life isolated in his house in Delft, virtually painting the same two smallish rooms, the same furniture, decorations, and portraying the same people, mostly women.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough he was a renowned artist in his hometown during his life, Vermeer died impoverished, and after his death, he was quickly forgotten. In fact, throughout the 18th century, some of his paintings were even attributed to some of his more productive contemporaries. The revival of Vermeer’s reputation did not begin until the 19th century, when art historians started to recognize the extraordinary quality of his surviving works. Once Vermeer's paintings were rediscovered and became appreciated around the world, his artistic genius became clear, and his paintings were compared with the new art of photography. The mystique of the paintings he produced by using the most expensive pigments (such as ultramarine) and the technique of painting with an optical device known as a camera obscura made Vermeer an art pioneer, and it helped distinguish his work from those of his peers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs a result, a man who died in debt is now considered one of the world’s greatest artists, and his work is almost literally invaluable. His paintings are featured in the grandest art museums, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGirl with a Pearl Earring \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eis now recognized as one of the most famous paintings of all time, and one of his paintings, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eYoung Woman Seated at a Virginal\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, sold for nearly $30 million at an auction in 2004.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books Prime","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45913970147519,"sku":"a2a01156-ea59-468a-9472-b19d791db847","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0761\/7550\/7647\/files\/adff9e5a825235135159a8144c389d67.jpg?v=1785053282","url":"https:\/\/books-prime.com\/products\/johannes-vermeer-the-life-and-career-of-one-of-the-dutch-golden-age-s-greatest-painters","provider":"Books Prime","version":"1.0","type":"link"}