Of all the great painters of the golden age when the small, soggy Netherlands arose as an improbable global power, Johannes Vermeer is the most beloved and the most disarming. Rembrandt gives us ...

In modern times, Johannes Vermeer is lauded as the preeminent genre painter of the Dutch Golden Age. But this wasn’t always the case: Until the 19th century, two of Vermeer’s contemporaries—Gabriel ...

Vermeer’s oeuvre may be slim—only 35 surviving works are widely attributed to the Dutch painter—but it casts a long shadow. Little is known of the artist himself, so much so he was dubbed “Sphinx of ...

“The most mysterious and beloved artist of all time.” Without a hint of apology, this is how the general director of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, Taco Dibbits, describes Vermeer. And it’s hard to disagree ...

Johannes Vermeer in his own day catered to a local clientele and so when he died, indebted, at age 43, with maybe 45 paintings to his credit, his name faded into obscurity until the late 19th century.

It’s not often that art lovers have the chance to walk through a room full of paintings by the great Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. After all, there are only about 35 of his pieces still in existence, ...

High-tech scanning techniques used by geologists, planetary scientists, drug companies and the military are revealing secrets of how artists created their masterpieces. A museum guest photographs ...

Johannes Vermeer's "Allegory of the Catholic Faith" includes evidence that the Jesuit perspective on optics shaped how the artist approached his paintings. Photo from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.