Girl with a Pearl Earring
Mauritshuis, The Hague
View of Delft, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1660–61. Oil on canvas, 96.5 × 115.7 cm. Mauritshuis, The Hague. Public domain.
The image on this page is a studio placeholder, not the painting. The open-access file from Mauritshuis, The Hague replaces it when the gallery's image pipeline runs — we would rather show you a card that says so than a reproduction we have not verified.
Dutch Golden Age
View of Delft
Johannes Vermeer · c. 1660–61
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 96.5 × 115.7 cm
- Held by
- Mauritshuis, The Hague
- Licence
- Public domain
- Movement
- Dutch Golden Age
- Country
- Netherlands
The painter
Johannes Vermeer
Around thirty-five paintings by Vermeer are generally accepted, which for a career of roughly twenty years is about two a year — a rate that tells you most of what you need to know about how he worked. He spent his whole life in Delft, ran an art dealing business inherited from his father, served twice as head of the painters' guild, had fifteen children of whom eleven survived him, and died in debt at forty-three, leaving his widow to petition for bankruptcy. Almost all the paintings are interiors, most lit from a window on the left, and many reuse the same objects and the same corner of the same room.
Nearby
Related works
The Milkmaid
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
What to look at
One of only two known townscapes by Vermeer, and it is organised by weather rather than by architecture. A band of cloud shadow falls across the near buildings and the water, and behind it the New Church tower is in full sun — so the brightest thing in the picture is also the furthest away, which should flatten it and instead makes the distance palpable. The reflections in the harbour are painted as broken vertical strokes rather than a mirror, which is how still water with a slight breeze actually behaves. The famous stippling appears again on the hulls of the moored boats and on the tiled roofs at the left, little raised points of light. Marcel Proust called a small patch of yellow wall in this painting the most beautiful thing in the world and put the judgement in the mouth of a dying novelist; the patch is on the roof at the right of centre.