Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer's paintings organize light, color, figures, and objects into carefully measured relationships within seventeenth-century Dutch art. Many show people reading, making music, or performing household tasks in interiors, with windows, floor tiles, and furniture establishing a clear spatial setting. In The Milkmaid, the concentrated action of pouring milk is surrounded by almost motionless objects, their surfaces animated by small bright touches of paint. Paintings of women at the virginal bring music and the arrangement of pictures on walls into these composed rooms. Girl with a Pearl Earring differs from a commissioned likeness: it is a tronie, a study of a character or type, presented in unusual dress. His earlier religious and mythological works show a broader range of subjects than the domestic interior alone. Differences of focus, perspective, and reflected light give even simple gatherings of figures and objects a carefully constructed appearance.