Johannes Vermeer: Google Doodle celebrates Dutch Golden Age painter

Google Doodle celebrates Dutch Baroque Period painter Johannes Vermeer, who recognized as one of the best painters of the Dutch Golden Age, on November 12, 2021.

Who was Johannes Vermeer?

Johannes Vermeer was born in the commercial Dutch town of Delft, the Netherlands, at the height of the Dutch Golden Age in October 1632 to a lower-middle class family. He specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life.

Dutch artist who made paintings that are among the most beloved and revered pictures in the history of art.

Johannes Vermeer started his career in the mid 1650s by painting large-scale biblical and mythological scenes, however a large portion of his later artworks—the ones for which he is generally well known—portray scenes of daily life in interior settings. These works are noteworthy for their purity of light and form, qualities that convey a serene, timeless sense of dignity. Vermeer additionally painted cityscapes and allegorical scenes.

Johannes Vermeer worked gradually and with incredible consideration, and usually used very expensive pigments. He is especially prestigious for his masterly treatment and utilization of light in his work.

In the nineteenth century, Johannes Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay ascribing 66 pictures to him, albeit just 34 paintings are universally credited to him today. Since that time, Vermeer’s reputation has developed, and he is presently recognized as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Like other significant Dutch Golden Age artists, for example, Frans Hals and Rembrandt, Vermeer never traveled to another country. Additionally, similar to Rembrandt, he was an avid art collector and dealer.

Johannes Vermeer was baptized within the Reformed Church on 31 October 1632.

On 29 December 1653, Johannes Vermeer became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke, a trade association for painters.

Johannes Vermeer created an aggregate of less than 50 paintings, of which 34 have survived. Only three Vermeer paintings were dated by the artist: The Procuress (1656; Gemäldegalerie, Dresden); The Astronomer (1668; Musée du Louver, Paris); and The Geographer (1669; Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt).

In December 1675, Johannes Vermeer died after a short ailment. He was buried in the Protestant Old Church on 15 December 1675.

He is most popular for his frequent use of the very expensive ultramarine (The Milkmaid), and furthermore lead-tin-yellow (A Lady Writing a Letter), madder lake (Christ in the House of Martha and Mary), and vermilion. He additionally painted with ochres, bone black and azurite.

Albeit little is known with regards to Vermeer’s early life, historians estimate from his early mythological paintings that he first aspired to be a historical painter.

By the 1650s, Johannes Vermeer started to paint quietly lit interiors with intricate symbology—a style recognized by traditional Dutch themes that became his trademark. He caught the ordinary in brilliant and perfect detail, making masterworks including “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” (1665) which is right now display at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, the Netherlands.

The artistic procedures Johannes Vermeer used are still begging to be proven wrong. Some art historians recommend he followed pictures projected from a camera obscura (a predecessor to the photographic camera), yet with no actual proof to back up such cases, some Vermeer experts stay unconvinced.

Google Doodle for Celebrating Johannes Vermeer

On November 12, 2021, Google featured a Doodle on its homepage for celebrating Johannes Vermeer. On this day in 1995, an eponymous exhibition opened at Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art, highlighting 21 of his 35 existing works.

On the left, the Google Doodle artwork references “The Allegory of Painting” (1666-1668) and in the center, “Lady Writing a Letter, with her Maid” (1670-1671).

In 1979, a ray uncovered a secret Cupid in Johannes Vermeer’s “Young lady Reading a Letter at an Open Window” (1657-1659), referred to on the right of the Google Doodle. Analysts kept on dissecting the material in 2017, discovering that the Cupid was covered by another painter.

In 2021, a German initiative totally restored the painting. These efforts are only a few of the many endeavors to demystify Johannes Vermeer and some of the world’s most treasured pieces of fine art he left behind.