Collection: Art prints by Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter who is considered one of the most important representatives of Dutch Golden Age painting. He came from a middle-class background in Delft, where his father was an art dealer and innkeeper, and grew up in an environment that gave him early access to the world of paintings and the art trade. Little is known about his artistic training, but from 1653 Vermeer was accepted into the Delft painters' guild as a master, which requires several years of apprenticeship in the craft, and in his early works he was inspired by models such as Carel Fabritius and the Utrecht School of Caravaggism.

In his early works, Vermeer devoted himself to large-format religious and mythological history paintings, but these soon gave way to a completely different pictorial concept. With increasing mastery, he turned to interiors and created the quiet, light-flooded interior scenes for which he was to become world-famous. These paintings usually depict a single or a few figures performing everyday tasks, reading a letter, playing music or looking at a map, and are characterized by an almost meditative calm and an incomparable treatment of the incident daylight.

A central feature of Vermeer's work was the extraordinary precision and luminosity of his colors, in particular his masterful handling of the precious lapis lazuli blue and his masterful rendering of light falling through high windows into darkened rooms. Famous works such as the Girl with a Pearl Earring, the Milkmaid and the Letter Reader at an Open Window are among the most precious and sought-after paintings in the entire history of art. These works demonstrate his unique ability to transform a fleeting, everyday moment into something timelessly still and profoundly human.

In addition to his work as a painter, Vermeer was also active as an art dealer, but this did not guarantee him lasting commercial success. He worked slowly and deliberately and left behind a comparatively small oeuvre of only around thirty-five paintings, which is all the more astonishing in view of his outstanding quality. After his early death in 1675, Vermeer was largely forgotten for almost two centuries before he was rediscovered in the 19th century and has since become one of the most admired painters in the history of world art. Today, Johannes Vermeer is regarded as a quiet master of light and the moment, whose few surviving works are among the most carefully guarded treasures in the world's most important museums and fetch record prices on the art market.